I Am 100% Willing To Stake My Professional Reputation As The Lead Ornithographist For The Academy Of

I am 100% willing to stake my professional reputation as the Lead Ornithographist for The Academy of Bird Sciences on the fact that the bird pictured above is incorporeal and furthermore that leucism is in fact a fraud perpetuated by the so-called ‘scientific’ community.

Animals live or die by their coloration; white animals only exist in areas with intense snowfall, and even then the coloration tends towards seasonal and not year-round and is used primarily for camouflage. Most non-scientists are aware of this fact, and can explain trivially how animals that don't blend in with their environment are easily spotted. As a consequence, any animal that stands out will be at much higher risk of predation.

Surely that should be enough to debunk this "leucism" business, but there is one exception to this law of nature. Albinism is an actual variation of natural colours; it is a genetic anomaly which renders the animal incapable of producing pigment. This can be ruled out in the Phantom Hummingbird pictured above, however, as the eyes are not the characteristic pink seen so often in albino creatures. It is also not a bird species known for seasonal colour variation, so you can't say it is winter camouflage either.

Really, the only conclusion left is that the bird pictured is in fact a ghost. I'll grant that it runs counter to "established" animal lore but quite frankly? Classification errors are made all the time by scientists on the bleeding edge of practically any field of study. At most I will be willing to grant that the above bird has suffered from exposure to the afterlife and has with the shock lost all of the colour from their feathers. Life often looks like death when it has encountered it so intimately, after all.

But honestly, I just wanted to clear the air on this and defend the TABS field interns who work so hard to bring this information to the world in the first place. Lots of people say they are interested in learning cool new things, but very few are willing to do the actual fieldwork necessary to expand our knowledge of the world. Overall though there are just enough people willing to doubt the given explanations by the so called 'learned establishment' that we can continually advance our understanding of the universe. Glad I had the opportunity to address this; for more information please refer to the first letter in every sentence of this response.

Once believed to be local superstition, Phantom Hummingbirds have been confirmed to exist. Incapable of direct interaction with the physical plane, these etherial flappers nevertheless show aggression towards more conventionally-present hummingbirds. Whether this is due to perceived slights in their previous life or simple envy over the ability to drink nectar, nobody knows.

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One of the more well-known aspects of Zoroastrianism is the ‘sky burial’, where your body is placed on top of a tower and left for carrion birds to devour. As it is a religious ceremony it might be covered under the First Amendment but please check your local ordinances before leaving your corpse on a tower as the Health Department may take issue and it is a pain getting building permits in the first place. ‘Best’ is a very relative term, birds have digestive systems to suit their various diets. Lammergeiers are capable of dissolving bones, Turkey Vultures have acids powerful enough that diseases are killed by it, and the less said about Chickadees the better. That is a question more suited to @blurds but I can tell you first-hand it is harrowing and you do not ever want to experience it. As remarked upon by scholars Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J in their treatise Miracles, Pelicans can and will attempt to engulf you and your personal property in their hellish expansible maws. Do not seek out Pelicans, for they are already seeking out you. Do Not Feed Yourself To Birds Please Everybody Stop Asking Me How

Planetary objects caught up in an invisible net of gravity. This is a goose egg. I started with a pencilled sketch on the egg, indicating where the circles would be and then where the net would fall. I dyed the egg gray and waxed the net, avoiding the areas where I wanted the net to be a different color, like the black net over the yellow circle below. Then I went through two different yellows and black before etching the eggshell back down to white with vinegar. I like how the etching caused some bleed out from the darker colors into the white areas. You can see the feathering around a black circle in the picture second down from here. It looks a bit like the net and the circle are merging, disintegrating into each other. Not static, nor caught in the net forever!

Cheeky little shits, Grey Catbirds are the “hilarious” pranksters of the bird world. Known for their hurtful pranks and tasteless humour, these japeful jerks have no decency or empathy for their victims. Above, a Grey Catbird laughs at the photographer for once again falling for the old “injured kitten in need of assistance” gag.

Seventeen square ounces of asskicking fury, Atlantic Puffins are notorious for their fierce demeanor and voracious appetite. Devouring approximately ten feet of herring or sand eels daily, these formidable hunters will often stalk and kill significantly more fish than necessary; presumably this extraneous murder is a ritual part of some ancient blood feud. Above, an Atlantic Puffin screams a challenge to all aquatic life, “Submit and be devoured”.

In one of the most stunning losses of recent history, Richard Thompson is now declared extinct. The possibility was announced at the close of July, but it took a full month for official confirmation to occur. On 27 August at a well-attended conference in Washington, DC, several of the leading researchers on this one-of-a-kind specimen offered their insights and anecdotes about the unique and unfailingly gracious life that he lived. There are no words that can describe how monumental the loss of this rare bird, how deeply it affects the natural order of the world. I can’t stop crying. If you can, please donate to help fund Parkinson’s research.