At long last, beetles have their own carnival and, man, it’s a good one. Ted MacRae rolls up an excellent inaugural edition of An Inordinate Fondness. Check it out.

Two tiny neighborhoods in Queens, Meadowmere and Warnerville, are finally connected to the New York City sewer system, and, thanks to the hookup, residents will no longer flush their toilets into a creek that runs into Jamaica Bay.  Well, that is, if the residents could afford to cough up the $10,000 each to hook up to the system.  One would think that a $37.5 million project might have included cash to hook the houses up, but, apparently, it did not.

Francois Portmann, who dedicated 10,000 Birds readers might remember from a birding outing in Prospect Park, has started a bird blog that is chock full o’ amazing images.  Go check it out (hopefully, when some more people start clicking through he’ll start posting more frequently!).

We at 10,000 Birds don’t like to brag (or at least, Charlie and Corey don’t) but certain milestones are worth sharing. For example, earlier today, Sitemeter logged our 3 millionth page view! I can’t recall when I installed Sitemeter (still one of the best free traffic trackers in the world) but it has probably been in place on this site since late 2005. But an achievement of this scale isn’t about us but rather about our tasteful, discerning, undoubtedly attractive readers. Thanks all! Now if we could just get each of you to send us $1…