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The Mascarene martin is a passerine bird in the swallow family that breeds in Madagascar and the Mascarene Islands. The nominate subspecies occurs on Mauritius and Réunion and has never been found away from the Mascarene Islands, but a smaller Madagascan subspecies is migratory and has been recorded wintering in East Africa or wandering to other Indian Ocean islands. The Mascarene martin is small with grey-brown underparts becoming white on the throat and lower abdomen, dark grey-brown upperparts and a slightly forked tail. The underparts are heavily streaked with black. It nests in small colonies anywhere with suitably sheltered sites for constructing a nest. It has a heavy flight with slow wingbeats interspersed with glides, and frequently perches on wires. It feeds on insects in flight, often hunting low over the ground or vegetation. A number of internal and external parasites have been detected in this species. Tropical cyclones can adversely affect populations on the smaller islands, but the Mascarene martin is a locally common bird with an apparently stable population and is classed as a species of Least Concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. (Full article...)

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... that in the Battle of Halmyros, the Catalan Company annihilated much of the nobility of Frankish Greece and conquered the Duchy of Athens?
... that the Detroit Red Wings' new arena will anchor a $650 million redevelopment project in Downtown Detroit?
... that the Maribojoc Church, with one of the remaining fourteen Spanish-era pipe organs in the Philippines, was destroyed in the 2013 Bohol earthquake?
... that there are at least 35 sources of acid mine drainage in the Mahanoy Creek watershed?
... that a consultative referendum on whether Ukraine should federalise was held in the Donbass region during the 1994 parliamentary election, twenty years prior to the disputed 2014 status referendums in the same region?
... that after Athena Farrokhzad hosted a show on Sveriges Radio, the Moderate Party's Gunnar Axén claimed to have thrown out his TV so he could stop paying the license fee (which also supports radio)?

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In the news

John O'Keefe, May-Britt Moser, and Edvard Moser are awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain.
The South Sydney Rabbitohs win Australia's National Rugby League championship.
The Rugby Championship concludes with New Zealand as the champions.
Researchers trace the origin of the AIDS pandemic to the Congolese city of Kinshasa in the 1920s.
Physicists report the discovery of a new quasiparticle, the Majorana fermion, which is its own antiparticle.
Sudan People's Liberation Movement factions of the South Sudanese Civil War agree to a proposal for federalisation.
Protesters gather in Hong Kong (pictured) to demonstrate against proposed electoral changes announced by the Chinese government.

Ongoing: Ebola outbreak – Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
Recent deaths: Jean-Claude Duvalier

On this day...

October 6: German-American Day in the United States; 1,000th anniversary of the death of Samuel of Bulgaria (reconstruction pictured)

69 BC – Third Mithridatic War: Forces of the Roman Republic captured the Armenian capital city Tigranakert.
1777 – American Revolutionary War: British forces under the command of General Sir Henry Clinton captured Fort Clinton and Fort Montgomery, and then dismantled the Hudson River Chain.
1908 – Austria-Hungary announced the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, causing a crisis that permanently damaged their relations with Russia and the Kingdom of Serbia.
1927 – The first successful feature sound film The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson, was released.
1976 – A violent crackdown by Thai military and police units on students and protestors on the grounds of Thammasat University and at Sanam Luang in Bangkok led to 46 deaths, and a military coup against the government of Prime Minister Seni Pramoj.

More anniversaries: October 5 – October 6 – October 7

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From today's featured list

A photograph of a woman with short black hair facing left and looking down while wearing a black lanyard around her neck that reads "I WANT ANIMAX"

Chapters of the D.Gray-man manga series are written and illustrated by Katsura Hoshino (pictured) and follow Allen Walker and his comrades in the Black Order as they fight against demons created from human souls by an ancient sorcerer. The manga began serialization in Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump on May 31, 2004 and are currently serialized in Shueisha's monthly Jump Square manga magazine. Since the premiere of the D.Gray-man manga series, over two hundred chapters, referred to as "nights", have been released in Japan. One chapter of the series was published in Akamaru Jump in August 2009 as the series transitioned to serialization in Jump Square, starting on November 4, 2009. The individual chapters are published in tankōbon by Shueisha. The first volume was released on October 9, 2004. The series has been licensed for an English-language release in North America by Viz Media. Viz released the first collected volume of the series on February 5, 2008, and twenty-four volumes have been released thus far. (Full list...)

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Mammy's Cupboard is a roadside restaurant located on US Highway 61 south of Natchez, Mississippi. The restaurant was built in the shape of a mammy archetype at a time when Gone with the Wind had made it popular; the archetype's skin was repainted a lighter shade during the Civil Rights Movements of the 1960s. Diners sit in the restaurant's brick skirt, which also holds a gift shop.

This photograph is from the Carol M. Highsmith archive at the Library of Congress, a collection of photographs of Americana donated to the library by the photographer and released into the public domain.

Photo: Carol M. Highsmith

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