Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 19/09/2026First we pay with our wallets, & later with our lives. richardconniff.substack.com/p/the-deadly... 000
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 10/09/2026U.S. Government "aesthetically terrified" by a painting of "a picnic in a park with flowers and some lesbians." www.nytimes.com/2026/09/04/a... 000
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 16/07/2026I realize pretty pictures are more the thing on social media, but can anyone help me identify the animal responsible for this poop? 🌿 210
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 01/07/2026Find four bats in this 1611 painting by Jan Breughel--and describe the astonishing thing one of them is doing. (Or just read the story.) substack.com/home/post/p-... 010
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 01/07/2026Somewhere in this 1611 Breughel painting there's a behavior scientists only figured out eight months ago. Can you find it? (Or just read the story.) richardconniff.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-... 010
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 13/06/2026At the #KennedyCenter, down comes the "D," the beginning of the end for Donald Trump's pathetic celebration of himself. (Photo: Cliff Owen/Associated Press) 111
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 24/04/2026Backyard chickens are the key to stop people from eating their way down the wildlife food chain. open.substack.com/pub/richardc... 000
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 11/04/2026"A wooden crate stands open, revealing what looks like a crude sculpture roughly five feet tall. It’s a tableau of death, a cataclysmic mix of blackened ankles, teeth, femurs and skulls jammed together ..." (Photo: Michael Christopher Brown) open.substack.com/pub/richardc... 120
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 23/03/2026As is often the case with Donald Trump, the terrible things he says about others will later turn out to be most true about himself. 000
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 14/02/2026Federal workers are "crooked" & "ruining the country," right? But this one saved us from a hideous disease that had been maiming & killing humans for 10,000 years. 🛟 open.substack.com/pub/richardc... 011
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 08/02/2026WaPo owner Jeff Bezos is vain about his physique. But Katharine Graham had bigger gonads & didn't go spineless just because some government jackass threatened to catch "her tit in a wringer." (Image: WSJ) 141
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 27/01/2026Plenty of potential #bison habitat out there, if we just let them at it. New study from WCS, Panthera Cats, Re: Wild, et al. act-green.org 020
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 15/01/2026Cave mummies discovery could lead to restoring one of the most beautiful animals on Earth to lost habitat. 🌿 richardconniff.substack.com/p/cave-cheet... 000
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 10/01/2026You may hate hunting but it played a key role 60,000 years ago in shaping the modern human mind. Poison arrows are the clue. richardconniff.substack.com/p/how-huntin... 021
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 06/01/2026Strange creatures, from an even stranger character in the history of exploration. richardconniff.substack.com/p/slavery-bi... 010
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 04/01/2026Reader comment: "Oh what a great read! Bizarre, macabre and also a bit magical, much like taxidermy!" substack.com/home/post/p-... 031
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 07/12/2025Part 2 of the desert rhino story richardconniff.substack.com/p/getting-cl... 000
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 07/12/2025Is it better to be horned by a charging rhinoceros? Or trampled? A guide tests the question. 🌿 richardconniff.substack.com/p/getting-cl... 000
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 15/11/2025Here's the great white shark of the jellyfish world. And other strangely elegant creatures made from snot. An 11-minute read for your weekend. (Photo: George Matsumoto/MBARI) richardconniff.substack.com/p/jelly-bell... 050
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 08/11/2025Here's the conclusion of my three-part series on spider webs. Read on to learn how the insects take their terrible revenge. 🌿https://open.substack.com/pub/richardconniff/p/a-spiders-life-hanging-its-butt-in?r=1fcr4&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true 011
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 25/10/2025Been to the Serengeti. Explored in the Amazon. Trekked in Bhutan. But watching spiders has been one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life as a naturalist. richardconniff.substack.com/p/spider-web... 162
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 18/10/2025You may be a policeman still angry that Trump freed Jan 6 rioters who battered cops, or a coal miner pissed that Trump has blocked regulations to protect you from black lung disease ... If you believe in America, it's your march, too. richardconniff.substack.com/p/heres-why-... 042
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 08/10/2025The shsssssssh-shsssssssh of boots walking through fallen leaves in the Connecticut woods 041
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 06/10/2025It's never been legal to export Galapagos iguanas from Ecuador. But pet dealers still sell them "legally" in Europe. Time to crack down on the wildlife pet trade. richardconniff.substack.com/p/the-wildli... 021
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 24/09/2025It wasn't a secret, but Trump admits he's using the power of the presidency to fatten his own bank account. 020
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 17/09/2025Also worth contemplating their handiwork, from an 1863 photo of escaped slave Peter Gordon. This photo is now deemed "corrosive ideology" by the Trump regime and banned from display in our National Parks. 010
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 17/09/2025Haunting image of three southern slaveholders, c. 1850. The banal face of evil. Original daguerreotype in the Metropolitan Museum, colorized and restored by Frank Hellsten 162
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 16/09/2025These Canada geese have an almost mathematical idea of acceptable social distance 010
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 06/09/2025Authors will do almost anything to promote their books. But I'd draw the line at deliberately getting bitten by a black mamba. richardconniff.substack.com/p/how-to-get... 011
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 30/08/2025With regret, a new addition to the Wall of the Dead for lost species seekers. Donovan Kirkwood fell off a cliff in the Western Cape while searching for a critically endangered flowering plant. 🌿 strangebehaviors.wordpress.com/2011/01/14/t... 082
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 30/08/2025Is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s anti-science killing your children? That could be just be a photo op for him. richardconniff.substack.com/p/a-chronicl... 000
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 26/08/2025John Deering on the long-running Epstein File Distraction Strategy 010
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 13/08/2025Any clues what this might be? Found under a mattress. 110
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 29/07/2025On the beach, evening, Duluth, MN. Meadow fritillary?🌿 010
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 13/07/2025I noticed these small insects circling above lupine seed pods last evening. A mating lek? Some sort of feeding behavior? 🌿 000
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 12/07/2025Substack, the web host for writers who no longer want to answer to billionaire bosses & corporate drones last month beat the traffic on wsj.com and cbs.com. You can subscribe there, free or paid, to my weekly column. richardconniff.substack.com 001
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 12/07/2025Substack, the web host for writers who no longer want to answer to billionaire bosses & corporate drones last month beat the traffic on WSJ & CBS. You can subscribe there, free or paid, to my weekly column on wild things. richardconniff.substack.com 000
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 02/07/2025Honest headline ("Poorest Americans Dealt Biggest Blow Under Senate Republican Tax Package") and lead graph from @nytimes. Please repost. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/01/b... 000
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 28/06/2025Ok, this photo is not meant to mimic images of the risen Christ (or Batman), and the headline uses "God" only as a literary stand-in for, you know, nature. So read on in the comfort of your beliefs. 🌿 open.substack.com/pub/richardc... 000
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 23/06/2025Name the #spider quietly practicing external digestion in my shower. Bonus points if you can name its prey (My guess: A housefly, Musca domestica) 011
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 21/06/2025House cats, a rare hummingbird, and hope on an ocean island. 🦉 substack.com/home/post/p-... 000
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 19/06/2025Maybe 25 feet from the feeder, where ruby-throated hummers do combat, we’ve got a nest of Baltimore orioles, & another 25 feet from that, a bluebird couple working on their 2nd clutch of the season. 161
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 07/06/2025A quarter of the land planted in corn is ALWAYS going to lose money. We pay for that. Why not pay for those acres to go back to birds and monarch butterflies instead? richardconniff.substack.com/p/fixing-the... 052
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 01/06/2025To hell with the politicians, it's the weekend and time for some HEALTHY nonsense. richardconniff.substack.com/p/the-unnatu... 020
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 31/05/2025To hell with Trump. It's Saturday morning and you deserve some healthy nonsense for a change. richardconniff.substack.com/p/the-unnatu... 140
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 31/05/2025The strange, almost hallucinatory, reality that infiltrated books your children read. 📚 richardconniff.substack.com/p/the-unnatu... 010
Richard Conniff @richardconniff.bsky.social · 18/05/2025One minute of dawn chorus where I live, 5:29 a.m.: Baltimore Oriole, Carolina Wren, Cedar Waxwing, Indigo Bunting, Mourning Dove, Scarlet Tanager, Common Yellowthroat, Eastern Wood-Peewee, Black-Capped chickadee, Wood Thrush, Red-eyed Vireo, Blackburnian Warbler. (Photo: Mike Warner) 022