I never tire of watching the great winter flocks of birds like starlings, moving with eerie grace like some superorganism, supposedly by obeying very simple rules. (Photo, sent anonymously a year or two ago, by Manuel Presti; thanks, PD!) This is most obvious when birds are under attack.Bill Kessler sent this amazing YouTube filmed in …
Tag: Birds
Bird Nerd Review Post
Heavy (bird) science warning! John Burchard asked me recently about the current evolutionary status of New World Vultures, and I realized my answer “reviewed” a book I had been meaning to. So consider the following to be my semi- official review of the amazing book The Inner Bird by Gary Kaiser. The very latest– this …
Smart Corvids
And for pleasure: A BBC feature on the always- amazing abilities of Corvids, with videos. HT Jonathan Hanson.
Vaguely Biological Links
An “extinct” bird is rediscovered– and eaten. Apparently black north American wolves owe their color to interbreeding with dogs that crossed the Bering bridge HT Laura Niven and Reid. SmartDogs sent a link to a new method of detecting rabies. It sounded good, but Patrick found reason to dispute their claims. Also at Terrierman: a …
Jurassic Males?
Carl Zimmer has a fascinating item on the ever- more- blurry line between birds and non- avian Dinosaurs. It seems the Paleognathes– the bird group commonly known as ratites, composed of the big flightless birds like Ostriches and the odd related but flying South American group known as Tinamous– have retained the brooding habits of …
River guardians
Today I drove to Jackson Hole to run a few errands with my son. We encountered these two river guardians in the Snake River Canyon along the way. Have a great weekend all.
Science Links
Darren has been posting a series of utterly weird and alien cetacean skulls. Try here and here and especially here for my favorites, but they are all wonderful. He also weighs in on the “Montauk Monster”. Despite the hysteria I though it was a canid; he convinces me that it is likely another small carnivore. …
Convergent Pigeons
Reader Mike Spies, who has a place in Jamaica, noticed that wild White- crowned pigeons (Columba leucocephala) resident there resembled some white- capped Catalonian tumblers he had seen on the blog. Of course, “Cats” are only one of the myriad breeds of Darwin’s pets, domestic pigeons descended from the Rock dove (Columba livia.) But the …
Gobi Birds
Some wonderful photos on the Temujin Blog, a good blog about trekking in Mongolia. French helps but is not a necessity– the pix speak for themselves. HT John Carlson. (Temujin was the birth name of Jingiz. And no, I won’t say it with a hard “G”, which no one does in Asia, though otherwise spelling …
Wondrous Feathers
Reader, falconer, and birder Stacia Novy, in the military in Honduras, sent a photo of herself with the central tail feathers of a motmot that she picked up. She wrote: “I found this pair of molted, central tail (deck) feathers from a Turquoise-browed Motmot the other day while hiking along a stream bed on base. …