Natural History
Birdcam
As winter draws in and the birds return to your bird table you might want to make your own bird videos with the Wingscapes BirdCam, which is a weatherproof, motion-triggered camera you can attach to your bird feeder to get up close and personal photographs and moving images of the birds pecking at your nuts. [...]
Crappy Taxidermy
Crappy Taxidermy is a site dedicated to ill-executed, ill-advised or just plain wrong taxidermy specimens, from a rat covered in blood to a cat that appears to have turned into a vase. Let’s hope Benson – the 64lb 25-yr-old British carp that recently died, and is deeply mourned by the fishing community – doesn’t suffer [...]
The Endangered Species Project
More art with purpose: The Endangered Species Print Project produces prints of species that are at risk of extinction. Prints are $50 each and come in editions of how many animals of that species are left. So, for example, there are believed to be no more than 100 Panamanian Golden Frogs left in the wild, [...]
Do Lectures
Do Lectures – If you feel like you need some inspiration to get off your arras and do something head down to Cardigan Bay in West Wales on 3rd September for five days of inspirational talks in a woodland setting. Well, actually you can’t because you have to apply in advance and go into a [...]
Truck Farm
Truck Farm is a roving farm and film project set in Brooklyn. It’s run by filmmakers Curt Ellis and Ian Cheney who have fitted out an old dodge truck with green roof technology and timelapse cameras to grow a flat bed of crops and record their progress. For a subscription of $20 you get updates [...]
Wanted: What the Specialist Factual Commissioners Want in the UK
At the Intelligent Factual conference a couple of weeks ago, specialist factual channel execs talked about which programmes have recently worked well for them and what they are looking for in the future. Click through to see what BBC1, BBC2, BBC4, Ch4, BIO, History UK and Crime & Investigation want in their science, history, art, religion and natural history slots. (Photo by plagel under CC BY-SA 2.0)
Elephant Car Wash
Elephants at a wildlife park in Oregon are working for their peanuts by washing cars with their trunks. It costs visitors $20 to get their cars cleaned. See them in action in the video.
Mannahatta
The fabulous Museum of the City of New York has a new exhibition, in conjunction with the Wildlife Conservation Society, which features the work of landscape ecologist Eric Sanderson. He’s spent ten years recreating the landscape and ecology of Manhattan in 1609, the year when Henry Hudson, an English explorer, arrived. His research reveals the [...]
Online Elephant
People have been flocking to watch the first live online elephant birth and follow the calf’s progress. 555,584 people saw the birth of Baby K as it streamed live from Antwerp Zoo in Belgium. At its peak, the site attracted more people than did the live feeds for the 2008 Olympic Games. There was a [...]
The High Line Opens in NYC
The long awaited High Line park has opened in – or rather above - NYC. Built in the 1930s to carry freight above the streets of an industrial area of New York (reinvented as the the trendy Meatpacking District and an area of warehouses that now house art galleries) it has been rescued from disrepair, [...]
