my father, gently apologizing to an irate mother killdeer. (we honest-to god did not see that nest behind her until I looked at my pictures afterwards. that’s some camouflage!)
pelcan Mouth perfec t size for put baby in to nap! inside very Soft and Comfort baby sleep soundly put baby in Pelican Mouth. Put Baby In Pelican Mouth. no problems ever in peliccan mouth because good Shape and Support for baby neck weak of big baby head. Apelican Mouth yes a place for a baby put baby in pelican mouth can trust pelican for giveing good love to baby. friend pelican
I was searching my ‘old pictures’ folder for the dove picture from this post, and found this series of photographs of the capture and subsequent release of a juvenile cooper’s hawk (guest-starring my mother, the only person in the household who had handled raptors before, and therefore the designated hawk-wrangler).
This delightful criminal mastermind somehow got INTO the securely covered chicken pen and made short work of a chicken or two (the blood you can see around his beak and breast belonged to the unfortunate chicken), but could not work out how to exit the premises after his meal, and so had to be gently netted and then released outside the pen. A slightly stressful ordeal for the handsome young rogue, but a happy ending for everyone who was not a chicken.
never say anything to a penguin that the penguin has not already said to you
this reads like a shitpost but i’m actually 100% serious.
i was walking along the side of the harbour this evening, just after all the penguins had come in from the ocean to nest. there was one penguin right by the footpath, and when it saw me it kept saying ‘höö’. so i said ‘höö’ right back. it seemed to like that, and we had a lovely conversation where we just kept saying ‘höö’ to each other. i crouched down about two metres away from it, and we kept talking, and it actually moved towards me a little bit, seeming to prefer my company to the heartless embrace of the sea.
but then i made the mistake of trying to change things up. i said ‘hweh’, which was something that a previous penguin said to me, and this penguin hated it, and fucked right off. never said another word to me. i felt so rude.
I keep imagining this from the penguin’s point of view:
“Gustav, my friend, why so glum?”
The penguin in question looked up from his half-eaten sprat, shaking his head in disgust.
“Not glum, Sebastian. Affronted, outraged – I had the most perturbing encounter with one of the Beakless Ones.”
Sebastian nodded solemnly. “Yes, they are often perturbing. What happened, my friend?”
Gustav sighed heavily, looking up to the sky and holding his flippers wide, as if to ask the gods “why?”, before mournfully retelling his experience, “I was on the beach where the Beakless sometimes wander, contemplating names for this year’s chicks, when one of them approached. It seemed harmless enough to greet – they’re cute, in a strange, bald and flat-faced way, are they not?”
“Oh Gustav, you kind-hearted fool.”
“Such a fool, I am!” Gustav’s moans had gathered a small crowd already – the only thing penguins love more than a bellyful of fish, is a story. A good storyteller was always guaranteed a warm spot to huddle in the winter, surrounded by bored friends longing for entertainment.
“What did it do, Gustav? Did it kick you?”
“No! When it got close, I called out to it, ‘hello, friend!’. It stopped and returned the greeting – awkwardly, but it was rather sweet, like a chick learning it’s first chirps. ‘Hollow fren,’ it said back to me. I was charmed, but not wanting it to learn poor pronunciation, I repeated the greeting, and so did it! Getting clearer each time, till it could almost pass for a true penguin itself.”
“Gustav is a wonderful teacher,” Adelina, his mate, stated with a proud nod of her lovely blue head. “You remember how well our chicks could enunciate, before they even caught their first fish.”
“But what of it, Gustav? What happened to sour this experience so?”
“We went back and forth, till I was satisfied. It lowered itself near the ground, and I moved closer, carefully, not wanting to alarm it. I was just about to tell it how pleased I was, that it learning so quickly, when all of a sudden, it looked me right in the eye and said ‘Fuck off, freak.’”
There were avian gasps all around.
“Oh no!”
“How rude!”
“I was so appalled, I could not bring myself to even chide it.” Gustav bowed his head in shame. “I turned and left without another word.”
“It said that to you? Oh dear.” Sebastian tilted his head in a piercing glare towards one of their fellows, focusing on the only one who was slapping his sides and chortling. “Björn, you scoundrel! What have I told you about yelling obscenities at the Beakless?”
Björn cackled and bobbed his head in defiance. “How was its enunciation, Gustav? You soft-hearted buffoon!”
Incapable of traditional flight, Western Meadowlarks maneuver through the world by leaping with powerful legs. Capable of jumping three times their body’s length completely vertically, these springy Sturnella are hardly hampered by the lack of flying ability; many casual observers have been fooled into believing they take wing due to the speed and precision of their numerous jumps. Above, a pair of meadowlarks judge the leaping form of a third.
is there a reason people on tumblr have a need to make up bullshit all the time?
Hello friend! Thank you for your valuable contribution to Bird Discourse (or as it is known in Prosumer Ornithographical circles: Bourse).
While ordinarily we here at The Academy of Bird Sciences welcome any and all corrections in the name of scientific cooperation and education, in this specific instance it appears you are in error: the photo you have attached is an Eastern Meadowlark, sister species to the Western Meadowlark described above. Do not be dismayed, this sort of mistake happens all of the time! They look quite similar but can be differentiated by the fact that Eastern Meadowlarks are incapable of terrestrial locomotion, as you can see in the above photograph. While ordinarily this would be a minor impairment to other birds, these skyborne Sturnella are quite able to hunt and eat enough aerial insect life to sustain their unceasing flapping.
Thank you again for your Bourse and have a nice day!
I don’t know if this is supposed to be a joke but I can find literally nothing stating that the western meadowlark can’t fly or the eastern meadowlark can’t move on the ground.
Wow!! Another person wants to share their Meadowlark Bourse (bird discourse)! Luck be a lady and that lady is me 🙂
Thank you very much tumblr user bluecrownedsnakes for sharing your results when searching for corroboration of my posts. After all, the foundation of good science is replication! Unfortunately you seem to have run into a fairly common problem: The Academy of Bird Sciences is simply so far advanced in the field of ornitholobiolographical research that it takes months to even years for everyone else to catch up to our findings. This delayed acceptance will of course lead to small moments of embarrassment (such as this misunderstanding about sandhill crane incubation tactics) from time to time, but it is a minor price to pay for living on the “bleeding edge” of science.
So please rest assured! Meadowlarks on the ground are Western, in the air are Eastern. If you are still hesitant to believe, simply wait a few years and run your search again. Alternatively, you could ask tumblr users @birdycreatures, @snailkites, or @sitta-pusilla, all of whom tend to keep up-to-date on the newest field research.
Thank you so much for this opportunity to share Bourse! It is one of my favourite parts of this job 🙂
Notes from a field correspondent:
In my many travels, I have observed many meadowlarks both Western and Eastern. I can confirm that while the eastern variety can fly, the western cannot. This idea is even supported by my published research, where you can see that eastern meadowlarks have taken advantage of their flightedness to evolve a flight display!
Meanwhile, western meadowlarks are not known to gesture at all.
I would encourage all consumers of news and scientific articles to keep in mind that being a good, critical reader means bothknowing when to question your sources, as well as when skepticism has gone a bit too far. In the latter case, being an aggressive skeptic will make you unable to appreciate fine satire and humor.
(Obviously, the Academy of Bird Sciences is not satire and is 100% advanced science, which explains why you may have trouble corroborating their fine results via mere Google searches.)
Last spring at @WildThingsChi I went to a talk by Dr. Amy Chabot about the @MidewinNatTP shrikes & I love them. I am def going to expand on this in the future
[Image description: a close-up photo of a blue bin that says “FISH” on the side. A bird of some kind is inside the bin, and part of their head is peeking up over the edge.]
A Pretty Taste for Paradox 