Philosophy

Tuesday, May 25, 2021

Jungle Babbler


Jungle Babbler (Turdoides striata)




 

 





Jungle Babbler 

Jungle Babbler is a new kind of bird arrived and nesting in aurangabad.

The jungle babbler (Argya striata) is a member of the family Leiothrichidae found in the Indian subcontinent. They are gregarious birds that forage in small groups of six to ten birds, a habit that has given them the popular name of "Seven Sisters" in urban Northern India, and Saath bhai (seven brothers) in Bengali, with cognates in other regional languages which also mean "seven brothers". en.wikipedia.org  




Wednesday, April 24, 2019

Information Overload is the Bane of my Life


My daily struggle is to understand what is important, to my situation, in the constant barrage of information on the Internet.  


What can and should be ignored?  

Is my purpose to seek distraction, novelty and entertainment? 

Or is the goal and purpose to my Net Surfing to gain valuable knowledge?  

What do I hope to accomplish?



“There are things that attract human attention, and there is often a huge gap between what is important and what is attractive and interesting."

Yuval Noah Harari   

  

And Donald Trump has not helped make being informed easy with all his mixed messages.


“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”

― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Thursday, January 12, 2017

Birds Babbling????

Birds make noises to communicate with each other, and we can learn to understand what they are “talking” about.  Patience and observation are really all it takes, even though a field guide will come in handy.  You don’t have to identify birds in order to understand their voices.   As you get to know the birds around you, you will be able to intuit their language, the same way you can tell when a close friend is happy or upset just from how that person answers the phone.

You might not need to know the names of the birds, but you should know something about their habits in order to understand their voices.  The birds with the most to say about other animals traveling on the ground are the birds that live on the ground.  A tiny warbler or chickadee, up in the treetops, might not care if a coyote is traveling underneath it, but a song sparrow will certainly notice when a coyote is passing through.

The predator is traveling right through the sparrow’s home in the thicket!  The general rule is that small brown birds that live near the ground will tell you the most.  There are a lot of birds out there, but don’t start out by trying to learn them all.  The perching birds, known as the passerines, have the most reliable voices.  These are birds like sparrows, wrens, or blackbirds.  In contrast, woodpeckers, herons, ducks, or hawks are not passerines.

Bird Language Basics

Listening to birds allows us to become aware of animal activity, to sneak up on wildlife or unsuspecting friends, and to enhance our senses.  In my year at Wilderness Awareness School’s Residential Program, in Duvall, Washington, I explored the school’s teachings about birds and awareness.  I’ll share some of bird language basics with you.  Soon, you’ll be able to tell when a hawk is about to fly out of the trees or when a deer is sneaking away from you.

What is bird language?

Birds make noises to communicate with each other, and we can learn to understand what they are “talking” about.  Patience and observation are really all it takes, even though a field guide will come in handy.  You don’t have to identify birds in order to understand their voices.   As you get to know the birds around you, you will be able to intuit their language, the same way you can tell when a close friend is happy or upset just from how that person answers the phone.

You might not need to know the names of the birds, but you should know something about their habits in order to understand their voices.  The birds with the most to say about other animals traveling on the ground are the birds that live on the ground.  A tiny warbler or chickadee, up in the treetops, might not care if a coyote is traveling underneath it, but a song sparrow will certainly notice when a coyote is passing through.

The predator is traveling right through the sparrow’s home in the thicket!  The general rule is that small brown birds that live near the ground will tell you the most.  There are a lot of birds out there, but don’t start out by trying to learn them all.  The perching birds, known as the passerines, have the most reliable voices.  These are birds like sparrows, wrens, or blackbirds.  In contrast, woodpeckers, herons, ducks, or hawks are not passerines.

Here’s the short list of helpful birds:

American robin (Turdus migratorius), song sparrow (Melospiza melodia), dark-eyed junco (Junco hyemalis), a local wren, and a local towhee.  If any of these birds doesn’t live near you, follow the general rule about finding perching birds that forage on the ground.  The first owl or house cat that ventures into your backyard will show you the birds to pay attention to.

You will have to gauge the “trustworthiness” of your birds.  The species above are reliable, but jays or crows, in the corvid family, can lead you astray with their seemingly random squawking.  I snuck up on a yelling jay family, only to hear them shut up completely when they caught sight of me.  I still think they were pulling my leg.

Despite their unpredictability, you can use crows and jays to find owls and hawks.  Corvids seem to have a special dislike for these predators, so a stationary mob of noisy crows might indicate a raptor.
When you have found your five reliable ground-feeding passerines, you can start to distinguish the vocalizations they use in different situations.  It’s the same concept as being able to tell the difference between someone yelling for help and someone singing.

Here are the five basic “voices” that birds use, as Jon Young outlines in his “Language of the Birds” cassette.  Most bird noises will fall into these categories.  The first four are baseline, or business-as-usual voices, and the last one is about alarm.

Song is the best-known noise that birds make.  Male birds sing a lot in the spring, and sometimes all year round.  If a bird is relaxed and safe enough to be singing, there probably aren’t any predators nearby.  The song is the vocalization usually heard on bird identification tapes, and you may see the bird singing from an exposed perch.

Companion calling is the second voice of the birds.  These are the sounds that birds make to keep track of their flock mates or “spouses.”  Usually it’s a dialogue of soft chips or tweets.  Translated into human speech, it might be akin to the calm murmur of voices in a restaurant.  The rhythm is conversational and regular.  You might see a pair of towhees flicking their tails periodically as a visual signal to each other, or a flock of robins moving in unison, making soft whistles.

The third voice is juvenile begging, and it’s usually heard in the springtime when baby birds have turned into hungry teenagers.  The parents feed them, because if they don’t shut these babies up, a predator will hear them.  While the young bird’s cries may sound strangled and horrible, that’s just the sound of another juicy morsel being shoved down the hatch.  Most baby birds flutter their wings and open their beaks wide as they plead for food.  The repetitive whining may be obnoxious, but don’t mistake it for distress.

The fourth voice, aggression, also sounds gruesome but it does not indicate a predator in the area.  You might have observed two male robins or mockingbirds staking their claims to opposite sides of the yard.  There is plenty of flapping and squawking, but other birds don’t pay attention.  Sometimes female birds will help their mates defend territory, so this behavior isn’t confined to males.

We’re about to hear the fifth voice, alarm.  Look at the lawn, the park, the forest, or the field where all the birds are singing and feeding. That is baseline.  Now a hawk flies over, a jogger comes through, or a bobcat creeps from behind a bush.  The birds cross from comfort into distress, and you will notice behavior that is not like their relaxed feeding or preening.  The actual noise the bird makes may not be very different from its companion call, but the emotion behind it will feel agitated rather than calm.

A song sparrow might be up out of its thicket, chipping nervously.  Maybe a flock of robins will squeal and dive for cover, telling you that a sharp-shinned hawk is on the prowl.  Certain behaviors, like wiping the bill on a branch, can also signal agitation.  Recognizing baseline is essential for being able to recognize alarm.

Different animals and events will cause different alarm sequences, so it can be difficult to determine what each bird is actually responding to.  Your common sense is the best guide for deciphering the birds’ reactions.  For instance, a predator on the ground will cause birds to move up farther than that predator can jump, while an aerial predator like a hawk will cause the birds to dive down into cover.

With practice, and knowledge of your local wildlife, bird language will indicate what kind of predator is causing the disturbance.  Think of how each kind of animal moves.  A bobcat or housecat that slinks along will collect a little following of alarmed birds.  The sound of the alarms will travel slowly through the forest as some birds join in and others leave as the cat moves through their territories.  A fast-moving dog or coyote will cause birds to “popcorn” up, just a few birds at a time popping up and alarming.  A perched owl or hawk will draw a mob of calling birds that stay in one place.  A bird-eating hawk, like the sharp-shinned, Cooper’s or goshawk, will cause a dramatic duck-and-cover disappearing act.

Interestingly, bird responses to humans seem to vary.  If you are using bird language to detect approaching humans, you must factor in the habitat and the attitude of the person.  Are you in a park where the birds are used to people?  Is the person stomping along in a bad mood, or strolling without a care in the world?

I tried to move quietly and sneakily out to my bird watching spot, only to hear towhees and robins make unflattering comments about me—“Who is this person sneaking around here?”  Now I stroll in whistling a tune, and the birds seem more relaxed.  After all, I am exhibiting baseline behavior.

It’s not uncommon for birds to be quiet around feeding deer, but then start to alarm when the deer begins sneaking away.  Perhaps the deer is sneaking away from you as you are coming down the trail, so listen for these peripheral or secondary bird alarms.  The more you can expand your hearing and awareness, the more you will be able to see and experience.

Once you tune into the attitudes and nuances of bird behavior, you will often be warned when animals are nearby.  This is how deer and other wary creatures use bird language to hide from approaching humans.  Sometimes it’s the other way around!  I was sitting in my yard early one morning, and heard Spider-eater the winter wren give an annoyed twitter.  The pair of song sparrows (Big Gray and Tan-stripe) chimed in a moment later.  Something was moving towards me, and moving fast!  I barely had time to pull my camouflaged blanket over my face, leaving a peephole so I could watch the big coyote trot past, thirty feet away.

If you are intrigued by these stories, try some of the activities that I find helpful when learning about bird language.

I always strive to develop an ability to recognize individuals.  Dr. Doolittle (the character in the old books I read as a kid, not the recent movies) said that if you saw two sparrows in a tree, and could recognize the same two sparrows the next day, you were observant enough to learn to speak to animals.  The surest route to understanding birds is to spend time each day at the same place—a place that has birds around.  A backyard is perfect.  Draw a map of where you see regularly see the same birds.  In my backyard, Chirpy the wren always sings from the south ridge, but Spider-eater sings from the north ridge.  Springtime makes territory boundaries and songs clearer, so that’s a good time to get out there and use your ears.

You might find a place to position yourself along a human trail to listen for the birds to tell you when someone is coming by.  Soon you will be able to tell if a hiker, jogger, rider, or cyclist is about to come around the corner.  I wouldn’t try to win any bets about guessing it, though!  Birds have a talent for humbling us.  It’s also best not to scare any humans.

If you are listening to bird tapes or CDs, focus on the birds of your area.  Listen to them over and over, and act them out.  How does the robin run across the yard?  How does the blue jay flip its tail around?  How does the great horned owl turn its golden-eyed head?  Put yourself in the bird’s feathers and you will be able to understand bird language.

This is a brief overview of a complex topic.  Whether you simply notice more birds than you did before, or learn every bird in your neighborhood, prick up your ears at the world of sound that surrounds us.  Birds are bound to lift your spirits with the mysteries and delight of bird language.



Buzzfeed : Sidestepped a basic principle of journalism which.is to verify


A basic principle of journalism.is to verify.

"The reporter's job is not to simply dump as much information as possible into the public domain. It is to gather information, sift through it, and determine what is true and what is not."

David Graham of The Atlantic



US President-elect Donald Trump clashed with CNN reporter Jim Acosta, repeatedly denying him a question and eventually telling him: "You are fake news"US President-elect Donald Trump clashed with CNN reporter Jim Acosta, repeatedly denying him a question and eventually telling him: "You are fake news" (AFP



  
The reporter's job is to gather information, sift through it, and determine what is true and what is not.






































Two media outfits -- BuzzFeed and CNN -- were singled out by Donald Trump who publicly attacked both as purveyors of "fake news" in connection with the report.
CNN was first to report that Trump had been briefed on the existence of a dossier circulating in US political circles, that alleged Russian possessed compromising information about him.

The cable network declined to give details of the unverified allegations, but BuzzFeed took the controversial step of publishing the 35-page dossier in full -- complete with salacious references to alleged sex tapes involving Trump and Russian prostitutes.

Several US media published limited descriptions of the report's contents -- while making clear, as did BuzzFeed, that they were unverified, and possibly unverifiable.

"I think it was incredibly irresponsible." said Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor 
Kennedy called it "unfortunate" that the actions of one media outfit -- BuzzFeed -- stood to further erode public trust in media, after a bruising campaign in which news organizations were pilloried by Trump and during which "fake news" became an issue.

One of the largest online news sites, BuzzFeed defended its decision to publish the 35-page document, compiled by a former British intelligence operative hired by other US presidential contenders to do political "opposition research" on Trump last year.

BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith said his goal was "to be transparent in our journalism and to share what we have with our readers," while noting that "the document was in wide circulation at the highest levels of American government and media."

"It is unverified -- meaning that it requires further investigation," Wemple wrote. 

David Graham of The Atlantic said BuzzFeed "sidestepped a basic principle of journalism."

The release "unfairly forces a public figure -- Trump, in this case -- to respond to a set of allegations that might or might not be entirely scurrilous," Graham wrote.
"The reporter's job is not to simply dump as much information as possible into the public domain... It is to gather information, sift through it, and determine what is true and what is not."
"Transparent transmission of misinformation is no more helpful or clarifying than no information at all."
 

At a news conference Wednesday, Trump called the dossier's release "disgraceful," training his fire intelligence agencies who he suggested may have leaked it -- and on the media.
Trump reserved his harshest words for BuzzFeed, a site that uses analytics to understand how news goes viral and drew some 185 million visitors last month.
"As far as BuzzFeed, which is a failing pile of garbage, writing it, I think they're going to suffer the consequences," Trump warned.
He also assailed CNN for breaking the initial story, accusing them of "going out of their way to build it up."
The president-elect then clashed with CNN reporter Jim Acosta, repeatedly denying him a question and eventually telling him: "You are fake news."
The cable network later pushed back in a statement, saying: "CNN's decision to publish carefully sourced reporting about the operations of our government is vastly different than BuzzFeed's decision to publish unsubstantiated memos."
- 'Kudos' to BuzzFeed -
Not all the reaction was negative.






Wednesday, November 30, 2016

The grey jay is Canada's national bird

The grey jay is as Canadian a bird as it comes, writes David M. Bird. Marcel Gahbauer /

Not so loony: Why the grey jay soared to victory as Canada's would-be national bird


 
The Royal Canadian Geographical Society recently stunned many Canadians by choosing the grey jay over the common loon as the organization’s candidate to become Canada’s national bird.

The announcement was made on Nov. 16, 2016, at the College of Fellows’ Annual Dinner in the Canadian War Museum.

Then, the loon poop hit the fan.

First, let’s dispel with the argument that due democratic process was not adhered to. In January 2015, the RCGS asked Canadians to help them choose a bird species that could best represent our broad nation and its variety of habitats.

Admittedly, the common loon came first place during the voting, while the grey jay came third. But the idea of the poll was simply to encourage debate among Canadians about the need for a national bird and to present a slate of potential candidates to choose from. There was never any intent to merely make it a popularity contest by choosing the bird that won the popular vote. After all, what if the iconic fourth-place Canada goose had won?!  Can you imagine the outrage from coast to coast?!

Before extolling the virtues of the winner, the grey jay, you might ask why Canadians even need a national bird.

Well, every state and every province and territory has one. Secondly, many nations around the world do, too. Only two years ago, the United Kingdom selected the robin (not to be confused with our American robin) as its bird. The Americans absolutely revere their national bird, the bald eagle. Not only does it adorn their national postal service logo, trained bald eagles are commonly flown at major social events, such as the Super Bowl. Basically, like our national tree (the maple) and mammal (the beaver), a national bird says something about who we Canadians are.

So why the grey jay, you ask? First and most importantly, this little bird is found in every province and territory in our country and does not exist in any other country in the world, save for some incursion into the U.S., i.e. the Pacific Northwest and some bordering states, including Alaska.

Also, unlike its competitors, the grey jay has not already been claimed as an official bird for any other geographical entity. The common loon, the first-place bird, has been Ontario’s official bird for eons (and Minnesota’s!), the second-place snowy owl is Quebec’s bird, and the black-capped chickadee (fifth place) is the official bird for New Brunswick, Maine and Massachusetts.

Look at it this way: When we selected our Canadian flag on Feb. 15, 1965, we did not elevate the flags of Ontario, Quebec or New Brunswick to national status; we chose something fresh and new, a flag that all Canadians are so proud of today.

 Related image

As for the character and quality of the grey jay, you could not find a more Canadian bird.

First, as a member of the corvid family (crows, ravens, magpies and jays), it is arguably the smartest bird on the planet. Their brain-to-body ratio is similar to that of dolphins and chimpanzees!

Second, the grey jay is extremely tough and hardy. By not leaving the country in winter, it has adapted itself to not only surviving our harsh Canadian winters but also breeding as well.
This bird can incubate its eggs at -30 C!

Third, grey jays are extremely friendly, readily coming down to perch on open hands and ski poles without any training whatsoever.

Fourth, unlike most birds in the world, grey jays are not promiscuous and the mates do not cheat on one another. The pair remains together year-round, often flying together everywhere and even perching side by side touching one another. So we’ve got “smart”, “hardy”, “friendly” and “loyal.” What greater way to describe the typical Canadian, eh?

It gets better. For 200 years, the grey jay was known as the Canada jay, but in 1957, for reasons far too complicated to get into here, the American Ornithologists Union Checklist Committee decided to rename it the grey jay and added insult to injury by adopting the American spelling.

But perhaps many Canadians best know this bird by its First Nations name, the whiskey jack — nothing to do with the beverage, by the way, but everything to do with an anglicization of a Cree-Ojibway word meaning “mischievous prankster.”

Yes, the bird does have the cheeky, cute and opportunistic habit of pilfering food, but indigenous folks revere the whiskey jack because it is an omen of good fortune and a warning of danger in the forest. In the end, we Canadians can call our bird whatever we like, even the Canada jay. After all, the Americans do refer to their bald eagle as the American eagle, right?

The grey jay is also a safe choice. It is not hunted and not killed as a nuisance species. It is also not endangered and not likely to disappear anytime soon.

I have saved the best for last. The grey jay is a denizen of our boreal forest, which extends from coast to coast, a habitat, incidentally, that is under siege from mineral and forest development. In short, to meet our hopeful national bird, Canadians are simply going to have to go to our ski mountains and into many of our national and provincial parks to hike, camp, and/or ski. And I guarantee you that this little bird will come down to greet you just as it did for millennia welcoming around their campfires the people who defined our nation — the explorers, settlers, prospectors, trappers and aboriginal peoples. And since the grey jay is highly dependent on cold winter temperatures to keep the stored food in its caches from rotting, you could not find a better poster child for climate change!
So, what’s next, you may well ask?

Well, we need the federal government to buy in by announcing the grey jay as our national bird for our 150th birthday party and, regrettably, the RCGS cannot officially lobby them. Thus, the grey jay/Canada jay/whiskey jack/mesangeai du Canada needs your help by sending emails, tweets and Facebook messages to Catherine McKenna, our esteemed minister of Environment Canada and Climate Change and by speaking with your local national members of Parliament.

And think of it this way: Had the common loon been selected, can’t you just hear Donald Trump mouthing the words “Canada, that nation of loonies!”


David M. Bird, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Wildlife Biology, McGill University, and Leader of Team Gray Jay

Image result


Source: http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/not-so-loony-why-the-gray-jay-soared-to-victory-as-canadas-would-be-national-bird



Sunday, August 12, 2012

Why parrots and other birds talk - Australian Geographic

 

 

 

Parrots and lyrebirds: the great pretenders

By:Hannah Price | September-20-2011




Why do parrots, lyrebirds and crows, have an amazing ability to mimic the sounds around them?

Lyrebirds have an astonishing repertoire of sounds they mimic from their environment, which includes more than 20 other bird calls, including kookaburras, as well as sophisticated mechanical sounds.

But just why some birds learn and repeat sounds - lyrebirds, crows, budgerigars and parrots are known to -  is a mystery experts are gradually unravelling. "It's a part of their language," says Jaynia Sladek, from the Australian Museum's ornithology department. "For some species it's like advertising 'I am very fit because I can learn a lot of different birds' [calls]'".

Bird mimicry

The male lyrebird, with his wide-ranging syrinx (a bird's vocal organs), will sing a medley of mimicry to attract and impress a female; the more detailed and varying his repertoire is, the more interesting it seems to potential mates - although the clanging of a construction site may not be appealing to us, it's pabulum for the curiosity of a female lyrebird. Much like females of other bird species, they do not take part in the imitating, but simply judge the competing males' patchwork symphonies.

Once learnt, it seems a lyrebird rarely forgets a call, and these sounds are also passed on through the generations. There are some lyrebirds in Victoria, Australia, that still recreate the sounds of axes, saws and old-fashioned cameras which haven't been used in the region for years.

Because the best singers will tend to be photographed more by experts, they are the most likely to be the best imitators of camera noises and also to pass both these abilities onto their offspring, says Martyn Robinson a naturalist at the Australia Museum in Sydney. "Because they're the most successful birds [with females] and the most photographed birds, they're imitating all the old sounds," he told Australian Geographic.

Talking cockatoos - it's a status thing

This correlation between genetic fitness and mimicking ability is also seen in cockatoos. As a flock-living bird, their position in the pecking order is linked to the extent to which other birds will listen to them. "You'll get a number of talkers within those flocks, because of their status," says Martyn. "If it's someone worth copying, they'll do it."

Recent evidence has shown that ex-captive cockatoos that have been let loose can teach wild birds to talk.

It's not just cockatoos and lyrebirds that have the ability to imitate. Corellas, bower birds, magpies and currawongs also have been heard mimicking calls and songs. Even common ravens and crows have an impressive ability to mimic sounds. "They have been taught to do pieces of music and it's like listening to a tape recorder," says Martyn.

Why do parrots and other birds talk?

These birds are not all closely related species, so there is no over-arching link between them, other than their desire to mimic. While some female bird species are attracted to a male's flashy colouring or ability to dance, the females of these species are more impressed by a mate's mimicking abilities.

Martyn says that while it's possible that all birds could imitate sounds, many birds may not use this skill because it's not attractive to potential mates.

"It depends very much on the species," he says. "Even within our own species, people like different things. Imagine the much greater differences from species to species."









 LINK:  http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/journal/why-parrots-and-other-birds-talk.htm
Why parrots and other birds talk - Australian Geographic





Drunk animals: inebriation in the wild - Australian Geographic



Humans are not the only animals who like getting drunk. Plenty of birds and mammals get tipsy on natural brews.
THEY STAGGER ALL OVER the place, can't keep steady on their perches, and fall head first into their food bowls. Meet the lorikeets under vet Dr Stephen Cutter's care.
He's used to riding out the drunken parrot season before the rains each year, when scores of intoxicated red-collared lorikeets (Trichoglossus rubritorquis) are picked up off Darwin's streets and brought to the Ark Animal Hospital in Palmerston. But this year is so bad he's calling it "a massive outbreak".
"People find them huddled in a corner or at the bottom of a tree. Mostly they just look sick -  just a sad little bundle of feathers hiding from the world," Stephen says. "They tend to be depressed, they can't fly, and they have difficulty climbing or balancing on perches."
In northern Australia, mango, umbrella, and other trees, can cause mild drunkenness in birds when the fruit or nectar ferments at different times throughout the year. But many of the lorikeets brought to the hospital aren't just mildly drunk -  they're completely sloshed, and sometimes for days at a time.
The most probable culprit is the Schotia brachypetala, a southern African native, commonly known as the drunken parrot tree. Stephen says he's seen this species pop up in gardens all over Darwin in recent years, and its rapid rise to abundance may be taking its toll on the birds. So far this year, more than a hundred lorikeets have been adversely affected from over-indulging on fermented fruits.

Drunk animals can't help their problem

Birds aren't experienced drinkers - unlike humans, they don't drink to get drunk.

"They don't want to ingest a lot of alcohol, but they're probably just being forced into the situation because there's not a lot of fruit available to them," says Dr Glen Chilton, ornithologist at James Cook University, Townsville.
Fruit-eating birds are particularly vulnerable because they depend so heavily on a food source that ferments, and to get enough proteins they need to eat a lot of it.
Glen says if the lorikeets in Darwin appear to be getting drunk on a larger scale, it is probably related to the limited supply of ripe fruit, a challenge that isn't unique to Australian birds.

In the northern hemisphere, heavy winter snows make it very difficult for birds to find fruit, and the rotting varieties that emerge once the snow starts to thaw - blackberries, hawthorn berries, juniper berries, crab apples - can produce very toxic levels of ethanol as the natural sugars ferment.

In the United States, robins, waxwings and starlings have been found dead in large flocks after eating toxic berries and diving into the ground or colliding with solid structures. In Vienna, Austria, 40 songbirds were found with broken necks and damaged livers after eating fermented berries and flying into windows.

Drunk animals like to party

Fermented fruits are not a first choice for many birds, but other animals would give anything to get their dose. (See a list of 10 animals known to get intoxicated)
"There's plenty of evidence that orangutans, and apes and elephants will wonder for miles to seek the pleasure of fermented fruits; so they basically like to get drunk," says Professor Gisela Kaplan, an expert in animal behaviour at the University of New England in Armidale.
The drawback for these keen drinkers is that happy hour only comes around at certain times during the year. "The opportunity to be inebriated is limited in animals, simply because they have to wait for the natural processes to occur," says Gisela. "They can't just go to a store and ask 365 days a year."
So when the fruits are overripe, the party animals make the most of it. Gisela says orang-utans in Borneo binge on the Durian fruit, which produces a very strong alcohol when it ferments. While in Africa, elephants and monkeys have been reported - though anecdotally -  getting tipsy on the fermenting fruit of palm trees and the Marula tree.

In Sweden just last month, an intoxicated moose made international headlines when it became entangled in an apple tree in a residential area after gorging on the fermented fruit.
But while animals seem to enjoy behaving badly under the influence, the phenomenon is seldom studied.
Even if alcohol isn't physically harmful to birds, it does make them vulnerable in other ways. When birds are drunk they lose mobility, making them helpless in the presence of predators. And if they can manage to fly while under the influence, their lack of coordination may have devastating consequences, much like those affecting humans who drink and drive.
"We know that [drunkenness] doesn't have serious side effects on mammals," says Gisela. "Mammals just sleep it off, but we have little knowledge of how birds deal with it."










Drunk animals: inebriation in the wild - Australian Geographic

Birds of a feather talk together - Australian Geographic


Pet parrots, such as cockatoos, that are let loose in the wild are teaching native birds to talk.
NO NEED TO THINK you're going bird-brained if you hear mysterious voices from the trees - it's likely just a curious cockatoo wanting a chat. Native parrots, especially cockatoos, seem to be learning the art of conversation from their previously domesticated friends.

The Australian Museum's Search and Discover desk, which offers a free service to identify species, has received numerous reports of encounters with talkative birds in the wild from mystified citizens who thought they were hearing voices.

Martyn Robinson, a naturalist who works at the desk, explains that occasionally a pet cockatoo escapes or is let loose, and "if it manages to survive long enough to join a wild flock, [other birds] will learn from it."

Birds mimic each other

As well as learning from humans directly, "the birds will mimic each other," says Jaynia Sladek, from the Museum's ornithology department. "There's no reason why, if one comes into the flock with words, [then] another member of the flock wouldn't pick it up as well."

'Hello cockie' is the most common phrase, though there have been a few cases of foul-mouthed feathered friends using expletives which we can't repeat here. 

The evolution of language could well be passed on through the generations, says Martyn. "If the parents are talkers and they produce chicks, their chicks are likely to pick up some of that," he says. This phenomenon is not unique; some lyrebirds in southern Australia still reproduce the sounds of axes and old shutter-box cameras their ancestors once learnt.
 

Birds of a feather chat together

In rural areas talking parrots will probably begin to lose their language abilities, says Martyn, with some words "likely to just disintegrate a bit and become part of that particular flock's repertoire."

However, in Australia's big cities like Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, cockatoos will probably maintain and improve their vocabulary due to regular contact with humans. "That's certainly the case in the Botanic Gardens [in Sydney]," says Martyn. "If you say 'hello' or 'hello cockie' to the cockatoos, and if they're interested in you and not just picking around for food, you may well trigger a response."




Check out this video of a cockatoo who's been taught to talk:









Birds of a feather talk together - Australian Geographic

 LINK: http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/journal/Parrots-and-other-wild-birds-able-to-talk.htm





Monday, August 6, 2012

Fashionable Falcon

Adoption Story

Crow Adopts a Kitten

A friendship between a kitten and a crow who saved her life.
License:  Standard YouTube License

Talking Parakeet

SMARTEST TALKING BIRD IN THE WORLD

says: I love you, pretty bird, I'm a smart birdie, his phone number, I'm a talking parakeet, get me out of here, have a nice day, Your so cute, good morning, good night, hi birdie and more

*HOW I TAUGHT MY BIRD TO TALK*


I first taught my parakeet "pretty bird" because I heard that phrase is a good one to start with. Myself and my family would always repeat it to my bird over and over throughout the day and every time we walked past his cage. After about four months, he finally said it. Now he can repeat phrases and words in just a couple of weeks.So, just think of a phrase and repeat it over and over to your bird. Don't give up because it might take a while until it says it's first word. If you have any questions, just ask!

 License:  Standard YouTube License