I Am Super Stoked About This!!! This Is The First I Think Actual Factual Non-commissioned Art Inspired

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​.

Patreon rewards are gonna be a bit fancier from now on...

First described by famously colourblind zoologist Carl Linnaeus, the Grey Phalarope can be distinguished from other Phalaropes by their rusty grey feathers and banana-grey beak with a black tip. With a diet consisting of equally-drab insects and small crustaceans, these wholly unremarkable birds spend their lives blending in with their surroundings.

It physically pains me to hide the work I commissioned from @kidclampdown for The Project. I was sent multiple progress shots throughout and somehow the end result is more beautiful and richly-coloured than I could have possibly anticipated. If you’ve got an ounce of sense in you and some pocket change (seriously, d.w. criminally undercharges for incredible work) then you should absolutely get a piece of art custom-made for you.

The White-crested Antbird is unequivocally the bird most capable of saving the world. These unassuming birds live primarily in South America, where they psychically dominate ant colonies for use as ‘beaters’, ordering a massive column to sweep through the undergrowth flushing out more substantial prey. How these birds can re-task the fearless formicans to save the world will be explored in the next entry, which will also answer a very related question.

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.