Eastern Towhees Are Still Screaming. We Dont Know Why. Please, If Anybody Has Any Leads Send Them To

Eastern Towhees are still screaming. We don’t know why. Please, if anybody has any leads send them to The Academy of Bird Sciences. We’re desperate and also in need of earplugs.

Terrified of heights, Skimmers have produced a rather novel adaptation. Rather than follow the Kiwifruit bird’s example and become flightless, they evolved a significantly protruding lower beak to keep in constant contact with the ground or water. Sadly this anatomical anomaly eventually erodes away, invariably causing a high-speed demise when the bird switches to the upper beak and can no longer look where it is flying.

Do birds make New Years resolutions?

On the one hand I can’t say they don’t make resolutions because there are a few wild species that do. On the other hand most honestly don’t care about self-empowerment/improvement in the same way humans do. For most birds in the wild, dodging human-introduced murderbeasts and hatching some eggs is pretty much the best they can expect in any given year.This changes though when a bird is routinely in contact with humans. For example, Buck Buck of @cluckyeschickens fame generally resolves to completely and utterly destroy the Sphere of Rage whenever it starts to turn. Birds living in pet stores usually resolve to attempt escape whenever given the chance, and ducks/geese/pigeons resolve to poop everywhere they possibly can that would be inconvenient to passersby while mooching any and all food.

Perhaps most concerning of all however is the human-created Canada Goose. They have universally resolved to bring back the Harper Regime, and come summer we might see a bloodbath as they migrate back to Canada in order to carry out this dastardly plot.

beware

You may remember hearing about caterpillars tricking predators by mimicking more toxic caterpillars, but biologists in South America have discovered something amazing: a caterpillar that mimics a baby bird. This allows them to ‘flip the script’ and rather than worry about being eaten, they are fed regularly by the Cinereous Mourner whose nests they parasitize.

Once cheered as a step forward for safety, the efficacy in reducing fatalities of the Red-Billed Oxpecker’s ‘hands-free’ operational mode is now being called into question. One recent study has indicated that the simple presence of an Oxpecker while browsing increases chances of predation by upwards of thirty percent! To their credit, Oxpecker manufacturers admit that one should not use any bird that may lead to distraction while performing dangerous activities like being a prey animal in the wilds of South Africa.

Owls have a well-deserved reputation for wisdom, but even greater is their capacity to teach. Above, a Little Owl supervises a dog studying for an upcoming German vocabulary test.