Praying Mantis Clumsily Eats Bees in Brooklyn

Praying mantises aren’t rare or graceful, but a treat to see. How do bees not notice this lobster-like monster sitting on a flower? This mantis in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park lurked on a flower, then lunged on two bees and tore them to pieces.

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Green heron nest survived Googa Mooga

Heroic green heron parents endured days of hipster music and foodies when their eggs were about to hatch. Now two chicks are learning to eat regurgitated fish and walk on branches of Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.

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Adolescent owl trying to look tough after getting spooked by a robin--how embarassing

Brooklyn got its first two great horned owl babies in a century this spring. Maybe they stayed away because they were so scared of the songbirds.

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700 Helmet hummingbird feeders floating around North America

Can you not stand sitting feet away from amusing hummingbirds as they steal sweet nectar from your feeder? Inventor Doyle Doss solved the age-old problem by devising a red face shield that serves the sugar water from a tube between your eyes. Since 2008 he says he’s sold about 700 of these. So while people may be freaked out to see one, hummingbirds may actually begin to recognize what they are and come right over.

Doss has some serious, boring inventions and then a side-line in goofy stuff like the face feeder, which he came up with after a hummingbird hovered in front of his red bird.  “A hummingbird came out of nowhere and just hung there, two inches from my nose,” he says. “My immediate response was, I froze. I never forgot the experience. It was such a magical type of thing.”

Decades later, Doss took a professional welding face shield and covered it in a red pattern that hummers love. Then he put a rubber tube between the eyes to be filled with sugar water. The birds came. This isn’t the first attempt at a hummingbird helmet. This adorable video shows a little girl watching hummingbirds in the more popular variety–and initially flinching and scaring them away.

The face shield serves to draw hummers in (they love red) and to make humans confident they won’t get their eyes poked out. Hummingbirds are so agile, they’re not going to go bumbling into your face.

Doss says the tube was the hardest part to figure

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Gilibrand rushes killing geese at refuge near JFK, where they haven't hit a plane in nearly 2 years

run, geese, run

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand says we need to hurry up and kill Canada geese at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge near JFK because bird-plane strikes are up–but Canada geese haven’t hit planes there in years.

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Explorers hope for less boring critters on upcoming trench dives

branson's submarine

James Cameron found nothing more than shrimp on his dive to the Mariana Trench. Richard Branson hopes to see more when he visits the deepest spot in the Atlantic this year.

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How quickly will national elk feeding grounds spread chronic wasting disease?

The century old tradition of feeding elk outside Yellowstone could end up severely hurting the population by spreading chronic wasting disease.

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FaceTime, the new Master's Voice

The iPhone’s new video chat service, FaceTime, is so good it fools dogs.

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Beagles sprung from NC lab still recovering one year on

Beagles in cages

About a year ago today my beagles’ lives started changing. Huckleberry, Moxie and 200-some dogs and cats were sprung from their filthy cages at Professional Laboratory and Research Services after a PETA undercover video

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Windshield snake scares family, amuses world, then dies

A snake scared a family by crawling across its windshield. They misidentified it as a water mocassin and drove on in terror till it fell.

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