The Mascarene martin is a passerine bird in the swallow family that breeds in Madagascar and the Mascarene Islands. The nominate subspecies occurs on Mauritius and Réunion and has never been found away from the Mascarene Islands, but a smaller Madagascan subspecies is migratory and has been recorded wintering in East Africa or wandering to other Indian Ocean islands. The Mascarene martin is small with grey-brown underparts becoming white on the throat and lower abdomen, dark grey-brown upperparts and a slightly forked tail. The underparts are heavily streaked with black. It nests in small colonies anywhere with suitably sheltered sites for constructing a nest. It has a heavy flight with slow wingbeats interspersed with glides, and frequently perches on wires. It feeds on insects in flight, often hunting low over the ground or vegetation. A number of internal and external parasites have been detected in this species. Tropical cyclones can adversely affect populations on the smaller islands, but the Mascarene martin is a locally common bird with an apparently stable population and is classed as a species of Least Concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. (Full article...)
... that Lieutenant GeneralRaymond A. Thomas(pictured) was deployed to Afghanistan for part of every year for over a decade, except for one year when he was sent to Iraq?
... that after Gabriel Wells bought a book whose 1,050-jewel binding had required two years to complete, he decided to send it to the U.S. via a passenger on the RMS Titanic?
Chapters of the D.Gray-man manga series are written and illustrated by Katsura Hoshino(pictured) and follow Allen Walker and his comrades in the Black Order as they fight against demons created from human souls by an ancient sorcerer. The manga began serialization in Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump on May 31, 2004 and are currently serialized in Shueisha's monthly Jump Squaremanga magazine. Since the premiere of the D.Gray-man manga series, over two hundred chapters, referred to as "nights", have been released in Japan. One chapter of the series was published in Akamaru Jump in August 2009 as the series transitioned to serialization in Jump Square, starting on November 4, 2009. The individual chapters are published in tankōbon by Shueisha. The first volume was released on October 9, 2004. The series has been licensed for an English-language release in North America by Viz Media. Viz released the first collected volume of the series on February 5, 2008, and twenty-four volumes have been released thus far. (Full list...)
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