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Eastern Great Egret
Scientific Name: Ardea modesta
Description: The Great Egret's overall plumage is white, and, for most of the year, when not breeding, the bill and facial skin are yellow. The feet are dark olive-grey or sooty black, as are the legs. During the breeding season, the bill turns mostly black and the facial skin becomes green. Also at this time, long hair-like feathers (nuptial plumes) hang across the lower back, and the legs become pinkish-yellow at the top. Young Great Egrets are similar to the adults, but have a blackish tip to the bill.
Similar species: The Great Egret can be confused with other white egrets found in Australia. It can be distinguished by the length of its neck, which is greater than the length of its body (and with a noticeable kink two-thirds of the way up), a dark line extending from the base of the bill to behind the eye and the overall larger size.
Distribution: Great Egrets occur throughout most of the world. They are common throughout Australia, with the exception of the most arid areas.
Habitat: Great Egrets prefer shallow water, particularly when flowing, but may be seen on any watered area, including damp grasslands. Great Egrets can be seen alone or in small flocks, often with other egret species, and roost at night in groups.
Feeding: The Great Egret usually feeds alone. It feeds on molluscs, amphibians, aquatic insects, small reptiles, crustaceans and occasionally other small animals, but fish make up the bulk of its diet. The Great Egret usually hunts in water, wading through the shallows, or standing motionless before stabbing at prey. Birds have also been seen taking prey while in flight.
Breeding: The Great Egret breeds in colonies, and often in association with cormorants, ibises and other egrets. Both sexes construct the nest, which is a large platform of sticks, placed in a tree over the water. The previous years' nest may often be re-used. Both sexes also incubate the eggs and care for the young (usually two or three).
Minimum Size: 70cm
Maximum Size: 90cm
Average size: 80cm
Breeding season: October to December in the south; March to May in the north.
Clutch Size: 2 to 6
Incubation: 28 days
Nestling Period: 40 days
(Source: www.birdsinbackyards.net)
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LONDEN (ANP) - De Britse regering zegt zich niet te herkennen in Amerikaanse kritiek na de dood van student Henry Nowak. Het Amerikaanse ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken stelde dat de zaak laat zien dat niet alle groepen gelijk worden behandeld door de Britse politie. De Britse minister van Justitie David Lammy zei bij Sky News zich niet te herkennen in "deze karikatuur van Groot-Brittannië met een strafrechtssysteem met dubbele standaarden".

De dood van de witte Nowak leidt in het Verenigd Koninkrijk tot grote verontwaardiging. Op beelden is te zien hoe de neergestoken en stervende tiener is geboeid door de politie, nadat zijn aanvaller hem van racisme had beschuldigd. Agenten negeren zijn smeekbedes. Zijn moordenaar, Vickrum Digwa, kreeg later levenslang opgelegd.

Het Amerikaanse ministerie uitte vergelijkbare kritiek als de nationalistische politicus Nigel Farage. Die claimde dat richtlijnen tegen racisme ertoe hebben geleid dat de politie niet alle etnische groepen gelijk behandelt.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Jaap van Dissel, tijdens de corona-uitbraak directeur van het Centrum Infectieziekten bij het Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu (RIVM) en voorzitter van het zogeheten Outbreak Management Team (OMT), wordt pas bij een volgend verhoor bevraagd over zaken als mondkapjes en de avondklok. Dat zei de voorzitter van de parlementaire enquêtecommissie corona Daan de Kort aan het begin van het eerste verhoor van Van Dissel.

De verhoren begonnen vorige week vrijdag. Deze eerste volle verhoorweek staat in het teken van het begin van de pandemie.

In totaal vinden er 51 verhoren plaats, met in totaal 47 getuigen. Onder meer viroloog Marion Koopmans en toenmalig Tweede Kamervoorzitter Khadija Arib zijn al verhoord. Naast Van Dissel moeten ook oud-premier Mark Rutte, voormalig gezondheidsminister Hugo de Jonge en oud-justitieminister Ferd Grapperhaus twee keer voor de commissie verschijnen.

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot published this picture as part of a set on social media with the following caption:

Day 108, orbit 1675 — Our orbital path regularly takes us over countless breathtaking atolls, appearing like brilliant drops of turquoise scattered across the deep blue of both the Pacific and Indian oceans. These ecosystems, essential to a lot of marine and coastal species, face threats resulting from human activity, particularly the accelerating impacts of climate change, like ocean warming and rising sea levels.
From orbit, it becomes extremely clear that for life to continue thriving, all our planet’s ecosystems must be protected.

Follow Sophie’s mission on the εpsilon page and on her social media platforms, such as X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.

Credits: ESA/NASA – S. Adenot

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

For this NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month we return to the constellation Orion (the Hunter), a location familiar to Webb. This area of the sky is replete with star-forming clouds that make up a complex hundreds of light-years across. We find ourselves in the giant molecular cloud Orion A, of which the familiar Orion Nebula (also known as M42) is just a part; Webb has taken both close-up and wide-angle looks at M42 before.

The target of these observations, however, requires us to look behind the Orion Nebula. Behind the stars, gas and dust of M42 is a long, massive filament of cold gas and dust called (somewhat confusingly) the Orion Molecular Clouds, which is divided into four parts, OMC-1 through OMC-4. OMC-1 sits immediately behind M42, to the north are OMC-2 and OMC-3, and OMC-4 lies to the south.

This image shows just a small, northern portion of OMC-2, located 1280 light-years from Earth and a little north of the Orion Nebula. Every stage of star formation – from the youngest stellar embryos, to protoplanetary discs, to newly-minted pre-main sequence stars – is contained within just this scene, which stretches 150 light-years across. The intense star-forming activity has produced an impressive display of billowing outflows and sparkling stars atop swirling layers of gas and dark, obscuring clouds.

Molecular clouds such as OMC-2 are vast clumps of gas much more dense than the rest of interstellar space. This density allows complex molecules to form, protected from the radiation given off by other stars, and it means that gravity can cause the cloud to collapse and form stars. The earliest stage of this process is a protostar – a growing star that is being fed gas from the surrounding cloud through a spinning disc of gas. As gas falls onto the protostar, it heats up, powering the glow of the protostar. The immense amount of energy acquired during this process is unleashed in fierce jets of gas from the poles of the star, frequently seen as twin glowing outflows that mark the location of a protostar.

The abundance of protostars forming here in OMC-2 has created many spectacular outflows, large and small. Jets emitted from the young stars form high-speed shockwaves that sweep through the dense material around them; where the shockwaves are impacting the gas, it heats up and glows brightly, creating sharp ridges. Zoom in to observe the fine details in these shockwaves, as well as spot the smaller outflows from younger protostars. See if you can spot the location of hidden protostars, still so deeply obscured by their dusty cradles that they can’t be seen directly, by following outflows! Compare these very young protostars to the most evolved examples: the large, bright stars which have cleared away the clouds that surrounded them and now illuminate OMC-2.

Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) was used to capture this view of OMC-2. The thick gas and dust in and around the Orion Nebula blocks any light coming from OMC-2 at visible wavelengths, and the clouds in OMC-2 itself obscure the protostars that astronomers really want to find. Only in the infrared do we see these protostars begin to shine out from their cocoons of dust. In many places, the cold dust is so dense that it absorbs all or almost all light, creating dark globules. Orange, brown and some of the red colours mark warmer dust that absorbs some light and emits some of its own. The yellow to green gradient is largely emission from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), while light from stars and protostars scattered by dust grains is seen here primarily as blue and cyan hazes. Gas heated by the outflows creates the detailed, glowing red ridges.

The data was collected in observing programme #5804, which aims to study the star formation in OMC-2 and its immediate neighbour, OMC-3. Since these molecular clouds are so near to Earth, they are excellent laboratories to learn about the earliest stages of stellar evolution. Astronomers will use the data from Webb to investigate how the many outflows affect star formation in the two regions, how the ultraviolet emission from the young stars impacts chemistry in the circumstellar discs which one day will form planets, and how gas and dust accretes onto the tens of protostars in the region.

[Image Description: An area inside a star-forming molecular cloud. The background is covered with layers of gas and dust in blue, green and yellowish colours. Thicker clumps of cold dust, dark brown to black, block out light completely. Stars lie among and atop the clouds, from small orange ones to large white or blue ones. Waves and streams of glowing whitish gas are created by jets from protostars colliding with the surrounding material.]

Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, T. Megeath, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb); CC BY 4.0
Acknowledgement: M. Özsaraç

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot published this picture as part of a set on social media with the following caption:

Day 108, orbit 1675 — Our orbital path regularly takes us over countless breathtaking atolls, appearing like brilliant drops of turquoise scattered across the deep blue of both the Pacific and Indian oceans. These ecosystems, essential to a lot of marine and coastal species, face threats resulting from human activity, particularly the accelerating impacts of climate change, like ocean warming and rising sea levels.
From orbit, it becomes extremely clear that for life to continue thriving, all our planet’s ecosystems must be protected.

Follow Sophie’s mission on the εpsilon page and on her social media platforms, such as X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.

Credits: ESA/NASA – S. Adenot

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot published this picture as part of a set on social media with the following caption:

Day 108, orbit 1675 — Our orbital path regularly takes us over countless breathtaking atolls, appearing like brilliant drops of turquoise scattered across the deep blue of both the Pacific and Indian oceans. These ecosystems, essential to a lot of marine and coastal species, face threats resulting from human activity, particularly the accelerating impacts of climate change, like ocean warming and rising sea levels.
From orbit, it becomes extremely clear that for life to continue thriving, all our planet’s ecosystems must be protected.

Follow Sophie’s mission on the εpsilon page and on her social media platforms, such as X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.

Credits: ESA/NASA – S. Adenot

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot published this picture as part of a set on social media with the following caption:

Day 108, orbit 1675 — Our orbital path regularly takes us over countless breathtaking atolls, appearing like brilliant drops of turquoise scattered across the deep blue of both the Pacific and Indian oceans. These ecosystems, essential to a lot of marine and coastal species, face threats resulting from human activity, particularly the accelerating impacts of climate change, like ocean warming and rising sea levels.
From orbit, it becomes extremely clear that for life to continue thriving, all our planet’s ecosystems must be protected.

Follow Sophie’s mission on the εpsilon page and on her social media platforms, such as X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.

Credits: ESA/NASA – S. Adenot

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Bracketology! In past World Cups, a pencil and eraser on a wallchart was the only option to work out England’s most likely stage of elimination. But humans evolve. And now we have this tremendous piece of technology: a clickable online bracket. If they top their groups, can Spain and France (the two favourites) meet in the final? Touch and drag to find out!

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De raad van commissarissen van Heineken, druk op zoek naar een nieuwe ceo, zal niet blij de Financial Times hebben ‘opengeslagen’ deze vrijdagochtend (neem wel aan dat ze online…