Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
Would anyone like to see pictures of this bird I’m friends with
I love her
i am loving people’s attempts to identify this bird its just an australian magpie, she’s not a chimera, she’s not a fucked up crow, etc. she is just….. a regular run of the mill magpie
She is also a mother…. here is her yelling son who she brought to me one time
HOW THE HELL DID YOU BEFRIEND AN AUSTRALIAN MAGPIE
i give her chips sometimes
From what I’ve heard, australian magpies are actually quite nice if they trust you not to hurt them. Swooping season happens because, as a species, they’ve learned that most humans are Dangerous and so they preemptively attack to protect themselves and their young. If you’ve been nice to a group of magpies, though, they’ll remember you and you won’t be swooped at.
Magpies are extremely cool birds, and very intelligent… which means that they know that humans are the biggest threat around and that we can be good friends. Thus, swooping, and also not swooping humans who have proven themselves to be trustworthy sources of food.
The funniest interaction I ever had with some magpies was when one of my former workplaces had our Christmas lunch as a picnic in a park. A pair of magpies were teaching their fledgeling how to beg for food from humans. First one would approach, crouch down and coo at us; someone threw them a bit of cheese. Then the other adult approached, crouched down and cooed at us; someone threw a piece of cabanossi. Both tidbits were picked up, taken back and shared with the offspring… then the adults were standing there looking at the fledgeling and then at us, obviously going “Go on, then, you try it!”
Fledgeling magpie nervously walked closer to us, looked back at its parents, then half-crouched and yelled “RAWK!” in our direction. We cracked up laughing, startling the poor baby, but he or she got over it pretty quickly when a HAIL of bits of cheese and sausage landed all around.
I’m fascinated with the concept of baby animals being TAUGHT, complete with focus-drawing behaviors, followed by demonstration, about how to interact with humans.
Emitting a recogniseable call is key with magpies. I lived just down the street from a park with a huge swooping problem for about 20 years, so I had time to run a lot of experiments. The conclusion I came to is that magpies don’t recognise humans visually, but aurally. If you make a friendly noise every time you see them (mine is a cooing ‘hello birdie’), don’t startle them or try to get too close, and politely go around them when they’re on the ground, they’ll soon remember you as a Polite Human and you’ll be exempt from the swooping as soon as you make the right noise.
Which is why I routinely crossed that park in swooping season, greeting the first magpie I saw in my usual fashion, and then strolled across the park in safety while assorted people in business attire ran past me screaming with their briefcases or handbags over their heads. The filthy looks I used to get when I stopped to speak to a magpie and then it went off to attack someone else were really pretty funny. Was it my fault they weren’t being polite?
We moved into a new swooping zone a few years ago, and I immediately began the campaign again. I got swooped a couple of times the first year, but never since. it really does work!
Owl Intelligence, and Respecting Their Way of Thought
For those of you who have followed my (original) blog for some time, my stance on owl intelligence should be clear. I am of the mind that owls are just as intelligent as a hawk or a falcon, and the pervasive reputation of these birds as being “lazy” and “stupid” animals is one of my biggest pet peeves.
The Myth of Owl Stupidity
In a cruel twist of fate, this mischaracterization of owls as being “slow” often comes from those who work with owls professionally because owls do not respond to the same training as their diurnal counterparts, but if you are constantly trying to shove a square peg in a triangular hole, it may not be the peg that’s unintelligent.
Diurnal raptors are only distantly related to owls, so it should not be a shock the two groups have more differences than similarities. A hawk is straightforward; they react to visual stimuli much like humans do, and they are at their peak confidence during the daylight. A hawk will look around, see no danger, and feel perfectly content to preen or eat from the glove. They burn off a lot more energy than owls as well since they capture prey by chase and have to be very active in searching for visual queues. A hawk will enter a dark room or have a hood slipped over its head and become almost catatonic because a lack of visual stimulus queues the hawk to feel calmed and stay in place much like they would to roost.
Owls see with their ears, not their eyes. An owl is also an ambush hunter rather than pursuit, every part of their instinctual wiring is geared to ensure they are not seen. If they are not seen and if they are not heard, they are safe, and they can be fed and they can relax in their invisibility. Because of their desires to remain unnoticed, they rarely show the same dramatic flight response of their diurnal cousins. Unlike the hawk, a frightened owl will not attempt relentlessly to take flight, a frightened owl sits as still as possible.
If you’re training a hawk and find it standing in place and looking at its surroundings without apparent urgency, it is a sign the hawk is confident; it needn’t watch you as you aren’t a threat, and it needn’t flee because it is safe and you will provide it food sufficiently. It can take time to look around at other things.
If you’re training an owl and it exhibits a similar behavior of standing firm on the glove and turning its head away from you to look at something else, this is a sign the owl is uncomfortable and worried, it’s not looking around out of curiosity, but to find an exit or a better hiding spot since it feels very visible on fist in the open.
Point of View of the Owl
When training hawks, the mutual relationship between man and bird is obvious. You are providing the hawk a secure roost, food, water, and freedom from disease. The hawk is more than willing to humor you in standing on your glove as though it were a tree limb and take time to look curiously upon whatever new sights you have to offer it, or to chase game you flush for it in the field.
Owls are more complex because the idea of being paraded in front of a crowd of humans or hunting game your noisy feet will scare away are very disagreeable to the owl for good reason. As I said, an owl is comfortable when it is not observed. Owls have a slower metabolism as well, meaning they do not hold food in the same esteem as the hawk. There is little urgency in an owl’s need to eat if all it has to feed is itself and it’s finished growing. Therefore, the only benefit a human can provide an owl is security. If you are not keeping the owl safe from scenarios that frighten it, you are not meeting your end of the bargain, and the owl views it as a betrayal because to be seen and to feel unsafe is torturous to these birds.
Owls find being companionship to be disagreeable as well, and do not enjoy physical touch or constantly being around a human or other animals. They only spend a few months of the year with their mate and owlets, the exception being burrowing owls who are more tolerant of company, but do not particularly crave it either in many cases. They simply hold it with indifference rather than displeasure.
Because of the strictly solitary nature of owls, they may become disagreeable in turn if you don’t give them their space. An owl prefers to be alone in its enclosure for most of the day and night undisturbed, and the only parts of the owl that should be touched are the keel (to determine body condition) and the talons (to ensure anklets can be placed in a way that will minimize stress). The face of the adult owl should never be touched unless it’s to briefly help it get something off, like residue from food or dirt that would be more irritating if left caked on the bird. Any touch at all to the bird should only be done for clinical reasons.
All of this is what makes owls incredibly unethical to keep as pets. Invariably, videos of pet owls show the birds being relentlessly stroked like dogs, forced to interact with humans or other pets, and taken to noisy places like a living room with the TV on or a store. Some even go as far as dressing them up in costumes.
Owl behavior and cognition in terms of how they see their world are complex enough that I can’t fully cover it in a tumblr post, but if you take away nothing else understand this much: owls are not cats, they are not dolls, they are not pets. An owl is a wild animal misunderstood even by self-proclaimed experts and many of us in the field are only just recently actually seeing them. There are so many misconceptions about owls that lead to them being abused and traumatized by being treated by something they aren’t.
In many ways, an owl is very much a wise animal because they devote all their time to silently observing. What people mistake as the bird simply “zoning out” is actually the bird analyzing everything it’s hearing and seeing. They don’t need to look around to observe, their ears see even more than their very keen eyes. They make silent note of everything you do in their presence, and if you misstep and cross them, they will remember it.
Owls may not have a “complex” language humans can quantify, and they may not use tools, but they also don’t need to. These should not be the end all be all of how we measure intelligence in animals. In solitary animals, there is no push for them to develop a language, and in animals as well adapted as an owl, there is no push to learn to use tools. They have every tool they need attached to their bodies as is.
Their way of thinking is alien to humans, as we are diurnal animals which require socialization to survive, but this in no way means they are not intelligent. They are simply different. An owl is very smart at being an owl after all.
Short video of a red-winged blackbird making a ruckus bc I was too close to his babies in his opinion
[Video description: A male Red-winged Blackbird sits on the high branch of a tree. He is somewhat silhouetted against a grey sky. He is singing a loud but melodious song. In the background, can be heard the chirps of Common Grackles and also traffic noise. End Description]
Christian Cooper, the bird-watching Black man who was the target of false accusations during an encounter in New York City’s Central Park in 2020, has a new TV show airing on National Geographic.
The channel announced this week that Cooper, a lifelong bird-watcher, will host a series called Extraordinary Birder. In the series, Cooper will take viewers into the “wild, wonderful and unpredictable world of birds,” according to National Geographic.
