Confused Roombas, Tortoises In Space, and Star Wars Told As An Epic Poem

I find you the finest reading material in this week’s “Linkfest”

A wren’s nest, illustrated by Susan Ogilvy in “Nests”

It’s Monday.

WHICH MEANS IT’S BREAK TIME.

I’ve got your back! Behold my weekly Monday “Linkfest”, filled with highly distracting yet utterly edifying material I scavenged online, just pour vous.

To begin …

1) 🐦 Gorgeous paintings of bird nests

The artist Susan Ogilvy discovered an abandoned bird nest in her garden, and was astonished at its beauty — as well as its meticulous engineering. Birds are amazing architects and inveterate up-cyclers, using everything from natural materials (like twigs and grass) to human-created materials, like newspapers and string.

Ogilvy began painting nests, and has just released a collection of those: Nests. I’m ordering a copy — it looks amazing! That nest above was made a wren; as she tells the Guardian …

“Each species uses its own architecture, which must be purely instinctive,” she says. “For example, chaffinches build a very symmetrical round nest, out of moss and cobwebs mostly. But a chaffinch living in a place where there isn’t moss and cobwebs will still build the same round…