Archie McPhee's Endless Geyser of AWESOME!

This magnificent eagle was created by Russian artist Sergey Bobkov, who specializes in making animals using wood chips cut from Siberian cedar.

“Bobkov, who received a patent on manufacturing art sculptures made of cutting chips, has made a total of 15 life-size wooden sculptures of Siberian birds and animals. The artist is known to study an animal’s anatomy and habits before creating these one-of-a-kind sculptures.”

Visit My Modern Metropolis to view more of Sergey Bobkov’s wonderful wooden creatures.

This awesome photograph, which makes a humble ladybug look like an insect superhero in the middle of a daring rescue, was taken by photographer Linden Gledhill in his garden in Pennsylvania.

[via Telegraph.co.uk]

It’s time to pay a visit to the Department of Awesome Mimicry where we’ll meet the Lygodium Spider Moth (Siamusotima aranea). Discovered in Thailand in 2005, this clever creature evolved markings on its wings that give it the impressively convincing appearance of being a spindly, orange spider. The markings deter predators and, now that it’s been discovered by humans, probably many arachnophobes as well.

Photos by John Horstman

[via Geekologie]

Turkish artist Hasan Kale creates awesome micro paintings on a variety of unexpected surfaces such as the delicate wings of butterfies, beetles, and cicadas, strips of pasta, tiny snail shells, seeds, and coffee beans. While Kale’s canvases differ greatly from each other, they all share one thing in common: each is painted with a miniature landscape of the artist’s beloved hometown, the city of Istanbul.

“Kale uses his finger as a palette to blend paints and to create his desired color palettes. With great patience and a well-trained, steady hand, the artist uses a very fine-tipped paint brush to achieve amazing details. Viewers have to look very closely in order to see and to appreciate the landscapes, which blend very naturally into his chosen, and unusual, backgrounds.”

Click here to watch a brief video of Hasan Kale at work, painting a pumpking seed.

Visit My Modern Metropolis to view more of Hasan’s miniature landscapes.

Marty Stouffer, eat your heart out! From the Department of Awesome Moments in Nature comes this truly breathtaking photo of a Great Grey Owl frozen in time just before making a meal of a little mouse. The splendour of the owl, the unwavering focus of its predatory gaze, and the cuteness of the mouse, who, let’s hope, was completely unaware of what was about to happen, together form an impressively intense image.

The photo was taken by Tom Samuelson, who had this to say about the experience:

“Great gray owls come south from Canada into Minnesota during the winter to find food. This owl was on the north shore of Lake Superior, just south of Two Harbors, Minnesota. We happened to find him as the sun was setting, and in the evening light, we were able to be in a position to see an owl that was hunting when a mouse came out, and the owl was quick to pounce and pick up an evening meal.”

Nature is awesome and so is this photo.

[via National Geographic]

From the Department of Awesome Optical Illusions comes this fantastic photo entitled Oko, which means “eye” in Croatian. It was taken by Marko Popadic, a photographer based in Merzenich, Germany. The markings on the wing of a butterfly perched on the zygomatic bone of a human skull hauntingly serve as the piercing gaze of the skull’s missing eye.

[via Neatorama]

Amit Drori and Tel Aviv-based designer Noam Dover created an awesome menagerie of robotic animal sculptures, which are powered by servo motors and remote-controlled by puppeteers, for theatrical production entitled Savanna, A Possible Landscape, which premiered in 2011.

Head over to Laughing Squid to watch a couple short videos of the production.

Photos by Noam Dover and Michal Cederbaum