Fat Burns ☮ has added a photo to the pool:
Many thanks for your visits, faves and comments. Cheers.
....from a walk through the Sherwood Aboretum.
Pied Cormorant
Scientific Name: Phalacrocorax varius
Description: The Pied Cormorant is a large black and white bird with a long, grey, hooked bill and black legs and feet. It has an orange eye-patch and bare throat skin, with a blue eye-ring and the eye is green. Its black back is glossed green, and its underparts are all white, except for black stripes on the thighs. Flocks normally fly in V-shaped formations and sometimes in lines.
Similar species: The Pied Cormorant is similar to the Black-faced Cormorant (previously, Black-faced Shag), P. (Leucocarbo) fuscescens, but is slightly larger, and lacks the black face and bill. It has instead a yellow-orange eyepatch and throat, a blue eye-ring and a paler bill. Its long, slender pale bill (rather than stubby and yellow), as well as its multi-coloured face and throat skin and much larger size, also distinguish it from the Little Pied Cormorant, P. melanoleucos. In addition, the Little Pied Cormorant flies singly, not in V-shaped formations.
Distribution: The Pied Cormorant is found throughout mainland Australia. It is more common in the south and along the coast of south-western Australia and is not found in the driest parts of the interior. It is also found in New Zealand.
Habitat: The Pied Cormorant is found in marine habitats (almost exclusively so in Western Australia), including estuaries, harbours and bays. It is also found in mangroves and on large inland wetlands in eastern Australia.
Seasonal movements: Sedentary, but young birds will disperse over long distances.
Feeding: The Pied Cormorant mainly feeds on fish, but will also take crustaceans and molluscs. Like other cormorants, it catches prey underwater, by diving and swimming using its large, fully webbed feet for propulsion. It has special nictitating membranes that cover and protect the eyes underwater. As their feathers are not waterproof, cormorants are regularly seen perched with their wings outstretched to dry after fishing.
Breeding: The Pied Cormorant breeds in colonies on coastal islands, flooded tree plains, mangroves and sometimes on artificial structures such as beacons. The large nest is constructed from seaweed, twigs or sticks cemented together with droppings, and is placed in a tree or on the ground. Both parents build the nest, incubate the eggs and feed the young.
Minimum Size: 70cm
Maximum Size: 75cm
Average size: 72cm
(Source: www.birdsinbackyards.net)
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stan.jernigan has added a photo to the pool:
I took this photo of the “Bronze and Stone Lanterns and Shrine” at Kunōzan Tōshō-gū Shinto shrine on Mount Kunō, overlooking Suruga Bay in Shizuoka City, Japan, using my iPhone 17 Pro Max. These traditional bronze and stone lanterns lead to the shrine's ornate gates and buildings. The entire area has such a peaceful and graceful atmosphere…
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A global outage taking down a wide range of Microsoft 365 services remains ongoing Friday morning. The outage started midday Thursday, impacting users of Microsoft email, cloud, and AI services. Microsoft has documented the full list of services impacted by the error, while moving early Friday morning to protect customers around the world from losing emails during the extended disruptions. "Recovery actions are ongoing," the Microsoft 365 Status account confirmed on X. "To help preserve delayed mail during this event, we've extended email timeout to 48 hours."
Similar to recent world-shaking outages of widely used tech like Amazon Web Services and CrowdStrike, the Microsoft disruption looks like "one of the biggest outages of all time," Ciaran Martin, the former head of the UK's National Cyber Security Centre, told NBC News. Possibly even "worse," he suggested.
Businesses, hospitals, police departments, and schools were among those scrambling to work around the outage. In Japan, it disrupted government IT infrastructure, according to deputy chief cabinet secretary Masanao Ozaki. NBC's report documented various harms, noting that "few public bodies were immune from the outage." In some cases, doctors couldn't send patients "important" updates on medication changes or follow-up care. The financial sector suffered, too, with people blocked from making bank transfers since they couldn't receive verification codes.
Justice systems were also hobbled. The Supreme Court in the Philippines saw its legal work derailed, NBC reported. And one US sheriff's office in Colorado reported that the outage made it difficult for people to post bond for prisoners' immediate release. It's unclear how many users were affected, but Microsoft estimated in January that the total number of paid Microsoft 365 commercial subscriptions exceeded 450 million. Microsoft's most recent updates confirmed that it's seeing "broader improvements in North America, sustained improvements across much of Europe, and encouraging recovery signals in Asia Pacific."
"Some users may still experience intermittent access issues or delayed email delivery as mitigation continues across remaining affected infrastructure," Microsoft said. "Our focus remains on stabilizing recovered infrastructure, completing mitigation in remaining impacted areas, and reducing delayed email queues and backlogs while we validate service consistency across connection methods."
Similar to recent world-shaking outages of widely used tech like Amazon Web Services and CrowdStrike, the Microsoft disruption looks like "one of the biggest outages of all time," Ciaran Martin, the former head of the UK's National Cyber Security Centre, told NBC News. Possibly even "worse," he suggested.
Businesses, hospitals, police departments, and schools were among those scrambling to work around the outage. In Japan, it disrupted government IT infrastructure, according to deputy chief cabinet secretary Masanao Ozaki. NBC's report documented various harms, noting that "few public bodies were immune from the outage." In some cases, doctors couldn't send patients "important" updates on medication changes or follow-up care. The financial sector suffered, too, with people blocked from making bank transfers since they couldn't receive verification codes.
Justice systems were also hobbled. The Supreme Court in the Philippines saw its legal work derailed, NBC reported. And one US sheriff's office in Colorado reported that the outage made it difficult for people to post bond for prisoners' immediate release. It's unclear how many users were affected, but Microsoft estimated in January that the total number of paid Microsoft 365 commercial subscriptions exceeded 450 million. Microsoft's most recent updates confirmed that it's seeing "broader improvements in North America, sustained improvements across much of Europe, and encouraging recovery signals in Asia Pacific."
"Some users may still experience intermittent access issues or delayed email delivery as mitigation continues across remaining affected infrastructure," Microsoft said. "Our focus remains on stabilizing recovered infrastructure, completing mitigation in remaining impacted areas, and reducing delayed email queues and backlogs while we validate service consistency across connection methods."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.