#Corvid life

[faironeforest]

It’s really not that interesting of a story…

Young Child Me: “Pretty blue rock!”

Some Adult™️: “That’s a lapis lazuli. It’s from Afghanistan.”

YCM: *not knowing what any of the larger words mean* “Cool!”

And I took it home (presumably my parents paid for it) and I added it to my rock collection with a little typewritten label.

[sd-card]

Fellas I now have a 18 person set of Weatherly platinum dipped edge plate and tea set, I am now poor...

[misogynist-lesbian]

When someone wrongs you, hold the grudge FOREVER.

Travel together with all your best friends and look out for each other.

Puzzles and games are the shit. Go at them with gusto, especially if you get a treat after!

Honor your dead. Hold vigils for the fallen.

Never be afraid to follow a pack of wolves. Wolves are awesome, and sometimes they'll leave you cool shit.

[hec-chan]

I'm a huge collector

[wine-porn]

Cap California

The Sierra Foothills makes a lot of wine–over several sprawling counties–and although I hate the term *world class* applied nonchalantly to various burgeoning regions by people typically having little experience in what it truly means, places like the eastern foothills of California are rife with wine falling far short of that vague qualifier. The Sierra Foothills makes a lot of wine: very little…

[clevercorvidae]

life series tangotek? :D

Absolutely seething, preparing for revenge

Hey sorry this took like multiple days. I originally just wanted to doodle hermits and stuff but then i started drawing him and was enthralled

[reasonsforhope]

Humans are so cute. They think they can outsmart birds. They place nasty metal spikes on rooftops and ledges to prevent birds from nesting there.

It’s a classic human trick known in urban design as “evil architecture”: designing a place in a way that’s meant to deter others. Think of the city benches you see segmented by bars to stop homeless people sleeping there.

But birds are genius rebels. Not only are they undeterred by evil architecture, they actually use it to their advantage, according to a new Dutch study published in the journal Deinsea.

Crows and magpies, it turns out, are learning to rip strips of anti-bird spikes off of buildings and use them to build their nests. It’s an incredible addition to the growing body of evidence about the intelligence of birds, so wrongly maligned as stupid that “bird-brained” is still commonly used as an insult...

Magpies also use anti-bird spikes for their nests. In 2021, a hospital patient in Antwerp, Belgium, looked out the window and noticed a huge magpie’s nest in a tree in the courtyard. Biologist Auke-Florian Hiemstra of Leiden-based Naturalis Biodiversity Center, one of the study’s authors, went to collect the nest and found that it was made out of 50 meters of anti-bird strips, containing no fewer than 1,500 metal spikes.

Hiemstra describes the magpie nest as “an impregnable fortress.”

Pictured: A huge magpie nest made out of 1,500 metal spikes.

Magpies are known to build roofs over their nests to prevent other birds from stealing their eggs and young. Usually, they scrounge around in nature for thorny plants or spiky branches to form the roof. But city birds don’t need to search for the perfect branch — they can just use the anti-bird spikes that humans have so kindly put at their disposal.

“The magpies appear to be using the pins exactly the same way we do: to keep other birds away from their nest,” Hiemstra said.

Another urban magpie nest, this one from Scotland, really shows off the roof-building tactic:

Pictured: A nest from Scotland shows how urban magpies are using anti-bird spikes to construct a roof meant to protect their young and eggs from predators.

Birds had already been spotted using upward-pointing anti-bird spikes as foundations for nests. In 2016, the so-called Parkdale Pigeon became Twitter-famous for refusing to give up when humans removed her first nest and installed spikes on her chosen nesting site, the top of an LCD monitor on a subway platform in Melbourne. The avian architect rebelled and built an even better home there, using the spikes as a foundation to hold her nest more securely in place.

...Hiemstra’s study is the first to show that birds, adapting to city life, are learning to seek out and use our anti-bird spikes as their nesting material. Pretty badass, right?

The genius of birds — and other animals we underestimate

It’s a well-established fact that many bird species are highly intelligent. Members of the corvid family, which includes crows and magpies, are especially renowned for their smarts. Crows can solve complex puzzles, while magpies can pass the “mirror test” — the classic test that scientists use to determine if a species is self-aware.

Studies show that some birds have evolved cognitive skills similar to our own: They have amazing memories, remembering for months the thousands of different hiding places where they’ve stashed seeds, and they use their own experiences to predict the behavior of other birds, suggesting they’ve got some theory of mind.

And, as author Jennifer Ackerman details in The Genius of Birds, birds are brilliant at using tools. Black palm cockatoos use twigs as drumsticks, tapping out a beat on a tree trunk to get a female’s attention. Jays use sticks as spears to attack other birds...

Birds have also been known to use human tools to their advantage. When carrion crows want to crack a walnut, for example, they position the nut on a busy road, wait for a passing car to crush the shell, then swoop down to collect the nut and eat it. This behavior has been recorded several times in Japanese crows.

But what’s unique about Hiemstra’s study is that it shows birds using human tools, specifically designed to thwart birds’ plans, in order to thwart our plans instead. We humans try to keep birds away with spikes, and the birds — ingenious rebels that they are — retort: Thanks, humans!

-via Vox, July 26, 2023

[deadgodjess]

Magpies: Do crime because they know nothing else.

Crows: Will look for non-crime methods but will fallback on crime if that fails.

Ravens: Choose crime on purpose.

[kavohh707]

I wanted to posted some of the photos of birds that didn't work out and here I start with birds flying of the moment you release the shutter. In this case I am left with crow feet and a bit of the crow tail and both are blurry.

[chaoticdesertdweller]

[the-crow-in-the-blooming-tree]

Young magpie stumbling

[egginfroggin]

*yeets this and runs*

My hand regrets my decision to try for more realistic wings, frankly

Transcriptions:

Mabel Pines - Steller's Jay

Dipper Pines - Blue Jay

fledglings

can't quite fly yet

wing's aren't adult-sized yet

Dipper often forgets to preen

Mabel likes to put glitter in her wings (and Dipper's, when possible)

Dipper collects his primaries to make quill pens

Mabel collects their feathers for crafting

Yeah so I'm just gonna drop this here and uhhhhh run, thanks for checking this, and I hope you have a good day

(program: krita; time taken: about 1 hr 45 minutes)

[breelandwalker]

Tfw your ADHD procrastination sidequest actually leads to learning a skill you need for another project....

Anyway, I know how to rhinestone stuff now and my masquerade look is gonna be SICK.

[onestellarghost]

The day before my high school graduation ceremony a juvenile steller's jay hit my window and died before I could climb outside to hold him. I buried his body in the backyard but when I dug him back up a year later to honor his bones there was nothing left. Rest easy little guy.

[critter-catcher]

This crow stopped by on a rainy day! The food dish did get a bit flooded, but this fella didn't seem to mind and decided to drink out of that and then go bobbing for apples!

[paddysnuffles]

I got a crow wood statue from my mom's boyfriend for Christmas

It will now keep my mom's seagull statue (that I got her last year for Christmas) company.

I named mine Alan after Edgar Alan Poe.