Planetary Objects Caught Up In An Invisible Net Of Gravity. This Is A Goose Egg. I Started With A Pencilled

Planetary objects caught up in an invisible net of gravity. This is a goose egg. I started with a pencilled sketch on the egg, indicating where the circles would be and then where the net would fall. I dyed the egg gray and waxed the net, avoiding the areas where I wanted the net to be a different color, like the black net over the yellow circle below. Then I went through two different yellows and black before etching the eggshell back down to white with vinegar. I like how the etching caused some bleed out from the darker colors into the white areas. You can see the feathering around a black circle in the picture second down from here. It looks a bit like the net and the circle are merging, disintegrating into each other. Not static, nor caught in the net forever!

Debate continues over whether the uncouth habits and antisocial mannerisms so engrained into older Gross Blue Herons are instinctual or learned. While there is compelling evidence towards their instinctive distaste for proper grooming (seen in the juvenile specimen above), they appear to learn their social cues from their parents. Above, a young Gross Blue Heron pays careful attention to their parent savagely attacking a field intern.

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Spoken of only in rumour and in hushed tones, Birds of Peopleface are the victims of a centuries-long smear campaign organized by the institutionalized ornithological gatekeepers known collectively as ‘Big Bird’. Often described as ‘unsettling’ or ‘freakish’, these kind and timid avians are forced to live apart from both human and bird society, eking out a tenuous existence as sideshow exhibits or otherwise masquerading as phenomenally powerful legendary figures in an attempt to deter harassment. Unfortunately I was unable to find a photograph of these incredibly wary birds so this art will have to suffice.

Today’s bird was drawn by the incredibly talented Monica Seldow. More of her work can be found at seldow.tumblr.com

I am 100% willing to stake my professional reputation as the Lead Ornithographist for The Academy of Bird Sciences on the fact that the bird pictured above is incorporeal and furthermore that leucism is in fact a fraud perpetuated by the so-called ‘scientific’ community.

Animals live or die by their coloration; white animals only exist in areas with intense snowfall, and even then the coloration tends towards seasonal and not year-round and is used primarily for camouflage. Most non-scientists are aware of this fact, and can explain trivially how animals that don't blend in with their environment are easily spotted. As a consequence, any animal that stands out will be at much higher risk of predation.

Surely that should be enough to debunk this "leucism" business, but there is one exception to this law of nature. Albinism is an actual variation of natural colours; it is a genetic anomaly which renders the animal incapable of producing pigment. This can be ruled out in the Phantom Hummingbird pictured above, however, as the eyes are not the characteristic pink seen so often in albino creatures. It is also not a bird species known for seasonal colour variation, so you can't say it is winter camouflage either.

Really, the only conclusion left is that the bird pictured is in fact a ghost. I'll grant that it runs counter to "established" animal lore but quite frankly? Classification errors are made all the time by scientists on the bleeding edge of practically any field of study. At most I will be willing to grant that the above bird has suffered from exposure to the afterlife and has with the shock lost all of the colour from their feathers. Life often looks like death when it has encountered it so intimately, after all.

But honestly, I just wanted to clear the air on this and defend the TABS field interns who work so hard to bring this information to the world in the first place. Lots of people say they are interested in learning cool new things, but very few are willing to do the actual fieldwork necessary to expand our knowledge of the world. Overall though there are just enough people willing to doubt the given explanations by the so called 'learned establishment' that we can continually advance our understanding of the universe. Glad I had the opportunity to address this; for more information please refer to the first letter in every sentence of this response.

Once believed to be local superstition, Phantom Hummingbirds have been confirmed to exist. Incapable of direct interaction with the physical plane, these etherial flappers nevertheless show aggression towards more conventionally-present hummingbirds. Whether this is due to perceived slights in their previous life or simple envy over the ability to drink nectar, nobody knows.

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what will the last bird be like

This is going to require some clarification I think, since there are plentiform and mutually exclusive ways one could describe a ‘last bird’.If you mean the final species to be grouped into class Aves, then unfortunately I cannot answer the question given I’ve not easy access to a time machine. Life on this rock looks like it’s going to continue for a while and Birds have been around for a hundred million years already so I think regardless of which ones are last classified I think there’ll be more after we extinct ourselves with some trivially avoidable nonsense or other. They did survive the K-T extinction event after all, and I’m not sure what we could do that is worse.This of course leads into the next option of final species of bird that would be classed as Aves if we were still around which again the dearth of chronal displacement devices hampers my ability to answer. I think there were a few episodes of The Future is Wild that dealt with that premise though, so try looking there.

(The Future Is Wild fanart by HydromancerX on DeviantArt)

You could of course be asking after the final specific individual bird who will outlive any other bird (hypothetical or not) in which case they are already alive today. They are immortal and very difficult to solidly comprehend but they are the first and last bird, the beginning and end of conceptual existence for birds and I am in fact writing a guide to them when I have free time. That is The Project that I’ve been mentioning more and more often these days! It’s all very exciting stuff and I can hardly wait to publish my research, but I’m still waiting on a lot of art from semi-licensed field ornithartisans and I’ve got a couple of interviews with survivors of encounters with the bird in question that I need to line up and honestly i am riding that edge of excitement and terror at all times these days because I don’t feel I am anywhere qualified enough to describe the majesty of this bird.Anyway that’s the best answer I can give to your question, sorry I couldn’t be more help!

Armoured to the core, Eastern American Toads are a surprising subspecies of the generally more toad-like American Toad. Unlike their close cousins who remain soft and jumpsome their entire lives, these armoured amphibians undergo a second metamorphosis after spending several months on land. During the first winter hibernation, the hinged keratinous ‘overshell’ and a retractible neck is developed, allowing these toads to withdraw to safety should danger approach.

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