Rolling Avian Issues Thread

Meinertzhagen's passion for bird-watching began as a child. He and his brother Daniel (VII) were encouraged by a family friend, the philosopher Herbert Spencer, who, like another family friend, Charles Darwin, was an ardent empiricist. Spencer would take young Richard and Daniel on walks around their home in Mottisfont, urging them to observe and enquire on the habits of birds. Around 1887 they kept a pet sparrowhawk, which they would take to Hyde Park to let it prey on sparrows.

many aeroplane takeoff accidents happen when birds are disturbed by one plane and then get struck by another's jet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2zB7Z-b6Kc

Nadeem Moulana
4 years ago

this video is so trippy, I love the sounds. I watched it when I was high and I can never forget the last seconds when you can see the grass as the planes smashes the ground. This is awesome footage, one of my favorite videos on youtube.

women - public strain [Started by Palpatean Mists (Lowell N. Behold'n) in March 2011, last updated 3 minutes ago by imago on I Love Music] 1 new answer

i liked that jet crashing video too

fwiw I own a copy of The Charm Of Birds, a season-by-season observational account of Britain's avians penned by long-serving Foreign Secretary Edward Gray, who strove in vain to prevent World War 1 before composing his masterpiece

fairly interesting figure as late-empire uk political highrankers go

edward grey did very little to prevent anything, his actions and inactions mostly followed a via media between the hard right of the army hierarchy and the liberal mainstream, he rejected most of the entreaties from the german hierarchy that might have restrained the war factions in both countries (and the rest of the entente and central powers)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Imperialists

:/ oh

he had a way with a soundbite, but that faction seems somewhat pandering

no less

https://twitter.com/SussexWildlife/status/550007097522659328

;_; hny

went birdwatching to sevenoaks wildlife reserve yesterday

it went brilliantly. we saw a kingfisher in flight at the very outset, a tremendous flock of peewit, many shovelers, a smattering of snipe…and then, right at the end, as evening fell, we saw two of the best and rarest birds I've ever seen - a lone great white egret, looking for all the world like a vase or a large binbag, suddenly sprouting a neck and flying off enormously - clearly not a (more common) little egret due to its vast size and slow heronish wingbeat - and then, the american white ibis that will have attracted many 'twitchers' (birdwatchers with text alerts) to the reserve - spotted amongst a large gaggle of geese as it pecked around wondering how it ended up in sevenoaks in january away from all the other ibises

basically, two unusual herons. but fret not, for the grey sort were there in force as well. herons are surely among the best of non-passerines

thought about reviving this thread earlier when something that looked like a jay in colour but slightly more hench and closer to a woodpecker in shape flew off of a branch that it was sitting athwart about 1 second after i looked at it

there was a jay/green woodpecker confusion at the reserve yesterday too. later sightings of jay probably confirmed the earlier one.

course you might have seen a waxwing in which case i am slain

shit, that's it

slightly smaller than a starling = typed this almost verbatim earlier

have dreamed of seeing one of those since i was 6 and never have

90% sure that was it

Bohemian waxwings are not brood parasitised by the common cuckoo or its relatives in Eurasia because the cuckoo's young cannot survive on a largely fruit diet. In North America, the waxwing's breeding range has little overlap with brown-headed cowbird, another parasitic species. Nevertheless, eggs of other birds placed in a Bohemian waxwing's nest are always rejected. This suggests that in the past, perhaps 3 million years ago, the ancestral waxwing was a host of a brood parasitic species, and retains the rejection behaviour acquired then.

^^^this stuff is terrifying & fascinating

posted this elsewhere but as an avian avian issue it needs to be here as well

The pollutant methylmercury is a globally distributed neurotoxin and an endocrine system disruptor. In the Everglades ecosystem, human pollution has led to increased concentrations of methylmercury, which have impacted the behaviors of the American white ibis.[67] Hormone levels in males are affected, leading to a decrease in the rates of key courtship behavior, and fewer approaches by females during the mating season.[68] In addition, methylmercury also increased male-male pairing behaviors by 55%. Both the chemically induced "homosexual" behavior and the diminished ability to attract females by males have reduced reproduction rates in affected populations.

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/londonbirders/images/0/07/102_-_105_Waxwings.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20110115210218

Taken on Drayton Park Road opposite the Arsenal steps. Waxwings in a Rowan tree.

two bodybuilding bros argue about the starling-sized birds in that tree

http://i.imgur.com/eOWL8i1.png

that first one really is peering

now do someone pissing on a molehill next to sunderland's finest

there was one of those regionally relevant interludes in the pittsburgh/baltimore game featuring, appropiately enough, a rather wretched looking raven from the national aviary in pittsburgh

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Aviary

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/ff/FranklinSpectacleOwlChick.jpg/520px-FranklinSpectacleOwlChick.jpg

Franklin, the spectacled owl chick

bare magnolia room with incongruous transverse branch where Franklin shall die

lmao

http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mafsxxMNb41qkgm7po1_500.gif

https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4005/4592455560_b04bf29320.jpg

that does not look like a bird species that exists

maybe in delaware?

would not put anything past delaware

An executioner in Mecca, the holy city, took two swings to hack off Layla bint Abdul Mutaleb Bassim's head, after she was found guilty of beating the girl and raping her with a broomstick.

From Arabic بِنْت (bínt, “girl, daughter”), used to denote a patronym.

The term entered the British lexicon during the occupation of Egypt at the end of the nineteenth century, where it was adopted by British soldiers to mean "girlfriend" or "bit on the side". It is used as a derogatory slang word in the United Kingdom, meaning 'woman' or 'girl'. Its register varies from that of the harsher bitch to an affectionate term for a young woman, the latter being more commonly associated with the West Midlands. The term was used in British armed forces and the London area synonymously with bird in its slang usage from at least the 1950s.

Saw some golden eagles passing through Guadalajara today. Or i assume they were golden eagles, the Iberian imperial eagle being much less likely.

http://i.imgur.com/PO2ILrF.jpg

golden oriole, greenfinch, bullfinch, firecrest. maybe a redpoll and a hawfinch. rest have me stumped.

is that an album that many avians will have downloaded

these two may have listened to a couple of tracks from a streaming service at the insistence of ILAFL's finest MENA pugilist, but would need to return to it to have an opinion much beyond 'seems nice, cool forest sounds'

the greenfinch is the only avian i know there

passerines

are they one of the more dominant passerines?

Greenfinches have suffered a terrible decline in the last decade. Used to get them daily in the garden, now cannot remember the last time I even saw one. Chaffinches and goldfinches still going well, in the UK at least.

Finches are amongst the most dominant passerines on the whole though, yes. They're seen as more highly developed than most other families, I think.

I have packed a large bird guide today for educational reasons. I will look up the greenfinch in a bit.

how do u rate dunnocks in the avian firnament

extremely high

they skulk in the literal, glowering sense, as much rodent as bird in behaviour, rarely putting more than four inches between themselves and the ground, even in flight. of course they are beautiful as well with surprisingly rich patterning. another garden standard & yet they never fail to thrill

you are like avian version of the egyptian god who weighed the souls of the dead

a novice

Smales, I. (2006)

Impacts of Avian Collision with Wind Power Turbines: An
Overview of the Modelling of Cumulative Risks Posed by Multiple Wind
Farms

Report for the Department of Environment and Heritage. Pro-
ject No. 5182. Biosis Research Pty Ltd., Melbourne