Rolling Avian Issues Thread

these ducks are mallards right, or is there a red-crested pochard contingent? this is important as pochards are diving ducks, as with tufteds, and so there's a bit of commonality to cling to. yer gadwall/shoveler/mallard dabblers won't mix with what they'd surely regard as little diving inferiors, grebes with airs

Yes, all mallards. idk, they seem to be getting on ok so far, but it's early days.

little diving inferiors, grebes with airs

how ILAFL sees ILE

It might seem that this nameless bird was not in a position to reciprocate Tesla’s affections. And yet who could speak for this pigeon of pure white, with light gray tips on her wings? Who could say what she “felt” for the tall, melancholy, strangely dressed creature who fed, nursed, and caressed her? As with the love between two humans, or between Balthus and his cat Mitsou, or a human and an operating system like Samantha in the 2013 film Her, fully symmetrical affection is not the criterion by which we can determine whether love is in effect. We need not invoke the transmigration of souls to account for the connection or recognition that occurred. Nothing mystical need have taken place; no modern Ovid is necessary to account for the romantic sacrilege. Finitude is what all creatures share. No matter how carefully philosophers try to build a semantic or ontological wall between ourselves and other animals, we all perish. We all die. Humans may anticipate their end with more conscious and unconscious dread than do our fellow animals, but we need only see the survival instinct in action to appreciate that all creatures cling to life with furious intensity when the spark of their inexplicable existence is threatened.

http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/55/pettman.php

Any ideas as to breed?

http://i.imgur.com/zfaqlYd.jpg?1

Ruddy Shelduck

(an introduced ornamental species like the Mandarin, Ruddy or Red-Crested Pochard)

Excellent. Thank you.

Vowel-averse Swedish techno duo SHXCXCHCXSH return to Avian with a slick follow-up to their 'Strgths' album. 'VVVLLLLVVV' rolls out with sub-aquatic square bass pulses and eerie, almost Drexciyan synth pads, and 'MRRRWRRRDS' locks into heavier, bleeping rolige charged with cavalcade of churning toms and swarming synths. 'MRRRCHNNNN' is roughest of the pack, pumping pneumatic bass and pistoning hi-hats thru the silty murk at 20 knots.

In the psittacosis "parrot fever" panic of 1930, "One city health commissioner urged everyone who owned a parrot to wring its neck. People abandoned their pet parrots on the streets."[13]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/32863603/cracker.jpg

grim

was reading about the passenger pigeon extinction recently, this might be the most horrifying extract on all of wikipedia:

One method of capture was to hunt at a nesting colony, particularly during the period of a few days after the adult pigeons abandoned their nestlings but before the nestlings could fly.[64] Some hunters used sticks to poke the nestlings out of the nest, while others shot the bottom of a nest with a blunt arrow to dislodge the pigeon.[64] Others cut down a nesting tree in such a way that when it fell, it would also hit a second nesting tree and dislodge the pigeons within.[64] Still another way was to simply set a nesting tree on fire, cooking the doves or collecting them as they tried to escape.[65][66] An extreme method, practiced only by particularly unscrupulous hunters, was to set fire to the base of a tree nested with pigeons, whereby the adults would free and the juveniles would fall to the ground, bursting open.[3]

There were a wide variety of other methods that were used to capture and kill passenger pigeons. Sulfur was sometimes burned beneath the nesting tree to suffocate the birds, which fell out of the tree in a weakened state.[67] At least one trapper used alcohol-soaked grain as bait to intoxicate the birds and make them easier to kill.[68] Salt was also frequently used as bait, and many trappers set up near salt springs.[69] Stool pigeons, which traditionally were blinded, were also used to attract flocks of pigeons that thought that the stool pigeon had found food.[70]

Low-flying pigeons could be killed by thrown sticks or stones.[68] At one site in Oklahoma, the pigeons leaving their roost every morning flew low enough that the Cherokee could throw clubs into their midst, which caused the lead pigeons to try to turn aside and in the process created a blockade that created a large mass of flying, easily hit pigeons.[68]

Basket used to transport captured passenger pigeons
Nets were propped up to allow passenger pigeons entry, then closed by knocking loose the stick that supported the opening, trapping twenty or more pigeons inside.[71] Tunnel nets were also used to great effect, and one particularly large net was capable of catching 3,500 pigeons at a time.[72] These nets were used by many farmers on their own property as well as by professional trappers.[73]

Passenger pigeons were shot with such ease that many did not consider them to be a game bird, as an amateur hunter could easily bring down six with one shotgun blast; a particularly good shot with both barrels of a shotgun at a roost could kill 61 birds.[74][75] They were frequently shot either in flight during migration or immediately after, when they traditionally perched in dead, exposed trees.[74] The pigeons did prove difficult to shoot head-on, so hunters typically waited for the flocks to pass overhead before shooting them.[76] Trenches were sometimes dug and filled with grain so that a hunter could shoot the pigeons along this trench.[76]

fwiw i still inwardly apologise to woodpigeons, for those bursting to dub me Hypocrite

The vultures (Cathartes urubu, Coragyps atratus foetens) fell upon him, devoured first of all the lizards, and then attacked the body of the unfortunate youth, beginning with his buttocks. Pain restored him to consciousness, and the hero drove off his attackers which, however, had completely gnawed away his hindquarters. Having eaten their fill, the birds were prepared to save his life; taking hold of his belt and the strips of cotton round his arms and legs with their beaks, they lifted him into the air and deposited him gently at the foot of the mountain.

The hero regained consciousness “as if he were awaking from a dream.” He was hungry and ate wild fruits but noticed that since he had no rectum, he was unable to retain the food, which passed through his body without even being digested. The youth was at first nonplussed and then remembered a tale told him by his grandmother, in which the hero solved the same problem by molding for himself an artificial behind out of dough made from pounded tubers.

http://radicalanthropologygroup.org/sites/default/files/pdf/class_text_056.pdf

Due to their short wings, auks have to flap their wings very quickly in order to fly.

those avians

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/apr/27/lazio-eagle-attacked-crow

eagle mascot is some proper spqr shit

Jesus christ, that picture!

did u see the weasel/woodpecker interface from the uk newsy-wewsies a few weeks ago

was it a super furry weasel?

it was super insofar as it had achieved the power of flight, something few weasels achieve

sounds like a pile of arse

Yeah, that's the biggest surprise of the set so far, and very welcome after the preceding four or five

next week i'll be liveblogging the TV listings for CBS Action

Yes. Although stranger things have happened

http://a54.idata.over-blog.com/3/75/39/26/bataille-1928.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS_hq0MlNwo

The break seems to have done them some good, they sound far more with it in these clips than they do on the 2009-era footage.

http://www.manxbirdphotography.co.uk/Birds/Crows-Shrikes/Chough/slides/chough211012.jpg

lol

Scrub Jay: 87K wav file
Description: A Scrub jay (Aphelocoma coerulescens) seemed to be flying towards the person doing the recording as he makes this series of chirps.

Hope you're all voting today mates

http://www.votenationalbird.com

all that rhetoric about unseating the robin but it's nigh on the best one, might even vote for it

blue tit and wren the only acceptable alternatives

voted robin

If you weren't limited to that shortlist, what would be your choice for national bird of Britain?

Imagine btw that this is official and permanent, not that I think this thing is

Pied wagtail would be my choice

Has nobody else voted? :(

was gonna vote Puffin but fuck off giving an email address

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how would you feel if it after a couple of bemused trips to moorlands and wetlands, it became clear that though there was no lack of avians, the entire avian population now compromised only of common or garden british normcore perennials like blackbirds, robins, wood pigeons etc?

lol at the tableau at the top of the gis for wood pigeon by the way

trenchant autocorrects

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Jeronimus_Sweerts_-_flowers_in_a_basket_with_shells_and_a_bird_and_a_bowl_of_fruit.jpg

that is an excellent composition

props on making quite a gaudily-hued psittaciform look so demure

But despite herons being nicknamed the 'shitepoke' in some quarters for their usual reaction to being disturbed, the carefully-maintained shiny black paintwork was not sullied.

there were some odd looking avians in my aunt's ash tree the other day, like ....Parus major....but with longer tails

herons are dorks