starlit-chaos-witch:

todaysbird:

the shining flycatcher is a small songbird found in northern australia. like their name implies, they feed primarily on small insects caught in flight. males are known for their distinct iridescent blue plumage. females are a rich chestnut color, with a stark white underside. they prefer subtropical & tropical forest habitats.

feather-bone:

The Emperor(s)

[ID: an illustration of a blue jay with a crown - it holds a stick like a wand in its beak and stands on the horn of a ram. End.]

feather-bone:

[ID: an illustration of a gila woodpecker on a blooming saguaro cactus against a red-orange background. five woodpecker feathers are above the bird’s head, arranged like a halo. End.]

Been doing a lot of desert creatures this week!

raptorcivilization:

raptorcivilization:

In completely unrelated news I’m tired of celebrity culture. I’m sick of hearing the hot takes on the Oscars. After an initial laugh the night of I do not care. I don’t want to see the James Corden or the SNl takes on it. Why are we still talking about all this shit and not the hooded pitohui

Not only is this one of a handful of species of poisonous birds, but the poison in its feathers and skin is structurally identical to those of poison dart frogs

rfskia:

Starling 💫

swallowtailed:

:

c-u-r-s-e-d-i-m-a-g-e-s:

Rating: Wild

I was tagged to find out what is happening. This is just an overenthusiastic wild baby being fed by a parent that didn’t likely expect to be met quite so readily at the door.

[id: photo of a Tree Swallow, a small bird with a blue back and white belly, clinging to the front of a nest box, as a baby swallow sticks its head out of the box to be fed and engulfs its parent’s entire face in its mouth. /end id]

rose-of-pollux:

decadent-hag:

Definitely one of the Top Images of all time I gotta say

As someone who has been following the Cal Falcons all season, this has been one heck of a story.  The TL;DR is that Grinnell, the longtime mate of Annie, the female, died after the second egg was laid, but a new male, Alden, stepped in and became Annie’s mate, and they had a third egg.  Only two of the eggs hatched–the Cal Falcons team believes that it was the second egg that did not hatch, meaning that Alden is most likely raising his chick, plus one of Grinnell’s (they’ll confirm it with DNA testing later).

Alden is believed to be much younger and inexperienced than Grinnell and Annie and… it shows.

..He is trying so hard to Dad. 

A for effort, Alden.

dzamie:

maid-of-timey-wimey:

keynes-fetlife-mutual:

toasthaste:

ghostpalmtechnique:

ghostpalmtechnique:

This morning I watched a blue heron fly majestically into the pond across the street, only to be immediately shown by an irate goose that pecking order is not necessarily proportional to wingspan.

This is an interesting article, btw:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/11/28/bird-feeder-pecking-order/

www.washingtonpost.com

Miller, Greig and their collaborators fed the first wave of that data into algorithms to condense a web of relationships into a simple rank. That rank not only reflects the relationship of frequent combatant pairs such as the house sparrow and the blue jay, but also accurately predicts which bird will dominate when two distant species meet for the first time.

oh my god yes this is good. get a bunch of little old ladies who love to sit and watch the bird feeder to send in their observations any time the birds scuffle and use those absolute REAMS of data to literally make a Bird Tier List. this rules. they even found some rock-paper-scissors setups between specific bird species…

also the very last line knocked the wind outta me

@birdblogwhichisforbirds

Is there any plan to do this for mammals? This morning in our yard we saw a woodchuck retreat from a rabbit, who was then in turn chased off by an angry chipmunk.

Here’s the bird tier list, by the way:

ALT

with an image ID, too, because I like typing bird names