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:

List of birds, several of them illustrated, ordered from most to least dominant: American crow, Common grackle, Red-bellied woodpecker, European starling, Blue jay, American robin, Red-winged blackbird, Hairy woodpecker, Mourning dove, Brown-headed cowbird, Northern cardinal, Song sparrow, Downy woodpecker, House sparrow, White-breasted nuthatch, White-throated sparrow, Carolina wren, Tufted titmouse, House finch, Red-breasted nuthatch, Dark-eyed junco, Purple finch, American goldfinch, Black-capped chickadee, Carolina chickadeeALT

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