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From today's featured article

The saxaul sparrow (Passer ammodendri) is a passerine bird of the sparrow family Passeridae, found in parts of Central Asia. At 14–16 cm (5.5–6.3 in) and 25–32 g (0.88–1.13 oz), it is among the larger sparrows. Both sexes have plumage ranging from dull grey to sandy brown, and pale brown legs. The female has a less boldly coloured plumage and bill, lacking the pattern of black stripes on the male's head. The head markings of both sexes make the saxaul sparrow distinctive, and unlikely to be confused with any other bird. Vocalisations include a comparatively soft and musical chirping call, a song, and a flight call. Its distribution falls into six probably disjunct areas across Central Asia, from central Turkmenistan to northern Gansu in China. A bird of deserts, the saxaul sparrow favours areas with shrubs such as the saxaul, near rivers and oases. Although it has lost parts of its range to habitat destruction caused by agriculture, it is not seriously threatened by human activities. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Oceanic Steamship Company advertisement

... that the Oceanic Steamship Company (advertisement pictured) beat a rival company in a trans-Pacific race, bought the rival's ships, and added them to its own fleet?
... that the play Sagittarius Ponderosa by MJ Kaufman recreates the scent of a tree as part of the performance?
... that there were no sex acts in Thea Ehre's nude performance at the 2021 Porn Film Festival Vienna?
... that Gerta Hüttl-Folter became interested in Russian culture after staying with Maria Razumovsky's family while homeless?
... that the author of Five Bullets was unaware for a year that Fear and Fury was also being written about the same 1984 shooting, and for the same publishing house?
... that a church in Colorado merged with another congregation, was sold, became a nightclub, and then was bought by an offshoot of the merged congregation?
... that volumes of one writer's journalism were variously described as "prattling pieces", delivering "a snigger a minute", and having a "soufflé touch"?
... that American football player Taco Dowler is the twin of a football player who was called "Burrito"?
... that the cover artworks for Metallica's Load and Reload were created by mixing blood with semen and urine, respectively?

In the news

Laura Fernández Delgado

Laura Fernández Delgado (pictured) is elected as the president of Costa Rica.
Clashes between the Balochistan Liberation Army and the armed forces in several districts of Balochistan, Pakistan, leave at least 225 people dead.
The US Department of Justice releases over 3 million documents from financier and convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
A winter storm causes widespread damage across North America and leaves more than 140 people dead.

On this day

February 5

The "Welcome Stranger" gold nugget

1783 – The first of five strong earthquakes hit the region of Calabria on the Italian Peninsula, killing more than 32,000 people over a period of nearly two months.
1869 – Prospectors in Moliagul, Australia, discovered the largest alluvial gold nugget ever found, known as the Welcome Stranger.
1923 – Australian cricketer Bill Ponsford made 429 runs to break the world record for the highest first-class score.
1985 – Punic Wars: The mayors of Carthage and Rome signed a symbolic peace treaty to officially end the Third Punic War, 2,134 years after it began.
2008 – Eighty-seven tornadoes occurred over the course of the Super Tuesday tornado outbreak across multiple U.S. states, causing 56 deaths and over $1 billion in damage.

Shunzhi Emperor (d. 1661)
Thomas Carlyle (d. 1881)
Colin Robert Chase (b. 1935)
Margaret Oakley Dayhoff (d. 1983)

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Today's featured picture

Amblyeleotris rubrimarginata is a fish in the family Gobioidei, the gobies. It is found on reefs or in seagrass beds in the western Pacific, from New Caledonia to the Great Barrier Reef and around New Guinea, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, at depths from 3 to 26 metres (10 to 85 ft). As with other Amblyeleotris species, it has a symbiotic relationship with alpheid shrimps, with an individual or a pair of gobies sharing a burrow with a pair of shrimps. A. rubrimarginata is up to 8 centimetres (3.1 in) in length, and its background colour is whitish, marked with five vertical brown or orange bars. It is most readily distinguished from its congeners by a row of red spots along the margin of both dorsal fins and the upper part of the caudal fin, and also by a prominent black spot just above and behind the eye. This A. rubrimarginata fish was photographed at the resort of Anilao in Mabini, Batangas, in the Philippines.

Photograph credit: Diego Delso

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