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Fridge Talks About Birds (Now featuring: The Passenger Pigeon)
Hello hi, Fridge here
If you've been around the forums for a while, you'll undoubtedly have seen me go on about birds.
I can unabashedly hijack threads to talk about crows, pigeons, parrots, puffins, any bird goes (even some fictional ones!)
So, in an almost certainly futile attempt to stop myself from doing that (the hijacking thing), I'll be making this thread instead.
Starting with our Lord and Saviour, Rainbow Birb, aka., the Feathers of Pride Bird!
Obtainable in DbD for free right now by using the code "CAWCAW" in the in-game store!
A bit of a personal story here. It turned out a bit longer than expected whoops.
This lovely fellow released on June 8th, 2022, near the end of the academic year. At this time, I was still in university, English Language & Culture. 2022 had been kind of a shite year for me up until then, in hindsight. I had something of a mental breakdown in January, induced by my complete inability to plan out things (I have been diagnosed with ASD in December of 2020) and getting overwhelmed with deadlines. I tried getting back into therapy to see if I could learn some kind of "lifehack" or whatever. They did offer some things I don't remember, but the main takeaway from them was that I needed to inquire at uni itself. There's a student psychologist, but contacting them became part of the "I'll get to it eventually". I never did end up contacting them.
Now, very early on in the academic year of 2021/2022, we had a course that was all about writing academic English. It covered all kinds of writing, including translating, from Dutch to English. It was a single assignment, but unlike every other assignment, I went through this one at rocket speed. Shocked at my own sudden capability at Doing a Thing, I quickly realised that I really enjoyed translating. In what I can only describe as a paradigm shift, my "intrinsic motivator", as my therapist called it, was discovered. I wanted to become a translator. That was my end goal. That's why I did this study. It would be nothing short of a battle, but there was a goal in sight.
It... didn't work out that way.
After the advise of a student councillor, I tried to do less courses in the next semester to "ease the load". A whopping 5 courses, out of the standard 8, or even 9 I should've done to keep up, but that didn't fare much better. I got sick with COVID on my birthday of all days. I could barely work up the motivation to attend hallway nights anymore. That, of course, became something of a cycle. I wound up flunking or even skipping those courses as well thanks to a complete and utter lack of motivation (but not without a crippling feeling of guilt :) )
Come April/May, I shifted into an even worse version of the "do what you can" mode to try to salvage anything. I wound up salvaging 1 course, and another one that had a weird deadline that allowed me to extend it into the summer break.
I didn't tell a soul how bad things were going. Not my friends, my hallmates, my mother. It was always "could be better", and for most, that sufficed. I shudder to think how many sleepless nights my mother had because of me, though. I never explicitly told her what was happening, always "I can manage". And, somehow, I believed that myself.
What I really needed was a goddamn break. No deadlines, no assignments. Nothing.
And then Rainbow Bird released. To me, out of nowhere.
There was something about that day. I don't know if it was the sun shining or whatever, but for the first time in over half a year, I was really happy about something. Specifically, something that made me happy. Here, on the forums, I got really excited about a silly colourful bird. Now, birds have been my weakness for some time, but for the first time in my life, I felt completely unashamed about it, because I was just that excited. For the first time in forever, I wasn't holding myself back because of some arbitrary self-imposed rule or because I trying to adhere to a persona. And people got excited with me, and started posting more birds. Because of me. That thread was a dumpster fire, but I couldn't care less. I got to be really passionate about birds, and people humoured and appreciated that. I specifically got tagged in the very important Cute Animal Thread a bit later, with a bird pic, because I was being myself. I don't think tippy has even the slightest inkling how important it was to me that he said "I remember someone saying they like birds", and I could go "me!" and not be ashamed of it, because yes, I do like birds!
That whole event kickstarted something within me. I started following bird accounts on other platforms, and started manureposting using our friend Rainbow Birb, because I wanted to do that, and it made me happy, made me smile, all that cringe stuff. I started to do things for me.
Going back to my academic... "career", summer break came. And there still was that one assignment. Deadline: the very last day of August. Assignment: a 2.5k word essay on "sustainability", using two very old American works of literature.
That deadline was so, so bad for me. For the entirety of the summer break, that deadline was on my mind. What should've been the time that I had absolutely nothing to worry about, instead became a very long period where that ######### assignment was on my mind every waking hour. For starters, it was boring as all get out. The works didn't interest me in the slightest, didn't even relate to the study (I did English, not American), and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what the hell I was supposed to do.
But I had 2 months. Two whole months. It would be so, so laughably pathetic of me if I couldn't get that assignment done, when I had 2 months to do it, and literally nothing but the assignment to do. I did get it done, but my god those last two weeks weren't pretty. There's a different, smaller story there, but that's for another time.
I went into the new academic year already feeling like shite because of that 1 assignment. "Hope you're all refreshed and ready to go!" Hahah, I certainly wasn't.
I once again tried the "reduced load" approach. Once again, it culminated into 2 essay deadlines and 2 exams, the former being precisely what I wanted to avoid.
The first essay was already a slog, but surprisingly manageable, because I got to do it about a topic of my choosing (FoMO, specifically prompted by DbD's limited-time winter skin debacle). I didn't even bother with the other essay for the "new" course, because I really wanted to pass the courses I was retaking. There'd be a resit anyway. As for the exams, I passed one.
And then, one fateful morning in February, I found myself asking a simple question.
"Is this worth it?"
and the answer was a resounding no.
Yes, I still wanted to become a translator, but no, this is not worth it.
In arguably the biggest decision of my life so far, I chose for myself.
Because that's what I have been doing since June of 2022. I ignored the councillor's advice, and went with what I thought was manageable. I did that assignment in the summer break, because I would not have been able to do it at all had I not gone out of my way to request that third opportunity. And I passed the course because of that.
I started choosing for myself more and more, culminating in me putting and end to the cycle that made me so miserable.
And what started that trend?
The release of the Feathers of Pride charm. That moment where I was able to be myself, which allowed me to realise that I, in fact, do not have to maintain a persona to be happy.
Why am I trying to achieve academic prowess? Who am I trying to please? Myself? Why's that abstract me so hellbent on doing the very things that are making me miserable? I will have to do some sort of higher education if I want to become a translator, but I can make my life so much easier by switching to a dedicated translating course, instead of a uni study where translating is a very small part of it.
By now, I'm half a year into my new translating study, I have yet to fail an exam, all my assignments were on time and all but 1 were graded superbly. I'm doing fantastic and feel great. I've still got quite a few bad habits to kick, but we'll get there.
So, uh... Yeah.
That's why I'm so very fond of Rainbow Bird.
More (real) bird talks coming soon!
Comments
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Great post. It takes a lot of courage to reveal these kind of feelings. It sounds like you found your serenity, that’s amazing. I’m sincerely happy for you 😊
A family friend has a Scarlet Macaw for a pet. Her name is Lady. She is so big but super friendly. She loves to talk and loves to give kisses.
This isn’t a picture of Lady but this is the kind of bird she is. She’s so beautiful. The family friend also keeps miniature horses but that’s for another thread lol.
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GentlemanFridge,
First off - Fellow Rainbow Birb fan club member unite!
Secondly, all the virtual positive energy to you. I know something very personal like that is not always the easiest thing to share, and we appreciate you so much, and are so proud of you.
Your story actually resonates a lot with me, believe it or not! 20+ years ago I was in a similar situation with my college-level schooling. Underlying issues with myself (physical & mental things; one horribly misdiagnosed years prior, and some that would be brushed off as "nothing" for years to come) that made classes a struggle no matter how much drive I had and put into them, along with pressure I put on myself to do all the things. I was so upset about it, but, then... life happened.
Shortly after, I went into creative business with my other half, and we have slowly built something for ourselves all these years we're proud of. And way back in 2015, I was given my first-ever moderator sword (on Twitch), and over time, slowly led me all over, including here with all you lovely fellow DbD people!
Life is beautiful in its surprises and spontaneity, and its easy to forget that when we are often so good at only seeing the negatives.
Be like Pride Birb... show your colors, and never let anyone, including yourself, dull their vibrancy 💗
And if we are posting favorite birds...
Pesquet's parrot, aka Dracula Parrot...
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did someone say birb
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Rubbertis-Duckitus, most commonly referred to as the Rubber Ducky, is rarely seen in the wild and most commonly found in children's bathtubs. It's the most buoyant of the birb species and is often featured in the top ten of "What Will Survive the Apocalypse", alongside cockroaches and Cher.
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i am glad i asked for this
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Puffins! I haven’t met a soul who didn’t fall in love with these fellas. Sometimes called the “clowns of the sea” they’re very, very social birds who are naturally very curious.
(I'm going to be referring to the Atlantic Puffin in particular here. I don't know much about the other species of puffin.)
(A friend I obtained when I was on Iceland last summer. Snagged him at the very last opportunity I had, because we were boarding the plane back home 15 minutes later)
Like other pelagic birds, puffins live on the ocean, bobbing about until the time comes to nest. Then they arrive at the colony en-masse. Thousands upon thousands of birds can live in a single colony.
If you’ve ever visited such a colony, you’ll know they can be rather tricky to traverse. Puffins dig a roughly 2-meter hole into the ground where they’ll build their nest. (If you’re visiting at the right time, you can see dirt flying everywhere!) You can imagine that because all breeding pairs will be digging their own hole (or taking up residence in an abandoned one), there’s a lot of holes in the ground. Watch your step, you don’t want to twist your ankles. Though you really don’t need to worry about crushing any eggs, they’re really deep into the nest!
Puffins are easily recognised by their clear white underside, black topside, the markings at their eyes and, of course, the distinct, vividly coloured beak.
Thing is, this is not the “default” appearance of the atlantic puffin. The bright beak in particular only appears during the breeding season. Outside breeding season, this distinct beak shrinks considerably, and their distinct black-white plumage fades in colour, making them resemble their younger versions (technically it works the other way round, but y’know)
(image source: https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/466404105145592342/)
I’m not completely sure where the rest of the beak goes, but you can see it’s a whole different look!
Puffins are creatures of habit, much like ourselves. They are monogamous (they have a single partner throughout their whole lives), and will keep using the same nest for the rest of their lives. That means that if you keep coming back every year to the same colony, you’ll be encountering the same birds as before!
Now I mentioned the monogamy, but there have been observed cases of puffins “divorcing” each other. This is thought to happen because the one puffin thinks their partner isn’t properly taking care of the chick.
Speaking of chicks, puffins typically have but a single one, and only a single brood. These pufflings are raised near-exclusively on sand eels and herring, which both parents will be delivering in turns.
What you may not know, however, is that pufflings fledge at night, instead of day. Using the moon as their point of orientation, they fly out whilst predators are fast asleep. As they make distance, they immediately chart the oceans they’ve explored. It’s thought that puffins use their first three years after fledginng to establish a map of the oceans.
Puffins can can fly surprisingly far away from their home, yet always know their way back. Flight pattern studies have shown that, no matter how far they’ve flown, they always remember where they came from. One pair studied in St. John’s revealed that the two birds separately make their way all the way over the Napels and New-England respectively, yet are able to return to the colony within 2 weeks when the time comes.
Now, because young pufflings fledging orient themselves using the moon, they can get in a spot of trouble in our modern world.
They can get confused by our civilisation’s lights, and instead of the open ocean, they wind up stranded in human towns.
In Iceland, there’s an entire event dedicating to helping these lost puffins out. The local population gathers to locate and catch the birds, to keep them safe until morning. And then when the time’s right, the Icelandic people will take the birds and toss ‘em off a cliff, from where they’ll fly off as they should. From there, the puffins can start their journey.
I’ve already mentioned that puffins are a very social species. They have shown a willingness to adapt certain mannerisms of their neighbours, just to fit in better.
The best example of this is seen in one particular colony that was started by conservationalists. They used decoy puffins to make the real puffins feel more at ease. Thing was, these decoys stood atop a stick. The real puffins saw this, and started standing on one foot, imitating what they saw their “neighbours” doing!
Lastly, the common name of the puffin is actually a misnomer! In English, anyway. There’s another bird, the Manx shearwater, whose scientific name is “puffinus puffinus”, which entirely unrelated to the bird we now call puffins. The original “puffin” name came from the puffed meat of the Manx shearwater. Supposedly, the name shifted towards the aulk that bears the name now thanks to its similar nesting habits.
Lastly lastly: I can’t talk about puffins without mentioning the sound they make. It is often compared to the sound of a revving chainsaw.
^ the atlantic puffin, in MS paint, by me :)
[slightly edited to give credit for the image, and correct a small error]
Post edited by GentlemanFridge on6 -
I have none planned at the moment apart from the dodo, but if you have any suggestions, fire away!
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excellent choice
I'll need to do some research, so it won't be the next one i cover, but I'll work on it!
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So many beautiful birbs in this thread, makes me smile.
Always have appreciated your love for birds on this forum, always a bright spot to see a celebrity appearance from them :)
I wish you luck with everything and am happy to see that your taking control of your life, I know that feeling a little too well sometimes. I graduated from college in '22 and for what felt like the majority of my life, never could find that intrinsic motivator as you called it. It took me hitting a low point to realize what truly made me happy and pushed me forward. I'm glad that you seemed to find yours :)
My mom used to always say that Robin's bring good luck and fortune so here's a little chunk for you :)
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You know, I really wasn't expecting this kind of response when I was writing the original post. Thank you all so much for the kind words! And I wish all the best for you too!
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im currently having a terrible week. but that bird made me smile, and the sentence "Be like Pride Birb... show your colors, and never let anyone, including yourself, dull their vibrancy 💗" that has made me smile even more. imma try be like pride birb now
thank you
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I'm so sorry the week has been rough for you, and wish you all the positivity <3 and I'm glad it helped out, and its true! It can definitely be difficult sometimes to get through some things, or know what to do, but being true to yourself, and not compromising for anyone (again, including ourselves because I can attest to being my own worst enemy over the years). You've got this!
And thank you too, @GentlemanFridge I knew a lot about Puffins... but now I know EVEN MORE 😄 and throwing in my suggestion; after the Dodo and Passenger Pigeon, the Laughing Owl might be interesting. I've always had a fondness for Owls and other Birbs of Prey!
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I purchased a new birb feeder over the winter (the big wood one)
I didn't get the pic but a Cardinal was on it yesterday. Which made me excited cause usually the big birds can't fit on my feeders, which is why I bought the big box feeder as they can now land on something.
I'm excited to see it already worked and will hopefully have many a big birbs to share this year. We need a happy forum!
EDIT: Also for your Puffin lore, supposedly Porgs in Star Wars (the little fellas on Luke's island in the new trilogy) exist because there were so many puffins on the island that it was easier to replace them with CGI creatures (which became the Porg) than it was to either remove them from the area or erase them from the movie).
Post edited by tippy2k2 on2 -
Crows! Where would horror as a genre be without them?
I was already working on a first draft of this a week or so ago, inspired by my discovery of the fraud of the Crow of Judgement. I wasn't necessarily planning on covering crows as the third bird, but now TierZoo has gone ahead and posted a video about crows as well. He focuses on their intelligence, which is remarkable in its own right, but it's not what I want to focus on right now.
What I do want to focus on is an error TierZoo made. Specifically in the footage he used to demonstrate corvids' iridescent plumage.
Taken straight from his video. (The editing is his, not mine. I also don't know his source.)
This, much like the Crow of Judgement, is not a crow. It's a grackle.
I'm not completely sure what kind of grackle, since the tail is obscured (I think a great-tailed grackle?).
That aside, I'm starting to get the feeling that I, as the forums' resident bird fanatic, should clarify about this misconception.
The bronzed grackle. The original Crow of Judgement. (Admittedly, Grackle of Judgement doesn't roll off the tongue as well.)
Now, I'll fully admit, it's an easy mistake to make. In the right lighting, a black, mean-looking bird is gonna be called a crow. They can't help it.
So how do I know that this isn't a crow? Well, that is what I want to focus on today.
Take this American crow.
Since grackles only appear in the Americas, this is likely the bird you'll be comparing it to.
Now, if you put these two birds next to each other, you'll immediately be able to tell a very obvious difference. However, I also want to use this particular image to highlight some other things. In order of how easy they are spot:
1: The eyes are, very obviously, very different from grackles. Grackles usually have yellow or lighter brown eyes. Crows have very, very dark brown eyes (American crows, anyway)
4: The "whisker-feathers". A feature of most corvids, which obscures their nostrils entirely. Notice that I wrote "most", as there are corvids that don't have 'em.
3: A bit hard to tell from this picture, but the crow's beak is a lot thicker. Corvid beaks also tend to bend downward at the tip, forming a sort of hook. The beak's shape, more than any other part of a bird, is determined heavily by what it's used for, so it's gonna vary for where you find your local corvids.
4: The iridescence, while present, is not nearly as defined as the iridescence seen in grackles. In grackles, the iridescence makes their feathers look purple or brown depending on the bird's gender. In the American crow, and most crows in general, it looks blue-ish, or only slightly purple in the right lighting. For the most part, the crow will still look mostly black.
Other features, which cannot be shown in image format, include the fact that crows and grackles have different calls. American crows are very well known for their CaaW-CaaW-CaaW as wikipedia so helpfully describes it.
Grackles, on the other hand, have calls more resembling what you would expect from a passerine bird. Mostly, anyway.
Another asset that corvids have that grackles don't, is their sheer intelligence. I've already mentioned their remarkable intelligence. Some estimates put corvid intelligence at roughly the equivalent of a 7-year-old human child. Grackles don't possess that level. You won't see any grackles drop nuts onto the roads to have cars crack them open, or use sticks to pull grubs from tiny holes.
Now, for some harder stuff. Get ready, 'cause this is going to get confusing.
Now, crows are known as wholly black birds. It's part of what granted them their doom-&-gloom connotations in pop-culture. However, crows aren't always completely black. Take the piebald crow for example. The name already hints at it.
https://www.birdguides.com/gallery/birds/corvus-albus/1002033/
Given what I've already mentioned, you'll still be able to tell that this is a crow (the "whiskers", dark eyes, and the general shape which I find hard to put into words).
But what if I threw these at you?
(apparently from wikipedia? i couldnt find it on the bird's page)
https://www.birdguides.com/gallery/birds/coloeus-monedula/1005390/
Suddenly it becomes much clearer how grackles can be confused for crows.
These are the Australian raven and jackdaw respectively. Both are corvids, but lack the dark eyes. Instead, they have white eyes. Not yellow, but white. They both have the "whiskers" as well. You won't find these sitting besides grackles, either, since the jackdaw is a European bird and the Australian raven is…well.
Both of these can be distinguished by their size as well. Ravens are generally much larger than grackles (and most corvids), and jackdaws are amongst the smallest corvids.
I'll stop myself here, since I'd be going on a tangent about other corvids that you really wouldn't confuse for grackles.
To finish off, I'll throw some test birds at you. Can you tell if these are grackles, or corvids?
Post edited by GentlemanFridge on0 -
small addendum:
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I have already seen it, I’m afraid
But that doesn’t mean this isn’t an excellent way to showcase a corvid’s understanding of cause and effect!
very good burb
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I remember seeing ravens for the first time in my life like over 10 years ago. I couldn’t believe how big they were! Huge! They were huddled next to each other on the back edge of a pickup truck. They looked bigger than chickens! I still can’t believe it lol. And they were fearless too.
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Oh yeah, ravens are huge!. They're easily the biggest of the corvid, with the Common Raven having a wingspan sometimes surpassing 150 centimeters. They're also thought to be the heaviest passerine bird of all.
For additional Raven content, check out Loki the Raven on youtube:
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posting it here as well since that other thread is going to be deleted
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Not much to say on this one. Just wanted to share this video I stumbled upon.
It's about the striated caracara.
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Can I make a request? If yes, can you give me a basic run down of the most common owl in North America?
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I'm writing it down! I'm very busy the coming month, and I need to be in the right mood (which is to say, hyperfocus state) to write these things out.
Might be a while, so hang tight!
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Another video: pigeons!
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In the "spirit" of the 4th of July (even though I'm Dutch), a video on the effects of fireworks on urban wildlife, specifically focusing on the hooded crows of Berlin.
You can imagine it's generally not all that positive.
Another full "talk" coming soon-ish!
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So! It's been a hot while!
Like I wrote before, I've been very busy these last few months, but now I should have a bit more time on my hands!
Without further ado (a-coo?)
The Passenger Pigeon
Even though the person who requested it deleted their account a while back, this one was requested by Simfeliz. I hope they still somehow find their way to this.
(PREFACE: the Passenger Pigeon is not to be confused with the Carrier Pigeon. The former is a species on its own, the latter a selectively bred "fancy pigeon")
The story of the passenger pigeon is, like too many other birds, similar to that of the Dodo.
I remember, in my uni time, when I had to do a presentation on an older work of American literature. This was for the same course that I got the summer essay for that I mentioned in my first bird talk. Now, I studied British literature. American literature wasn't exactly within my interests, and you may recall that I was kinda in the pits regarding Uni anyway. My motivation to do this presentation was… nihil. I had barely prepared. I knew the rough topics (colonialism bad, who'dve thunk?), but afterwards I realised I had even read the wrong section. To my surprise (especially in hindsight), we managed… fine. With the knowledge of the topics discussed in class, I was able to get through it remarkably well, all things considered. It wasn't stellar by any means, but that aside.
By now, I couldn't tell you what work the presentation was on, but during the presentation, my partner brought up a species of pigeon. I hadn't encountered any birds in what I read, so I was thrown off slightly, perhaps visibly so. However, I had already done my part, so I could lean back and let her carry on. And as she did, she mentioned that this species was had been hunted en masse since the arrival of the Europeans. They were plentiful, and so made for a cheap and easy source of meat. Granted, the Native Americans did hunt them as well, but, as with most things, the Europeans industrialised it. She ended our presentation on a note that, because of the actions of humans, the population of this species of pigeon had been reduced immensely, at an unfathomably quick pace.
It's now that I realise what species this was. The passenger pigeon.
The passenger pigeon was a slightly-smaller-than average pigeon species, thought to have been just a bit smaller than your typical rock pigeons. A charming species, with its rosy throat, grey head and brown back. And of course, the reddish eyes typical for some New World pigeons (specifically parts of the Patagioenas genus, if that means anything to you). It was also a comparatively fast pigeon, able to reach 100km/h (62mph). Nevertheless, the passenger pigeon was a remarkably "average" pigeon.
What was not average about them, was just how many there were of them. Although it's hard to say for certain, ornithologists (that's the study of birds) believe that the passenger pigeon, in its heyday in the early 1800's, boasted a population of at least 3 billion birds.
By the 1900's, they were completely extinct in the wild.
In less than a hundred years, the passenger pigeon had gone from possibly the single most numerous bird in the Americas, possibly the whole world, to nonexistence.
The very last passenger pigeon, named Martha, was found dead in Cincinnati Zoo on September 1st, 1914. (Depicted → is Martha, displayed in the National Museum of Natural History, in 2014. Not sure if she's still there.)
For comparison, the common house sparrow, one of the single most common and widespread birds found today, has an estimated population of 1,6 billion right now. Imagine house sparrows being twice as common, localised to a single continent.
But! While overhunting, loss of habitat and all the usual suspects were inarguably the main factors that lead to its extinction, the passenger pigeon had another spot of bother: the very fact that it was so numerous. This particular species was prone to explosive population swings, mostly thanks to its versatility and well-above-average speed for a pigeon allowing it to travel practically anywhere and thrive. Even so, 3 billion birds of a single species was extraordinary. In recorded history, the only species to ever surpass that number is the domesticated chicken.
There's an obvious issue when you're with that many, living in roughly the same area. You all gotta share the same food. While the passenger pigeon, as the name might already suggest, was a migratory species, you may also know that birds migrate in flocks. With 3 billion individuals, spread across a single continent, that meant massive flocks of passenger pigeons would travel to the same spot, all competing for the same sources of food. And that's just the pigeons themselves. There's other species to compete with, and that's not even including the humans, even before the Europeans arrived. It wouldn't take much for there to not be enough food for all. And if there's not enough food to go around, populations dwindle. According to Hung et al. the average population of the passenger pigeon across the centuries was around 330.000 birds. All that to say, a steep decline in total number of passenger pigeons was inevitable.
However, as with all natural cycles, the population's decline would eventually have plateaud and stabilised. Obviously, there's no way of knowing when that would've happened, but as far as I can tell, the species would have survived.
Alas.
While it by no means met with a unique fate, the passenger pigeon's story did do something else.
Its story roused public interest in the plight of birds, and wildlife in general in the modern age. As the public learned about the unjustifiable, entirely preventable demise of the passenger pigeon, interest in the preservation of our planet's precious species grew. With the death of the species, life was blown into conservation efforts. Laws were created that have allowed many species to survive today.
None of it would save the passenger pigeon, of course, but it would appear that, perhaps somewhere, we _are_ able to learn from our mistakes.
Sources used (in order in which I remembered to add them):
Drastic population fluctuations explain the rapid extinction of the passenger pigeon | PNAS
Sources of images:
Passenger Pigeon Facts, Pictures, When & Why Did They Go Extinct (extinctanimals.org)
(I'd also recommend these if you're interested in further reading. The Smithsonian one is kinda outdated, though.)
Post edited by GentlemanFridge on2 -
Good bird news!
A species of parakeet has been brought back from near-complete extinction in the wild, thanks to conservationists efforts!
More like this:
Post edited by GentlemanFridge on3 -
Quick fire fun-facts that I've been sitting on for a while:
Some sea birds like albatrosses have these tubes within their beaks that excrete salt. This allows them to drink sea water safely, as well as fish for micro-organisms. You can see the tube just above the nostril. That little drip at the very tip of the beak is the salt being excreted. This is also the reason why sea birds shake their head so often, as they try to get rid of that dribble.
(from: Albatross - Wikipedia)
(from: Cruising With Birds - Ornithology)
Woodpeckers, as you know, peck into trees. They do this primarily to find bugs hidden within the bark. But a sharp beak isn't enough to actually get the bugs out once they've been exposed. Woodpeckers, then, also have a really long tongue.
(from: Green woodpecker tongues are so long they wrap around their skulls | #########!? | Earth Touch News )
The link already gives it away, but yes, the tongues are so long, that they do this:
(from: The Amazing Secrets of Woodpecker Tongues - ABC (abcbirds.org) )
Certain groups of crows have learned to use sticks to catch grubs. They're very particular about what makes a 'Crow Stick', too.
Owls cannot actually move their eyes. In fact, they don't have conventional eyeballs at all. They have so-called eye-cylinders. This was the owls' answer to needing way bigger corneas to hunt at night. Most nocturnal animals have developed huge eyes to accomodate the need for the bigger corneas, so they can catch as much light as possible. Owls have, comparatively, pretty small skulls, so they couldn't exactly develop bigger eyes, and developed cylindrical eyes instead. This is why owls rotate their heads so far round, and typically bob their heads up 'n down. They allow the owl to stay mostly motionless while looking around, and thus quiet.
(source: Owls Don't Have Eyeballs | Office for Science and Society - McGill University)
With peafowl, when you think of their mating ritual you'll think of the big display of tail feathers. While this is very impressive, even for humans, there's actually something else going on as well—something we can't actually see. And it's got to do with that fancy crest of theirs (the feathers on top of their heads).
(from: The Peahen (pinterest.com) )
As it turns out, when a male is displaying their feathers, the rattling it makes also produces a vibration. The frequency that vibration produces is then picked up by the crest of the female. As this article puts it: "When a male shows off his trademark fan, the female he’s courting doesn’t just see him. She also feels him, in her head."
Peacock Crests Sense Vibrations From Mating Tail Displays - The Atlantic
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was somewhat obsessed with birds, and some believe they served as inspiration (or even as composers) for some of Mozart's pieces.
He kept a pet starling for about 3 years. The story goes that in the pet shop, the bird was singing a part of a composition of his that he had finished just a month prior, with the first public performance only happening a month after this encounter. Although a few notes were off (like, just a few), it was singing a theme of Piano Concerto in G Major K.453. Sound implausible? Well, starlings are masters at mimicry, after all. And not just that, they're also very good at improvising. It's entirely possible the bird picked up the tune from Mozart humming or whistling to himself, and 'finished' the tune on its own. Obviously I don't have a recording of what Mozart's bird sounded like, but just to prove how remarkable starlings are, take a listen to this fine fellow:
When the starling passed away, Mozart had a full-fledged funeral for the bird. He was well and truly shattered by its death, even writing poems for it. There’s one piece in particular that Mozart wrote in this time, Ein musikalisher Spaß (‘A Musical Joke’), K.522. There's rather compelling evidence that this uncharacteristic and decidedly chaotic piece was heavily inspired by the starling's musings.
(source of info: Mozart's Starling - How Starling Influenced Mozart In His Music Pieces - CMUSE
also shoutout to the gent who gave a presentation on birds in classical music for the volunteers of the charity bookshop I work at. (there's a whole other story there that's entirely unrelated to birds, but that's for another time.))
Post edited by GentlemanFridge on1
