Where Is The Little Facebook Button On Your Posts So I Can Share Your Words Of Wisdom With The Aviary

Where is the little Facebook button on your posts so I can share your words of wisdom with the aviary masses??

If you are reading on Birdscience.org instead of through the Tumblr dashboard, you should see three dots at the bottom of every entry. Click on them, and it should show a bunch of ways to share the post across a variety of platforms. Here, have an informative .gif specially made just for you!

Giveaway has ended! 

Thank you to everybody (especially @blurds, @birdycreatures, and @speciesofleastconcern) who helped boost visibility, my friend was able to clear out their lab freezer.

If you are one of the people who liked/reblogged because you thought this was a surrealist shitpost, you should really get to know experimental animal researchers since this is like, regular day stuff. Seriously, when I crashed ICVM 2016 there was an actual for-real research presentation where methodology involved strapping heavy backpacks to live surly peacocks during mating season and nobody considered this at all unusual. (incidentally the presentation immediately after had a severed emu foot hooked up to artificial tendons to test moment arms of emu toes so yeah shit gets weird. and tbh it’s not just lab stuff that gets bizarre, check out #fieldworkfails or #fieldworkscares for how anomalous the world becomes on the edges of new knowledge)

Science is weird and full of the uncanny and I wholeheartedly encourage people to get to know biological scientists; the stories you’ll get out of that friendship are just incredible. Speaking of, if you get a chance you should ply Dr. Frank Fish with good food, drinks, and pleasant company because he’ll tell you all sorts of neat stuff in return.

Bird brain giveaway!

(image source)

Well, not exactly. 

Someone who isn’t me happens to have a surplus of Western Scrub Jay brain sections (40um), and is looking for a person or persons who could make use of them. They are leftovers from completely legitimate research testing how they reacted to dead conspecifics, predators, and alarm calls. Some are male, some are female, some were parasitized (body cavity worms) others were clean, some were aggressive, some were not; there is a good variety is what I assume my friend is saying. Caveats: the tissue samples have been floating in cryoprotectant for the past five years at -20C, so they may not even be viable and need testing to see if they can be stained. My friend (who I must reiterate is not me) is unable to afford such testing so think of this as a blind box situation where you might not get what you want. If the samples do end up useful then coauthorship is expected. Also, to further drive home the point that I am just relaying this information and do not personally have an astonishing variety of preserved neural tissue in my freezer, the samples are in Australia. So if you are an actual scientist who could make use of such a thing please contact me at [email protected] with the subject line of “i assure you i am not a bird zombie” and I will pass along your information. If you aren’t an actual scientist but do have scientist friends, please help out this completely separate person from myself and reblog this post.

Serious inquiries ONLY.

Garrulous Blue Herons are masters of ambush chats and long-term conversational tactics. Capable of holding one-sided conversations for an astonishing eight hours or more, these horribly dull herons never quite seem to realise how restless or uninterested their conversational partner is. Experts in the field of Ornithobehaviourology believe this may be a holdover from their ancestors, who are thought to have hunted by literally boring their prey to death.

Guerrillous Blue Herons are masters of ambush strikes and long-term area denial tactics. While they are often significantly outclassed and outnumbered, their scouting brilliance and dagger-sharp beaks ensure they are never caught unarmed or unawares. Curiously, despite being deadly melee combatants we’ve seen fewer reports than a decade ago of GBHE-caused fatalities in recent border skirmishes. Whether this is due to a political shift (so as to appear more sympathetic to outsiders) or simply lulling their enemies into a false sense of security, only time will tell.

I need some help. My son was recently playing by a pond when a heron came out of nowhere and swallowed him whole right before my eyes. I live in Florida and I'm wondering what kind of heron it was. I also what to know if there is any way that my son might still be alive. If not, how can I find his remains? Please answer this as soon as possible.

Okay as a general preface here for all of my readers: Please do not raise a child in Florida. Something will eat them, eventually. It is the Way of Florida.

As to the meat of the question, there are three main birds in Florida which possess the child-devouring capabilities you mention: the Gluttonous Blue Heron, the Gator-commanding Blue Heron, or some variety of Pelican. Here are some super-quick writeups of how your situation may have gone down; whichever sounds closest is probably your culprit.

Gluttonous Blue Heron (which I have written about before) would most likely approach the child if he was eating candy or some other food, and devour him along with the tasty morsel. If you are quick, you’ll be able to find his remains inside the remains of the GBHE as they often die of burst stomachs. (image source)

Gator-commanding Blue Herons don’t usually commit deeds of child devourment, instead using their contubernium of alligators to do the actual snatching; this is what happened in the rather famous Disney World Incident. If this is the case, what is left of the child will be inside up to nine archosaurs so good luck with that. (image source)

Pelicans would be the most likely to simply saunter up and engulf the child, but you said heron so I am least confident on this bird being the culprit. That said, Brown Pelicans are masters of the cosmetic arts so you may have seen one in disguise. Don’t bother trying to find the body if this is the case, as you will be eaten too. (image source)

I am super stoked about this!!! This is the first I think actual factual non-commissioned art inspired by my work here at The Academy of Bird Sciences.

HOWEVER

(she says, pedantically)

It appears you’ve accidentally drawn a Gorgeted Blue Heron instead! The giveaway was the fact that it’s holding a sword; Gross Blue Herons use short clubs or their own bodies because it makes their racially-targeted violence more ‘personal’. Gorgeted Blue Herons on the other hand are all about martial appearances, cleaving to more ‘elegant’ instruments of warfare.

Don’t feel too bad about this sort of misidentification! It happens all the time among field interns, no doubt in part because the Alpha codes all resolve down to GBHE.

Night shift doodle! How better to represent the Gross Blue Heron than with the V of Swords. He’ll take everything you have and doesn’t even feel a little sorry. Inspired by @maverick-ornithography​.