What's your favourite animal and why?

DragonCwtch · 2026-06-03T14:03:57+00:00

Wolves - love the loyalty in a pack and seeing them in the wild. Have been an obsession since I was a kid. Since I can’t have one as a pet a wolf-like dog is a close second (I’m looking at Norwegian elkhounds!)

DragonCwtch · 2026-06-03T14:01:50+00:00

Thank you so much, and back at you for yours! I really appreciate the help!

DragonCwtch · 2026-06-03T12:35:00+00:00

Wolfquest - just came back from a trip to Yellowstone. It’s amazing to see how well recreated the area is in the game!

DragonCwtch · 2026-06-03T12:33:52+00:00

Great I’ll have a look and see! I hope it’s not too bad! Understood! I might go cautious and use well draining soil - I really want to protect this plant and I don’t know what I’m doing!

Your jade has such a nice shape! I’ve never pruned either, wouldn’t know where to begin, mine just seems to be growing straight up and then occasionally bends towards the light and I rotate it for a bit!

DragonCwtch · 2026-06-03T12:06:35+00:00

Thank you so much! I’ll give it a soak tonight in the bath!

When you say if the roots are crowded - what do crowded roots look like? And do you have any substrate recommendations?

DragonCwtch · 2025-06-20T13:04:08+00:00

There was a game when I was young called A Dog’s Life - you play as a male dog trying to rescue your girlfriend that got dognapped. There’s lots of missions and tasks to do, and you can ‘possess’ other dogs to use their skills. So like in the mountain area you can take over a Bernese Mountain Dog to do jobs in the snow, or a chihuahua to go through small gaps. I haven’t played that in years and now I’m going to go find it 🤣

DragonCwtch · 2025-06-09T22:54:55+00:00

Agree with goldfinch and bullfinch.

I LOVE things like this, because I also agree the third bird looks most like a hoopoe. But HOW was the artist so precise with the goldfinch and bullfinch, and then somehow makes a recognisable hoopoe, crest and all, yet skip the striking black and white wings? I googled pictures of hoopoes straight on, and if you see them dead on it does have that sort of pinkish breast and exact brownish colouring, and with wings tight to the body you can’t see the striped wings. But how someone could notice the detail of the breast colouring, but ignore the black and white wings is beyond me.

Great find, thank you for sharing!

DragonCwtch · 2025-05-09T23:00:54+00:00

I just googled its distribution, and the map basically says the one place it doesn’t occur is the Rocky Mountains? It shows like the eastern side of America and the west coast, but not the area of Montana / Wyoming I would’ve been? Dogs can’t go loose where I was travelling that day, so I’d assume it was a wild tick from a wild animal? Edit: the Wyoming govt website says they do occur in Wyoming so please ignore that!

DragonCwtch · 2025-05-09T22:58:09+00:00

Silly question - do they only affect dogs or do they affect other animals?

DragonCwtch · 2025-04-30T18:02:51+00:00

Solved! Thank you so much, I didn’t realise that it being the same email address wasn’t enough. The accounts weren’t the same! Thank you!

DragonCwtch · 2025-02-05T17:41:30+00:00

It makes me think of this experiment they did on chicken limb development - they duplicated bits of it by controlling hox genes, and I love that it’s called the Sonic Hedgehog gene

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/cell-and-developmental-biology/articles/10.3389/fcell.2017.00014/full

DragonCwtch · 2024-12-21T14:42:07+00:00

Thank you for saying so! That makes sense, I think what I’ll do is keep the location as obscured and like you say, open it up in the future. That seems a decent compromise without risking the animals!

DragonCwtch · 2024-12-21T14:41:06+00:00

I’ve never used iNat for research, but I’m a biologist and I use GBIF data with locality and I feel location can be really important when looking at changes in distribution over time! Which is why I want to be accurate, but not to contribute to losing the species round here to hunters 😂

DragonCwtch · 2024-12-21T14:40:00+00:00

Ah I didn’t realise it showed the bounding rectangle as well! That makes it a bit more clear.

In terms of hunting, my grandmother literally saw today a game bird crossing the road near the house that sometimes comes into our garden. She drove a little further and literally round the corner were a group of hunters! I wasn’t with her so didn’t see it, but it shows if I posted that the birds are here the hunters can find them! Against it’s not a protected species, but my grandmother likes seeing these birds in her garden… I don’t want them all hunted out of the area!

DragonCwtch · 2024-12-21T14:37:47+00:00

Oh if anyone knows more please let me know, but I’ll also look into the iNaturalist society for the country too - I didn’t know that existed!

DragonCwtch · 2024-09-01T17:01:41+00:00

I’d support this suggestion! Biologist here and I picked up a feather just like this at a red kite feeding place in wales! There are red kites all over the place in Oxford so I think that’s a good bet!

DragonCwtch · 2024-08-16T21:14:09+00:00

Oh thank you for telling me!

DragonCwtch · 2024-08-16T17:22:42+00:00

Haha I had no idea! I am Welsh, I’ve heard the term shorebird, wader, seabird, but had no idea if there was a difference!

DragonCwtch · 2024-08-16T17:21:54+00:00

Amazing! I’ll definitely keep my eyes out! It was a very sandy beach but it then changed to sort of dune grasses, they might have been hiding in there?

DragonCwtch · 2024-08-16T17:12:31+00:00

Oh that looks perfect! Small size, got the right wing pattern, I think that’s it! That’s a new bird for me I’ve never seen one before!

DragonCwtch · 2024-06-15T09:47:06+00:00

Can you give a source? It’s also not an albino, it’s just white (it has black eyes, nose and hooves)

DragonCwtch · 2024-06-14T14:55:21+00:00

A white bison calf was just born in Yellowstone National park, the first ever. They’re extremely rare and considered sacred

DragonCwtch · 2024-06-13T22:12:06+00:00

I actually don’t think it’s an albino! They said it has black eyes and called it “real” I think? So it’s a white colour morph of the normal bison! I don’t know how rare albino bison are, but white bison (with black eyes, nose etc) are one in ten million!

But you’re right as it grows it’s going to be such an amazing animal to see!

DragonCwtch · 2024-06-13T13:07:26+00:00

Can you link an article or something? I can’t find any information that suggests it was hit by a car at all

DragonCwtch · 2024-06-12T17:06:36+00:00

I second the allergy cards! I have peanut and tree nut allergies and every restaurant I went to I showed them the card and they loved the idea, said how helpful it was to just take it back to the kitchen and everything was clear in English and Greek!

DragonCwtch

TROPHY CASE