Wake-up: its time for five of the best!

This is a dowitcher, probably short-billed but busily hiding most of the id points whilst kipping.
I was planning to accompany this post with a picture of the famous caribbean bloom the thorn-apple or Datura. Best known for its use in "voodoo" zombification. Unfortunately the verge I found the plant on was strimmed before I got to take the picture this morning so we'll have to wait for that.

In the meantime if you can summon up more energy than this chap here's this week's 5 science links:

1) A bit more paleoanthropology. I'm not sure why I have a favourite fossil but I do. It's had a lot of names over the years but my favourite is it's finders' loving "dear boy". Laelaps describes it, its biology and its history - including those name changes (I proably shouldn't admit this but one of the reasons I chose the Cambridge college I did was that Louis Leakey was an alumni (that, the good teachers, the handy scholarships and cool bar)).

2) GrrlScientist explains a little about why and how small island endemic lorys are introduced to reserve islands.

3) Dr. FreeRide (whose friday sprogblogging is one of the highlights of my blogreading week) suggests an alternative method of peer review and provokes a lot of comments.

4) Shelley of Retrospectacle has returned from her post-Wileygate break and introduces us to the Schmidt Pain Index. I'm not sure this is the sort of science post Mike had in mind when he suggested it but I found it interesting and amusing. I'd be keen to know how many of the insects on the list readers have taken hits from I managed only 3 (and would rank them in Schmidt's order) but then most of them are american insects.

5) Some climate science courtesy of pure pedantry wherein we learn that us Brits won't all freeze horribly as a result of global warming.