Awww....

My wife is a wonderful woman. She's known for some time that I've always wanted to see an owl. I mean, come on, they're such cool birds. Her friend Andy Beet visited her at the library last week brandishing a photo of an owl in a tree just behind the building. When I got home from work, we took off to go see it. It wasn't a rare bird, there weren't scads of birders lined up looking at it through their scopes. Just the two of us at sunset staring up at an owl roosting in a hole in a tree. And now that I've seen one, I can't wait to see more. Thanks sweetie!

Photos courtesy of Andy Beet

The bird I saw was a red-phase Eastern Screech-owl. So there must be two staying there this summer!

Old MacDonald Had a Farm...

...and on that farm he had a Günther's Wrasse, E-O, E-O-L

The Encyclopedia of Life is up and ready for your perusal. And for the scads of qualified bird experts who read this here blog, please, please consider entering data for some birds. Since the EOL effectively calls the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole its home, it seems as though every fish species is taken care of, while everything else is sorely lacking. Nothing that can't be fixed with a monumental effort to centralize research and data and to present it in varying degrees of scientific detail. Spread the word!