Amity 🦎🐳

My heart belongs to Particularly Large Lizards

Cetacean Enthusiast, Dinosaur Enjoyer and Amateur Animal Photographer

[Amity 🦎🐳 @delphindae]

Getting a Go Card when all the services are changing constantly because of CRR is a special kind of hell designed specifically for me, I think.

[Amity 🦎🐳 @delphindae]

Just a gentle reminder for everyone given Recent News that Adan's mother died of a potentially genetic heart defect and Tekoa's mother and grandmother both died during labour.
To breed either of them would be to gamble with the lives of any resulting calves.

[Amity 🦎🐳 @delphindae]

The highlight of Lake Eden last week was easily this Sacred Kingfisher. What a beautiful Bird, and incredibly showy too.

[caxela @caxela1]

Cetacea

[Amity 🦎🐳 @delphindae]

I always love the colouration on the big male Eastern Water Dragons.

[Amity 🦎🐳 @delphindae]

Conceptually knowing the size difference between Great and Little Black Cormorants is very different from actually seeing it in person.

[Amity 🦎🐳 @delphindae]

Plus a normally coloured girl who was with her. It was only thanks to her calling that I even noticed they were there.

[Amity 🦎🐳 @delphindae]

Literally waiting for the bus this morning and guess who was just hanging out in the fucking active construction zone right across the road.

[Amity 🦎🐳 @delphindae]

Realised I never posted these here, but for a few weeks in late 2024/early 2025 the lakes near our old house were home to a group of about 20 Wood Ducks that included at least four leucistic females.

[Amity 🦎🐳 @delphindae]

Shoutout this little family. Unfortunately I didn't really get any great photos of them all together, but they were a joy to watch. Oh well. Guess I'll just have to head back again sometime soon. What a shame.

[Amity 🦎🐳 @delphindae]

Spent some time at Lake Eden today

[Amity 🦎🐳 @delphindae]

Taken from like 100m away so it's a not a great photo, but I just saw a Wood Duck in a tree for the first time. Took me long enough.

[Amity 🦎🐳 @delphindae]

And it should go without saying; I'm obviously not glad he's dead. But he was never going to survive this.
The German Government never cared about what was best for Timmy, they only cared about protecting their own image. And I'm glad they can no longer use him to do that.

[Amity 🦎🐳 @delphindae]

Maybe it sounds callous, but I'm glad Timmy's body has washed up. By dumping him at sea there was just enough plausible deniability that the people who tortured him for weeks and weeks and weeks could paint themselves as heroes and saviours. But they can't do that anymore.

[Amity 🦎🐳 @delphindae]

@AkulaEcho So like. If they wanted to breed Kyara in the future they were putting ALL of their hopes on a 40 year old bull living another decade for Kyara to reach sexual maturity. We know now with hindsight that it would have been fine, but what a ridiculously short-sighted decision.

[Amity 🦎🐳 @delphindae]

This week I learned that a LOT of people genuinely see SeaWorld bringing back the name 'Shamu' as some amazing thing worth celebrating 🫩

[Amity 🦎🐳 @delphindae]

@AkulaEcho Even the last calf they ever bred was genetically useless. Kyara was related to every single male Orca in the entire SeaWorld collection, except Ulises. And he was 40 years old at the time and already the oldest bull ever to live in captivity by an entire half decade.

[Amity 🦎🐳 @delphindae]

Gorgeous Common Glider in the yard today.

[Amity 🦎🐳 @delphindae]

@orcaflukez Guests needing to physically see a medical procedure happening and have the knowledge the understand what is going on and/or seek out a trainer in person and specifically ask about the health of one individual animal is about three degrees of separation away from transparency 👍

[Amity 🦎🐳 @delphindae]

@AkulaEcho Genuinely saw someone on Instagram hoping they restart their breeding program to complete their "return to their pre-Blackfish glory." Because who cares about stupid shit like gene pools, Baby Shamu™ is cute no matter how inbred it is!

[Amity 🦎🐳 @delphindae]

@orcaflukez This can also be seen in the fact that it is JUST births, deaths and transfers they talk about. Katina spent her last several years battling health issues, including repeated serious skin problems. Surely if they were transparent they MUST have said something about that, right?

[Amity 🦎🐳 @delphindae]

@orcaflukez Also they are only open about the things you listed for Orcas. No other species under their care receives even close to the same level or "transparency." So it's less than they're actually open and honest and more that they simply can't get away with covering things up.