❁Maria❁

(Photo one source) (Photo two source)

These photos were captured by my friend Jeff Wirth! He’s a phenomenal wildlife tracker with a love for Mountain Lions, he went out specifically searching for the rarely seen—and documented by photographs only once before—sign of a Mountain Lion predating on a Mountain Goat. After he found the carcass he returned with his dslr camera traps and was able to get this mom and kittens returning to the killsite.

(Photo source) (Also on the cover for this book!)

Jeff is now doing incredibly important work down in the borderlands of Arizona, documenting the lions and other species in the area and how they’re impacted by the border wall that’s being installed, and advocating both for the wild world and the people who are suffering from it.

It’s a community funded project; his only source of income while spending all day, every day in the field is from Patreon and donations.

Stay Wild Media Website

Stay Wild Media Instagram

Stay Wild Media TikTok

Stay Wild Media YouTube Channel

The "Persian or Scythian Rider"

Attic workshop, Parian marble H: 1.08 m Archaic period sculpture 520-510 BC Discovered close to the Erechtheion (Acropolis) in 1886. Several fragments restored. Athens Acropolis Museum

! Edit: Front missing leg restoration fragmented and partially darkened for higher contrast to original parts (fake knee and hoof). Support pole darkened. Lens distortion perspective adjustments

The statue's conventional name "Persian" or "Scythian" rider is due to his attire which is of Eastern provenance. In Athens, during the 6th cent. BC, lived a few hundred mounted Scythian archers. They were employed as mercenaries, essentially policemen, to maintain public order.

Another possibility:

A ceramic plate, now in Oxford, bears the image of a similar rider and the inscription "Miltiades Kalos", meaning Miltiades is handsome. This has led to the hypothesis that this is a statue of the Athenian Miltiades, one of the ten Generals, who later won the battle of Marathon in 490 BC. In his youth, Miltiades spent much time in Thrace, near the land of Scythians. He had fought them on the side of the Persians, defending the military and commercial interests of the Athenians in the Black Sea region.

Polychromy reconstruction: archaeologie.de/Persian_Horseman

thnx hipstafootprint