The Birds

[greennui]

Thought we could use a thread solely dedicated to these animals.

My cat caught a kingfisher earlier. Not a bird you normally see around these parts, the abnormally cold weather recently probably had something to do with it. A shame as it's a pretty bird and it's status in Sweden is currently seen as threatened.

[sally]

ooooh! i love kingfishers! they're not exactly common around here - they're not threatened or anything (tho they're specially protected by law, it's illegal to photograph them without a licence), they're just small and zippy and easily disturbed, so one sighting per year is an achievement - saw one in november for the first time in two years. not sure whether it's the same when they're dead, but that flashing hyper-real blue is insanely electric, makes everything else around it seem dull

bad cat

[rischka]

that is spectacular. your cat is evil. i'm starting to see neighborhood cats in my yard too and the roadrunner was hiding in a bush last week, outed by a cactus wren

i'm doing this currently https://feederwatch.org/

next week is audobon's great backyard bird count https://www.birdcount.org/

birdwatching has exploded during the pandemic, pretty cool

[sally]

got one of these in the river near me, always cheers me up to see him bobbing away. there used to be two tho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2Pk8mj3SwY

[rischka]

he's adorable!! i should visit the water more. there's a great blue heron at our lake who stands on the boat dock when people aren't around

[greennui]

I used be an avid bird watcher as a kid, my grandparents would always drive me around to places where I could see different kinds of birds, like Lake Hornborga where one can see thousands of cranes during the spring. Then the Pokemon craze happened and I stopped colleting data about birds in favour of data about Pokemons...Kinda feel like it's growing back a little though as I see a lot of birds when I go for runs in the forest, like different kinds of woodpeckers, mostly great spotted ones but even black ones at times.

[niminy-piminy]

i wrote about Olga Karlíková (1923-2004) already in the "birds" thread on zeta BUT...
in early December 2020, prior to another (current) lockdown, i attended the exhibition of Olga's oeuvre (mostly dedicated to drawing bird singing).


i did a lot of pictures there (too many to post all of them).


the whole exhibition looked like this (bird chirping was played in the room).


alongside the exhibition, a quite thick and heavy book about Olga was published (i didn't start to read it yet).


besides, in the last year, part of my art hoarding collection became her graphics called LARKS (1998), No. 76/100.

[greennui]

not sure whether it's the same when they're dead, but that flashing hyper-real blue is insanely electric, makes everything else around it seem dull

It still had that, looked so unreal that it took a while for me to be convinced that it was an actual bird.

[rischka]

the song drawings this is a type of synethesia?? never seen this before

[niminy-piminy]

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/the_aut ... tml#p33465

Olga was (seems like) highly synesthetic.

[rischka]

https://www.staradvertiser.com/2021/02/ ... on-midway/

The world’s oldest known banded wild bird hatched a new chick on Monday at Midway Atoll, wildlife officials announced today. Biologists first observed the egg pipping — or shell cracking — on Jan. 29, and the chick hatched several days later on the first of February.

The chick appears to be healthy and doing well.

The return of Wisdom, at least 70 years old, and her mate, Akeakamai, to their nest site at Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in late November marked an exciting milestone for wildlife officials, who anticipated they might hatch another chick.

wisdom is a laysan albatross. she was banded in 1956, est. age 5

[rischka]

strange mustachioed bird of central america

https://onebigbirdcage.com/articles/his ... UVlwi8w0QE

[rischka]

brids (or how to be one) postmodernist greek quasi-documentary very loosely adapted from aristophenes. rather amorphous really. is this some kind of trend in greek cinema??

link in the usual place. i'm going to nap now and dream of flying

[greennui]

I watched a bird film the other day, Pica Pica (Mikael Kristersson, 1987). Kristersson might be the world's only birdwatching auteur, or at least the only one that I know of. In Pica Pica he observed a gang of magpies living near a city centre during an extended period of time, by observing the magpie activity he also observed the human activity going on in the background. It's even more prominent in his following film Kestrel's Eye (1998) in which he observes kestrel's living a top of an old church tower, also observing the church activities on the ground.

Pica Pica


Kestrel's Eye

[sally]

goddammit greennui pls put the magpie one in the place or something!

(and thnx rischka for the greek one, was gonna watch it on mubi but my streaming has gone to shit)

[rischka]

guys i'm cheating on you at a bird forum

https://www.birdforum.net/

[greennui]

^ No political thread in sight, no need to get jealous.

[rischka]

check out this cutie i've seen on my feederwatch this week. it is a white-crowned sparrow, usually a migrant here. they breed in the far north of canada and alaska so i expect they'll be leaving soon. there's a group of four or five; this is the male. the female has black and tan striped head

[rischka]

i thought someone was knocking on my door (very angrily!) but a damn woodpecker was hammering on the roof of my porch lol

[niminy-piminy]

https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/ ... it-3141625
Edinburgh woman bit off man’s tongue in street brawl before seagull swooped down and ate it
A man who had a large chunk of his tongue bitten off by a female thug was left horrified when a seagull swooped down and ate it.

James McKenzie spat out a piece of his tongue onto the street after Bethaney Ryan, 27, had ripped it off with her teeth during an incident in Edinburgh.

The gull then flew down and grabbed the muscle, making off before the injured man could retrieve it.

Edinburgh Sheriff Court was told about the grisly incident - which left the victim maimed for life - when Ryan appeared in the dock to plead guilty to the attack last Thursday.

Prosecutor Susan Dickson said the pair clashed as they passed each other on Leith Walk at around 8pm on August 1, 2019.

Ms Dickson said the pair were strangers but “an argument developed” between them.

The court heard Ryan had tried to walk away from the confrontation.

The fiscal said McKenzie continued to be aggressive towards Ryan and he approached her again with “a clenched fist”.

Ms Dickson said: “Miss Ryan, somewhat oddly, responded to that by pushing him on the body and kissing him.

“She kissed him on the lips and during the course of that she bit through his tongue which caused a piece of his tongue to be removed.

“Mr McKenzie walked off and spat a part of his tongue out at which point the piece of muscle was picked up by a large seagull that made off with the piece of tongue.”

The fiscal told the court the chunk of tongue bitten off was approximately two centimetres by three centimetres in size.

Ryan was later arrested by police and McKenzie attended hospital for treatment where “the laceration to his tongue” was said to be “oozing blood”.

The fiscal added: “He did not require surgery given the piece of tongue was no longer available and could not be reattached.”

Solicitor Neil Martin, defending, said the attack by his client, of Lochend, Edinburgh, was “a very strange incident in the round” but added he would reserve his full mitigation to the sentencing hearing.

Sheriff Nigel Ross said “because of the serious nature of the incident” he needed to defer sentence for the preparation of reports to later this year.

Ryan pleaded guilty to assaulting James McKenzie by pushing him on the body, kissing him and biting off part of his tongue to his severe injury and permanent disfigurement at Leith Walk, Edinburgh, on August 1, 2019.

https://nypost.com/2021/02/21/scottish- ... ll-ate-it/
Scottish woman bit off man’s tongue in street brawl — then seagull ate it

A Scottish woman bit off part of a man’s tongue in a wild street brawl — and a seagull promptly swooped down and gobbled it up, authorities said in a report.

Bethaney Ryan, 27, clashed with the stranger, James McKenzie, sparking an argument in Edinburgh on Aug. 1, 2019, according to a prosecutor cited by the Edinburgh Evening News.

After McKenzie walked towards Ryan with “a clenched fist,” she inexplicably kissed him — then chomped off a 3-by-2-centimeter piece of his tongue, prosecutor Susan Dickson said in Edinburgh Sheriff Court Thursday.

“She kissed him on the lips and during the course of that she bit through his tongue which caused a piece of his tongue to be removed,” Dickson told the court.

After he spat out a bloody chunk of the organ, a bird plucked it off the ground and ate it — making reattachment surgery impossible, she said.

“Mr McKenzie walked off and spat a part of his tongue out at which point the piece of muscle was picked up by a large seagull that made off with the piece of tongue,” Dickson said.

McKenzie was treated for “the laceration to his tongue” after it began “oozing blood,” the prosecutor said.

“He did not require surgery given the piece of tongue was no longer available and could not be reattached,” the prosecutor said.

Ryan, who was arrested, pleaded guilty to the assault on Thursday, according to the outlet. It wasn’t immediately clear what prompted the argument between her and McKenzie.

[greennui]

The Art of Flying (2015)

Short film about "murmurations": the mysterious flights of the Common Starling. It is still unknown how the thousands of birds are able to fly in such dense swarms without colliding. Every night the starlings gather at dusk to perform their stunning air show.

https://vimeo.com/241007433

[rischka]

i've always wanted to see this in real life. we have starlings but i've only seen a small group. this looks amazing

starlings are invasive species here and many birders hate them. but i think they're quite handsome

[rischka]

remember when i went to mexico? that was one year ago this week

[sally]

i love starlings! they're so naughty, and the juveniles are pure downy chocolate milkshake. back in the before time when i went to the city the ones by the market were so bold they would come and crap on your leg whilst you were sat there feeding them by hand

[niminy-piminy]

Rooster fitted with knife slashes man's groin and kills him at illegal cockfight

The rooster's 45-year-old owner died from blood loss as he was being rushed to hospital following the "freak accident" in Lothunur in Telangana state, India

A rooster fitted with a three-inch knife for an illegal cockfight killed its owner as it tried to escape his grasp.

The bird was struggling to break free when the blade, strapped to one of its legs, slashed the 45-year-old man's groin before a fight in the village of Lothunur in India's southern Telangana state.

The man died from blood loss as he was being rushed to a hospital in the rural area.

His death has sparked a police investigation and a hunt for at least 15 other people who were involved in the illegal cockfighting event last Tuesday.

Officers seized the rooster and held it at a local police station for a day before transferring it to a poultry farm.

It's not the first time an owner has been killed by their cockerel. Last year a man in Andhra Pradesh died after he was hit in the neck by a blade attached to his bird.

[rischka]

live by the knife, die by the knife?

[niminy-piminy]

it's a pity rooster's accomplice was not a seagull of Edinburgh.
then the yellow press headline might look as follows...

Rooster fitted with knife slashes man's groin, cutting off a 3-by-2-centimeter piece, then seagull swooped down and ate it

[rischka]

another bird hit my window about an hour ago but i looked out just now and he's gone



it was an abert's towhee. he rested a long time and i wasn't sure he could fly

[sally]

saw my first lapwings today, now i know it's spring (also my face got sunburnt in 50F cuz i haven't seen proper sun in months)

they were somewhere here i swear, tbh you hear them before you see them


i love their call it's so weird

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt83JPcWcHg

[rischka]

https://www.usnews.com/news/world-repor ... seychelles

A ONCE-EXTINCT BIRD species "re-evolved" itself into existence and returned to the island it once colonized thousands of years ago, researchers say.

The Aldabra rail, named after the Aldabra Atoll it inhabits in the Seychelles, is the last surviving native flightless bird in the Indian Ocean region. It is a descendant of the flying white-throated rail that is believed to have lost its ability to fly because the lack of predators made it unnecessary.

more like an example of parallel evolution