cross-posted from: https://lemmy.nz/post/6377991

New Zealand's rarest bird looks set for a bumper breeding season this summer with five fledglings already striking out on their own and as many as eight more chicks to follow.

That might not sound like many but given that the total world population of tara iti, or fairy terns, is less than 40, that is a huge boost to the species' chances of survival.

It is also a much-needed morale boost for volunteers and Department of Conservation staff looking after the birds, after the disastrous 2022-23 season in which Cyclone Gabrielle killed five adults and all but one chick.

DOC supervisor Shelley Ogle said the current season was tracking to be the best since 2013-14.

Just tidying up my music collection and stumbled on this that I had forgotten about

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.nz/post/5503861

New Zealand Giant Stick Insect - Argosarchus horridus

Was visited by this not so wee one yesterday. Never seen a stick insect this big outside of the zoo - was probably close to 18cm long (judging size against weatherboards).

My daughter named it Dave.

Started to move off Google's services to proton:

cross-posted from: https://no.lastname.nz/post/275253

"Streetpunk Sexy" - Visualize a portrait of Neo. Neo is a young 22 year old woman. Neo is on an medieval street in a small village where the (second stories jut over the street)+++. The streets are cobbled.it is rainy afternoon,The shot, taken from a distance, captures Neo walking away in the golden hour. Neo is wearing a long and flowing red riding cape with detailed leaf and vine patterns stitched into it over a (black gothic dress:2) .The humid atmosphere ads mist to the street and the (mountains in the distance):2. Long dark messy hair escapes the red hood of Neo's cape, The image showcases the natural late afternoon light, in hyperrealistic detail under soft lighting. The depth of field focuses on her against a backdrop of soothing,muted tones and high contrast,creating a dark,yet gorgeous (1.2) and immersive evening scene.

Negative prompt: text, watermark, low-quality, signature, moiré pattern, downsampling, aliasing, distorted, blurry, glossy, blur, jpeg artifacts, compression artifacts, poorly drawn, low-resolution, bad, distortion, twisted, excessive, exaggerated pose, exaggerated limbs, grainy, symmetrical, duplicate, error, pattern, beginner, pixelated, fake, hyper, glitch, overexposed, high-contrast, bad-contrast

Steps: 26, Sampler: DPM++ 2M SDE Karras, CFG scale: 7, Seed: 995203940, Face restoration: CodeFormer, Size: 1024x512, Model hash: a19b862e79, Model: fullyREALXL_v30ForREAL, Pad conds: True, Version: v1.7.0

"Streetpunk Sexy" - Visualize a portrait of Neo. Neo is a young 22 year old woman. Neo is on an medieval street in a small village where the (second stories jut over the street)+++. The streets are cobbled.it is rainy afternoon,The shot, taken from a distance, captures Neo walking away in the golden hour. Neo is wearing a long and flowing red riding cape with detailed leaf and vine patterns stitched into it over a (black gothic dress:2) .The humid atmosphere ads mist to the street and the (mountains in the distance):2. Long dark messy hair escapes the red hood of Neo's cape, The image showcases the natural late afternoon light, in hyperrealistic detail under soft lighting. The depth of field focuses on her against a backdrop of soothing,muted tones and high contrast,creating a dark,yet gorgeous (1.2) and immersive evening scene.

Negative prompt: text, watermark, low-quality, signature, moiré pattern, downsampling, aliasing, distorted, blurry, glossy, blur, jpeg artifacts, compression artifacts, poorly drawn, low-resolution, bad, distortion, twisted, excessive, exaggerated pose, exaggerated limbs, grainy, symmetrical, duplicate, error, pattern, beginner, pixelated, fake, hyper, glitch, overexposed, high-contrast, bad-contrast

Steps: 26, Sampler: DPM++ 2M SDE Karras, CFG scale: 7, Seed: 995203940, Face restoration: CodeFormer, Size: 1024x512, Model hash: a19b862e79, Model: fullyREALXL_v30ForREAL, Pad conds: True, Version: v1.7.0

I'm aiming to get better at telling the story to generate the images I really envisioned. Taking @krank Star@lemmy.world 's post as a aid to describe the image

Reference

Early attempts:

Back at the Holy Library his exploits were recorded and catalogued for those that will come in a latter time

It's not as good as some of the other Kermit images, I just cant get SD turbo to do him well