boyjorts

Watermelon piece is a good offering towards any adult wasp, but being a mud dauber she is a great wasp to observe, since they are not very aggressive and their sting is not too bad. I waited until she was a little more hydrated and started grooming herself to remove her from the house, since she was visibly quite dusty i knew it would be the next thing she would want to do.

unauthorized fucking thing!!!!!!

(warning: loud chirping throughout)

the first osprey is the father, the one that comes later is the mother.

ospreys are not eagles, they're ospreys

ospreys only eat fish, that's why they don't register this starling as possible food

the starling got home safely

the starling was not trying to eat the eggs, it was mostly curious and you can see it trying to hop under the osprey every time the osprey tries to sit down again--this is because the starling is still a baby and has the instinct to get under an adult for warmth, even though it mostly has its feathers. this scares the osprey because that is a Foreign Creature near its eggs.

at the end of the video you can see the ospreys starting to turn the eggs. birds do this so the yolk and/or embryo don't stick to the shell of the egg, which is bad for the egg's health.

Dorsal view by the same photographer:

And from the side:

“Just Dark Souls? Not Demon’s Souls?” If anyone wants to take HQ screenshots for me, sure. Until then, it’s sadly not gonna factor into this review.

I’ve had lots of ideas, some already expressed, about how to integrate my knowledge of and an interest in architecture with these games, and one of them was to run through sites and define just what exactly is being seen. For me, there’s an inherent pleasure to being able to pick out something and conceptually delineate it, but I think the really fruitful result of learning what‘s what is that you can see how it’s iterated upon (besides the obvious benefits for a person who’s an architect or architectural artist). There’s an undeniable pleasure to simply experiencing a setting with minimal formal comprehension. If you want more than that, though, you might like this series.

Above: a gateway right before the Undead Settlement, from Dark Souls 3.

1. Those projecting brackets are corbels. If the rows of them weren’t ornamental, the gaps in between would be identifiable as machicolations (sometimes going by the much better name of MURDER HOLES), whose purpose is offensive and defensive. Heavy objects or molten liquid could be expelled from holes between the gaps, and the corbels themselves defended against enemy projectiles.

2. These arches are known as blind arches because they lack actual openings or significant recessions. In effect, they’re a sort of referential ornament. Blind arches or blind windows can also be arches or windows which once served as actual apertures and were later filled up with brick or stones.

3. Likewise, while this succession of arches would just be an arcade if they stood apart from a wall and formed a free-standing screen, they are a sculpted detail of the wall and also have defined columns, and thus form a blind arcade.

4. This is a parapet (a low wall placed to protect against a sudden fall) – specifically, a crenellated battlement, because it alternates between raised portions (merlons) and indentations (embrasures).

All told, these details have defensive/fort-like suggestions, and it’s super easy to pick up on that even without naming the bits. The Undead Settlement proper has its own gateway, but the fact that it’s preceded by all this gives its isolationist air a thicker scent.