Oriental-pied hornbill sightings are getting very common in urban Singapore. Is this due to the successful national conservation project or due to the loss of their habitats due to rapid deforestation and habitat fragmentation?

I witnessed the failed attempts of a couple of Javan Mynas trying to save their chick from a certain death. Alas, the chick got to live another day when the crow got startled by some humans and the chick fell to the ground, into the safety of a humans hand. Should we intervene in the cycle of life or should we accept that 'life is cruel' and allow the chick to end up as the crow's dinner?

Global GeoARTBlitz 2024 Project: I’m observing & capturing marine flora & fauna of the Devon-Cornwall coast in my nature journal [with the occasional odd bird]

https://www.rgs.org/events/upcoming-events/global-geoartblitz-2024

Found MANY of them on a small American Elm! Took forever to find out what they were! I only ever saw the caterpillars, no butterflies or chysalises.

The tree is right up against the sidewalk, though be warned the sidewalk has only one ramp, and a section of dirt and mud unless they fix it.

It's development can be followed:
Larva https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/79511352
Pupa
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/81590622
Adult
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/82796482

CRG Reference Suncana 1053

See her swinging her bolas: https://youtu.be/DKMrKwTNV5k

Some more wonderful photos of this lady by photographers much better then moi. She is quite a celebrity!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/101951926508391/permalink/4394361263934081/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/101951926508391/permalink/4397220953648112/

notroadkill

First draft of description:
Playing dead, it turned back into the bush after a few minutes.
Interesting sculptural effect. Is this a stop motion of muscle movement?

Additional information added in response to questions in comments below.
Snake: completely unmoving as if "frozen" for a few minutes. Surface contours present and unchanged, until just before it turn around back into the bush.

What happened:
We were driving, when I saw "something on the road ahead". We drove up slowly to get a better view.

We stopped the car less than 5m from, what was by then clearly, a snake. It had not moved from the time that we spotted it some distance before.

I was intrigued by surface contours. Stupidly and reflexively, I got out of the car from the passenger side. I came around the back of the car to get clearer photos. It did not move for perhaps a minute or so.

When one of our friends in the car behind us also got out, I came to my senses. Almost as soon as I said not to get any closer, that it might be playing dead, the snake turned around returning to the bush.

nymph fiddling

I moved this little nymph from its large green home (an Iboza leaf), across the drive to a safer spot. Onto a blooming bright orange Tecomaria flower. I had before observed a pink nymph on such a flower and wanted to see if this fellow would change colour. Not a chance! By the next day he'd climbed off the flower and found another large green home about 20cm away (as the nymph climbs down then up), an about-to-bud blue Plectranthus. He might have been disturbed by a giant, relatively, Leaf-footed Bug which are commandeering the emerging Tecomaria flowers, but I won't fiddle with his obvious preference again.

Whether he can change colour is thus moot.

Of interest in these latest shots, taken sequentially a couple of seconds apart, is his defense response. In the first pic, his pale face is looking at me (doubtless thinking, "Hell the bugger's going to move me again!"). I then gently tickled the underside of his leaf and his head instantly snapped around, antennae flailing, to show me the black "face" behind his head.