Here’s a cartoon from my friend Kurt Erichsen.

Visit his website or journal.
 

Driving through the Washtenaw wilds, working on my firefly project, I chanced upon these two deer in the road, who then ran into a nearby yard.
 

Update (31 July): I think I saw the same pair last night, same time about a half mile away, in a more open area.
 

Check out JournOwl, an excellent site with wildlife and conservation news.

I’ve been working on images of fireflies this summer, and I’ll post some soon. Right now the only ones I see are unlucky males, on a fruitless search for a mate.

Fireflies make a brief appearance in Hedgehog in the Fog, an excellent 1975 animation by the Russian artist Yuri Norstein.

“Dog buried in Sand” (1820-23).

One of Francisco Goya’s 14 ‘black paintings‘, among his last works, painted on the wall of his home, called Quinta del Sordo (“Deaf Man’s House”). The title is not Goya’s, and was assigned by others after his death.

Two Cats (1912) by Franz Marc.

Marc was killed in WWI, cutting short his search for “empathy with the throbbing and flowing of nature’s bloodstream“.

Just saw this today at the Heritage Auctions site, a great looking scorpion in amber, a little over half an inch long. With an estimate of $24,000 – $32,000, I’m not sure who will buy it, but I wish fossils like this could be seen by anyone interested, and not hidden away in a rich collector’s vault.

In the same Natural History Auction is the nice Pterosaurs fossil below, more than a foot long, with a wingspan close to 40 inches.

Half human, half animal, a detail from “Personaje“, a 1958 painting by Remedios Varo.

Here’s a large image of the painting.

Saturday was the Royal Oak Nature Society’s 2008 Open House at Tenhave Woods and despite the cool and sometimes rainy conditions I managed to crawl on my belly like a reptile to find this ant traversing a serrated leaf edge.

Buy a print of this image.

See an ant in a sea of gold.

I’ll be showcasing some of my favorite wildlife illustrators every once in a while.

Below is a color plate by W. Heath Robinson from a favorite of the illustrated books I own, The Song of the English (1909) by Rudyard Kipling.