With a head like a fighter-plane cockpit, a Pacific barreleye fish shows off its highly sensitive, barrel-like eyes—topped by green, orblike structures—in a picture released today but taken in 2004.
The fish, discovered alive in the deep water off California’s central coast by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, is the first specimen of its kind to be found with its soft transparent dome intact.
The 6-inch (15-centimeter) barreleye (Macropinna microstoma) had been known since 1939—but only from mangled specimens dragged to the surface by nets.
Birdwatchers from all over Britain who gathered in Grimsby to catch sight of a rare American robin were horrified to see her eaten by a passing Sparrowhawk. They were still setting up their cameras when the predator swooped down from a row of drab factories and warehouses on an industrial estate.
The young bird, from the southern US, “didn’t really live to enjoy her moment of fame”. The robin’s vivid red breast made her an obvious candidate for a lunch date.
“It was a terrible moment,” Graham Appleton, of the British Trust for Ornithology, which had spread news of the bird’s arrival, told the newspaper. “Most of these rare visitors eventually succumb anyway to cold weather or a lack of food, if not predation”.
The robin, whose scientific name “Turdus Migratorius” derives from its long-distance travels within America was probably blown across the Atlantic after being caught up in a jetstream.
Turdus?? now that’s a shit name!