maverick-ornithography - Dispatches from The Academy of Bird Sciences
Dispatches from The Academy of Bird Sciences

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Crows Do Occasionally Mourn And Hold Funerals, But The Mechanism For It Is Incredibly Convoluted.Much

Crows Do Occasionally Mourn And Hold Funerals, But The Mechanism For It Is Incredibly Convoluted.Much
Crows Do Occasionally Mourn And Hold Funerals, But The Mechanism For It Is Incredibly Convoluted.Much

Crows do occasionally mourn and hold funerals, but the mechanism for it is incredibly convoluted. Much like the Victorian Crowned Pigeon, Crows are often vessels for reincarnation. Unlike VCPIs, individual crows hold one complete soul rather than a fragment spread across the entire species. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be too much of an issue as a soul loses most of it’s knowledge when it enters a new body for the next round of corporeal existence. However, a quirk of evolution has made the being of Crow largely compatible with the essence of a human. There are of course some ‘translation errors’ but by and large the general personality of the Ātman remains intact when going from Human 🡢 Crow. In rare cases this can include learned rituals and basic knowledge of the world gained in their previous incarnation. So, when the right essence with the right experience (e.g. a funeral director) slots into a particularly compatible crow, knowledge of funerary customs and a general familiarity with the Kübler-Ross model can in fact be retained. When this particularly unusual reincarnation integrates with the local aggravated assault of crows, this knowledge can be shared and thus comes the phenomenon of crow funerals.

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More Posts from Maverick-ornithography

Is it a Snag with faded warning ribbon? I’m not in forestry but from what I understand sometimes dead/dying trees are purposefully left standing so as to provide habitat while they decay.

Every time I pass this tree I think, “This is it. This is the day.”

Any forestry people out there, why do you tie the ribbons around the trees but never cut them down? 

Intensely Territorial, Marmots Rival Killdeer In Terrifyingly Murderous Defense Of Their Homes. Luckily

Intensely territorial, Marmots rival Killdeer in terrifyingly murderous defense of their homes. Luckily for most humans these savage Sciurids tend to live in mountains, so lethal encounters are quite rare. That said if you are ever hiking you should avoid rocky areas as they are prime real estate for Marmot dens.

This post was sponsored by intensely kind tumblr user @naked-bee in return for feeding me several times when I was in New York. If you are interested in diverting the focus of research here at The Academy of Bird Sciences for paltry sums of money, become a patron on Patreon!


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First revealed as a hoax perpetrated by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, Great Bitterns continue to be reported by novice birdwatchers an astonishing two and a half centuries later. This peculiar endurance is in large part due to veteran birders building replicas out of feathers, discarded beaks, and particularly hostile rocks to fool credulous newbies. Unfortunately for prank-hearted birding mentors, this practice is dying out as the newest generation of birdwatchers can trivially fact-check their existence through the use of internet-connected pocket telephones.

This entry was sponsored by a Patreon supporter! If you would like to help direct research here at The Academy of Bird Sciences, become a patron!


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Can you please elaborate on this bird religion? And is it open or closed to new converts?

Look, I appreciate your interest in other cultures and such as like but there are hundreds upon hundreds of different religious schools of thought when it comes to birds. I’ve addressed this before, so if you’re interested in some examples go ahead and look there, but I don’t feel like that’s going to satisfy you because it sounds more like you’re wanting to convert to a specific religion that worships birds rather than a religion that birds adhere to.I get it, really I do. I have a bunch of other people clogging up my inbox peddling some new religion worshiping anything from a specific family of birds all the way up to worshiping the concept of birds themselves, and like that’s fine and all but they should absolutely not be confused with actual factual bird religions. Heck, just the other day somebody tried to sell me on a new Heron-based religion which I’ve been pointedly ignoring because there’s already one that’s been going for several dozen million years. I’m actually going to be talking about that next week (or at least the main god of it) since that’s one of the ones I try and keep right by because it allows unprecedented access to knowledge that is generally kept from allofamilials.If it turns out I’ve got you sussed wrong and you’re really trying to get your foot in the door with an as-practiced-by-birds religion then next week’s going to be something to keep an eye on, as I’ll be profiling the three major gods I pay fealty to. I’ll also list which birds tend to be in their flock so you can go out and make your own contacts, but please understand I am really putting my head on the chopping block here! Don’t show up at your local gathering like you know what you’re talking about if you do try and join up, because I will absolutely catch flak from it. Be respectful, don’t argue, listen carefully, and don’t mess this up for me.


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