Animal Series - Roadrunner

In looking for information about the roadrunner in this postcard, I came across the "The Cornell Lab of Ornithology".   It has great information on individual birds, including this about the roadrunner: 

The Greater Roadrunner is a signature bird of the desert Southwest. During the 20th century, its range expanded all the way to southern Missouri and western Louisiana. A ground-dwelling cuckoo, it feeds on snakes, scorpions, and any other small animal it can catch and subdue.

The site also describes it as "chicken-like".  If I were a roadrunner, I'd prefer "ground-dwelling cuckoo" to "chicken-like".  Also about this bird from the back of the postcard:
 
The rather unusual behavior of the roadrunner accounts for its unique name.  When surprised on a road, it will rapidly run away and vanish into cover.  It seldom flies.
 
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology also includes the sounds of individual birds, and the roadrunner's sound is nothing like the famous "beep beep beep" of the Wile E. Coyote/Road Runner Looney Tune cartoon fame.

Swiss Cows

We have to love Swiss cows - from them we get Swiss cheese and Swiss chocolates!

This is another Postcrossing postcard, from a Swiss mom.  She sent me a big stack of postcards, some made from pictures she'd taken herself, as a "thank you" for sending her a stack of San Francisco postcards.  Turns out her daughter, age 12, is a HUGE San Francisco fan, and the mom wanted to give her a bunch of San Francisco postcards for Christmas.  I was more than happy to oblige, and sent several.  In return, not only did I receive several great postcards (including this one), I also received a picture of the daughter, in a San Francisco t-shirt, holding up my postcards and looking very happy. 

Definitely made my day.

The Last Cows Standing

Another cow postcard, this one from Leny, a fellow Postcrossing member.  From the back of the card, "I'm Leny...  I live in the south of the Netherlands, a few km from Germany and Belgium...."  How many beautiful corners of the world there are, and here's a postcard from one of them.

And Even More Cows

Should I be calling this the "cow series" instead of the "animal series"?  This is the third postcard featuring cows and I actually  have a couple more!  Do the cows warrant their own series?  It is a subseries of the animal series?  One could get carried away with classifying, if one were so inclined. 

Note to self:  must reconfigure postcard classification system.

More Cows

It's a two- fer!  (Two for one, for the non-native English speaking readers.)

Not only does this belong to the animal series, but it also qualifies as part of an art series - "Sofa Art XIII Down on the Farm".

Actually, Sofa Art is an annual art competition in Visalia, California, and recently completed its 16th year. Visalia is in the central valley of California, an area not necessarily known for its art scene. However, you can't beat if for its tree fruit (peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots) and nuts (almonds, pistachios, walnuts).

 From the website: 

The first Sofa Art Show was held in 1996 as a playful response to an unflattering depiction of Visalia’s local art scene as described by a local newspaper writer. Sofa Art Co-Founder Varian Mace, then an art instructor at College of the Sequoias, shared the article with her classes and challenged them to make some “real sofa art” in response. The resulting exhibition was a hit, to say the least, and has been an annual Visalia tradition ever since.

It sounds like a lot of fun, and I can only imagine what additional sofa art might look like.  Is all sofa art 2-dimensional, or does it include sculpture as well?

P.S.  A shout out to my friend, Steve, who lives in Visalia and is a constant contributor to my ever-growing postcard collection.  Thanks, Steve!

Speaking of Beefeaters

Speaking of Beefeaters. 

I have to say, though, that these look like milk cows, not beef cows.  Not that I'm an expert on cows, but  I did visit a Texas cattle ranch once.

In any case, here's the first in a new animal series

I present to you, the cow!

Animal Series - Bats

I was surprised to find I had two postcards of bats, one of Polish bats (or at least bats on a postcard sent from Poland) and one of fruit bats in northern Australia.

The Polish bats came from Gouraanga (her Postcrossing ID) who lives on the Polish coast of the Baltic Sea in a town called Koszalin.  She describes herself as a mad ecologist who studied bats and their habitats for a couple of years.  Very cool! And, very unusual to get such a card through Postcrossing.  Thanks, Gouraanga!

I'm not sure where the fruit bat postcard came from - it may have been from my mom's collection.  She recently moved out of her home of 48 years and found lots of postcards which she passed on to me.  In any case, the Australian fruit bat is also knows as a "flying fox".  The one in the postcard above appears to be a Spectacled Flying Fox. 

Some interesting info about bats from the Wikipedia:

Bats are flying mammals in the order Chiroptera.  The forelimbs of bats are webbed and developed as wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight. By contrast, other mammals said to fly, such as flying squirrels, gliding possums and colugos, glide rather than fly, and can only glide for short distances. Bats do not flap their entire forelimbs, as birds do, but instead flap their spread out digits, which are very long and covered with a thin membrane.

There are about 1,100 bat species worldwide, which represent about twenty percent of all classified mammal species.

20% of all mammal species are bats?  That number surprises me - it seems so high.  Who knew?