Eider Duck

       The eider duck is a species of duck found both in America and Europe. The birds abound in Norway and Iceland, where their favorite haunts are solitary rocky shores and small islands. The eider duck is about twice the size of the common duck. The male is for the most part black, but has a white back and head, with a black crown. The female is reddish, and spotted with black, and has two white bands on the wings. The nests are usually formed of drift grass and dry seaweed and are lined with down, which the female plucks from her breast. Eider down because of its warmth and lightness was in great demand many years ago for beds and coverlets. One female produces about half a pound of down.

More About Eider Ducks from The Web:

• Nesting Eider Ducks on The Coast of Iceland
• The Unusual Markings of Male Edier Ducks 
• Royal bird visit "King Eider Somateria Spectabilis Praktejder

Frog: 14 Fun Facts

A variety of frogs from a 1892 print.

       A frog a small, tailless animal, belonging to the same class as toads, newts and salamanders. 

14 Fun Facts About Frogs:

1. These creatures, the amphibians (which see), start life as water animals, and in a mature state can live both on land and in water. 
2. Frogs differ from toads in having teeth and in possessing a less bulky body than their near kin (see Toad).
3. Frogs are common in all parts of the world except Australia and South America.  
4. There are many species, and they inhabit widely different regions, but usually prefer swampy places and the shores of lakes and streams. 
5. The young frog, which is known as the tadpole, bears no resemblance to the parent. 
6. It has neither mouth nor limbs, but has branching gills and a long tail, with which it swims about. 
7. Its body looks like a roundish lump of dark jelly. 
8. But soon the mouth develops, the gills disappear and. as the days go on, the hind legs appear. 
9. The fore legs follow, the tail is gradually absorbed and thus the animal changes into the frog. 
10. It is an interesting transformation which any person may observe, if he will keep a few of the tadpoles where he can see them daily.
11. The mature frogs breathe by lungs and cannot live in water without coming to the surface for air.
12. They swim with great rapidity and move by long leaps, being able to jump many times their own length. 
13. In the tadpole stage, frogs live chiefly on vegetable matter, but the mature frog lives on insects, slugs, snails and the like. 
14. The flesh, especially that of the hind legs of certain species, is considered very choice food, and in France, particularly, frogs are bred for the market in large numbers.

More About Frogs From The Web:

• Frog Eggs and Tadpoles
• 3 Reasons Why Frogs Are So Important to the Ecosystem

sub-phyla of the Chordata: animals with a notechord.

Cardinal

A nesting pair of cardinals by Jo Alwood

       The cardinal or redbird, a showy North American finch, with fine red plumage and a crested head. A black patch is conspicuous on each side of the bill. The cardinal whistles beautifully, and his clear, ringing note is a great favorite, especially in the Southern states, where the bird is often kept in captivity.

       The birds are found in Southeastern Canada and in Eastern United States from New York to Florida. They are permanent residents of certain districts south of the Ohio River, and have been charmingly written about by James Lane Allen in his Kentucky Cardinal. They are easily tamed, and in city parks often learn to come to the call of people, who feed them with nuts.

More About Cardinals From The Web:

• Cardinal Rule - Keep Feeding FYV
• Bird of the Month - Northern Cardinal
• Mr. Cardinal Wants His Peanut!

Ferret

       The ferret is a flesh-eating animal, closely allied to the polecat, about fourteen inches in length, of a pale yellow color, with red eyes. It is a native of Africa, but has been introduced into America and Europe. It cannot, however, live long in a cold climate. Ferrets are used for hunting rabbits and for killing rats and mice. They rarely devour the animals which they attack, but kill them and suck their blood. Their slender bodies enable them to enter burrows, but unless muzzled the ferrets are apt to leave their victims behind after sucking their blood.

More About Ferrets From The Web:

• Ferrets are Funny Than Cats and Dogs
• Black-footed Ferret vs. Prairie Dog
• Adorable Ferrets! A Big Mosstake

Eland

       Eland, the Dutch name for a large African antelope. It is the size of a full-grown horse. The animal is hunted for its hide, which is used for harness, and for its flesh, which is suitable for the table. It is gentle and easily captured, and consequently is threatened with extinction.

Africa's largest antelope, the eland by PHALANX47

Dormouse

Dormice are becoming rare.

       A dormouse is a small rodent, common in Europe, its name means "sleepy one." These little animals inhabit temperate and warm countries and subsist entirely on vegetable food. Their pace is a kind of leap, but they have not the activity of squirrels. While feeding, they sit upright and carry the food to the mouth with their paws. The dormice pass the winter in a torpid state, reviving only for a short time on a warm, sunny day, when they take a little of their hoarded stores and then relapse into sleep. Among the different species are the fat dormouse and the garden dormouse.

More About Dormice From The Web:

• 10 Things You Didn't Know About Dormice
• Dormice are thriving in Suffolk Wildlife Trust reserves
• Dormice In Danger!

Dipper

       The dipper, a remarkable little singing bird, closely related to the thrushes, but resembling the wrens in appearance, especially in its up-tilted tail. It is covered with very close, water-proof plumage and lives about streams, often in the vicinity of waterfalls, into which it dashes in a perfectly fearless manner. At times it goes entirely through a cascade and finds in the crevices of the rocks back of the water, dry places where it can build its dome-shaped nests and rear its young. The dipper is a rather dark bird with a white breast, and as it moves about it jerks its tail upward and bobs its head downward. There are several species of dippers found in Asia, northern Europe and the high regions in the western parts of the United States and Canada.

Flounder

       The flounder is one of the most common of the flat sea fishes, found along the shores  of almost all countries. The body, which is extremely flattened at the sides, has the upper side dark and spotted and the under side white. Both eyes are on the upper side; and one is set lower than the other, giving the face a twisted appearance. The flounder is esteemed for its flesh.

Facts About Flounders by Deep Marine Scenes.

Duck-Billed Platypus

Platypus by the river's edge.

Platypus rolled up.

       The duck-billed platypus also called ornithorynchus, the lowest of the mammals, a peculiar creature, living in the quiet streams of Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea. It is about twenty inches long, rather slender and covered with brown hair. Its head is small  and instead of a nose it has a horny bill, resembling a duck's with nostrils, however, at the extreme end, enabling the animal to breathe with only the tip of his bill out of the water. The male  has on each heel a sharp, horny spur, which he uses for defense. Duckbills usually live in large colonies in the banks of streams, each pair inhabiting its separate burrow. The food consists chiefly of insects and worms, which the animal comes out to get at night. On land, duckbills walk about very clumsily on their short legs and webbed feet, but in water they move very rapidly.

More About Platypus From The Web:

• The Strange Platypus
• 7 places to see platypus in the wild
• Rare platypus at San Diego Zoo

Paper Church Silhouettes

       These paper cuts or silhouettes of the front and back of a church, plus stained glass windows would look lovely in any Sunday School. I've restored them for students and teachers, enjoy.

• Find more stained glass windows to color at Color The Bible
• Craft stained glass windows from melted crayons

Egret

       Egret, the name of a species of wood herons. The feathers on the rear part of the bird's back are long, reaching to the end of the tail, and even beyond at certain seasons. They are more beautiful than the feathers of the common heron. The American egret is about thirty-seven inches long, has soft plumage, a smooth head and twelve trailing feathers. It is one of the most beautiful of the native birds. In the past, the egrets have been so much hunted for their white flowing plumes, which women wear for ornament, that they were endangered. Laws now prohibit the wearing of egret feathers.

More About Egrets from The Web:

• The Great Egrets of Missouri
• 10 Egrets and Herons Found in North America

The Great Egret During Nesting Season 

by Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Fish

       Fish. Among the vertebrates (back-boned animals), the fish are lowest in order of intelligence, but among the most important from an economic standpoint. From earliest historic times men have used the flesh of fish as food, and today there is hardly a country in the world whose people do not include it in their diet.

How to fish swim in harmony? by TED-Ed

19 Characteristics of Fish:

1. Fish constitute the class Pisces, which is divided into about 13,000 species. 
2. All are back-boned animals, living in water. 
3. Notwithstanding the numerous species, fishes show a remarkable uniformity in appearance, for the greater number have elongated, compressed bodies, tapering toward both ends, with paired fins to take the place of limbs. 
4. This form of body is well adapted to meet the pressure of water. 
5. The body is generally covered with scales or bony plates, though a few species lack such covering.
6. With the exception of a small family of fresh-water fish, which possess both lungs and gills, fish breathe wholly by means of gills, which are designed to extract oxygen from the water.
7. They have cold, red blood, which is pumped through the system after being purified by passage through the gills. 
8. The backbone is composed of vertebrae, and is so loosely jointed that the body can be turned and bent freely in all directions. 
9. Fish possess in their air bladder, or swim bladder, an organ peculiar to themselves, which they are able to fill or empty at will. This bladder enables the fish the ability to control their buoyancy.
10. The skeletons of some families of fishes are not of bone, but of a strong, thick cartilage.
11. Geological investigations show that there have been many thousands of species of fish now wholly extinct, but those that survive are distributed throughout almost all the waters of the earth. 
12. Those in temperate or tropical waters are more brilliantly colored and strikingly marked than the inhabitants of colder waters. 
13. In most species the colors increase in intensity and beauty during the breeding season, much as the plumage of a bird grows bright. 
14. Some fish feed on both animal and vegetable matter, others are flesh-eaters, and some eat only vegetable food. 
15. They reproduce by eggs, these being laid in shallow water. 
16. The eggs are usually left uncared for, though some species, like the stickleback, gather the eggs in nests and protect and care for their young. 
17. Millions of eggs are laid by a single fish, but the young are preyed upon by so many enemies that relatively few survive. 
18. In size fish vary from tiny minnows, an inch or so in adult length, to man-eating sharks thirty-five feet long. 
19. Whales (which see) are mammals, though they bear certain resemblances to fish. 

More About Fish from The Web:

• Wonders of Wildlife Aquarium
• Tennessee Aquarium
• St. Louis Aquarium
• Chicago Aquarium
• National Aquarium

More About Fish from Our Blogs:

• "F" is for fish" alphabet coloring page
• Color these fish in a bowl