Bird Brain Giveaway!

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.

Ghost Crabs are (as their name suggests) the spirits of murdered crabs bent on revenge. Given physical form by voluminous levels of hatred, these belligerent Brachyura spend every waking moment of their new lives hunting down those who wronged them. Curiously, the most common cause of this hellbent vengeance is “disrespectful treatment of earthly remains” and not “being murdered” so one would be well-advised to avoid crab feasts.

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i am having A Time mentally so no bird today but here have this link that’s been living in an open tab of my browser for the past month also have a video from their youtube channel, they’ve been helping me find a focus when everything gets too loud to bear. its a good channel, basically a cooking show using 18th century techniques and recipes with a history lesson for context.

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.

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.