california quails they’re unforgettable. small and round, black feather on top.
EVERYONE STOP ✋🏼🛑 WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND LOOK AT THIS MOUNTAIN BLUEBIRD
okay thanks
blondebrainpower
Kea in New Zealand, 2018
This photo shows a Kea (N. notabilis) the world’s only alpine parrot, soaring above Mt. Luxmore in the Fiordlands of New Zealand.
Photographer: Phil Narodick
Seeing people shoot raptors in other countries is fucking wild to me because we have a whole system of super strict laws governing how you can handle an individual FEATHER off of an eagle, and it doesn't have to even be a dead eagle. One can molt and you can find it on the ground and if you're caught with it the warden will fuck your entire life. What do you mean people are out there shooting them to protect a fucking pheasant. A pheasant??? That thing I have to avoid running over approximately 459 times any time I leave a major highway???
My good friend @prismaticate has asked a very good question here, and while I’m not entirely sure I’m qualified to explain it and would love some input from more qualified sources, my SUPER simplified understanding of why the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 and its numerous modern revisions and addendums have clauses about this included is this:
-It’s basically impossible to tell a feather that’s been picked up off the ground from one that’s been taken from a poached bird
-This used to be a MAJOR problem when bird-feather hats and the like were in high demand back in the day, because several bird species on the edge of extinction kept getting poached in spite of the new laws protecting them since people would just say they “found” any feathers from protected species used in the stuff they were selling, and you couldn’t prove otherwise unless you literally caught them in the act of poaching
-This eventually got SO bad that they had to just make it illegal to have the feathers at all, with certain exceptions made for members of different indigenous groups, or authorized organizations that display them as part of efforts to educate the public about the species they belong to
@zooophagous is this a reasonable rundown? Was there anything I missed/any better sources you might recommend to learn more about this? I know it’s probably far more nuanced than that, but this was kind of the explanation I’d always seen floating around. 😅
That's pretty much the gist of it! Eagles and eagle feathers have more laws on top of that because of their sacred uses in certain indigenous practices, how they relate to legal falconry, and because eagles at one time were highly endangered while at the same time being a national symbol. Where a cop or a game warden may shrug and look the other way if you, say, illegally picked up a chickadee feather from your bird feeder, if they see a real eagle feather they will notice and will be VERY interested in where it came from.
Not long ago here someone was arrested and charged for violating these laws because they tried to sell a plains feather bonnet at a pawn shop, claiming they had "found it while exploring an abandoned house."
The clerk suspected it was real eagle, the warden confirmed it was, and because those feathers are so tightly tracked they were able to locate the family of the previous owners who said the item had been stolen some time ago.
If nobody knows you have it, obviously you can get away with it. But if they see it, or God forbid you try to SELL it, the hammer will fall.
Im surprised every time people think it's a crazy sounding law, it is genuinely one of the only things preventing a lot of native birds from extinction or any asshole could kill as many as they want and just say they found them on the ground
Wait, poaching wasn’t about the meat, it was about the feathers?
The collapse of bird populations in the USA in the late 1800s thru early 1900s was very much about feathers.
At its peak the feather trade had feathers that were worth more than gold. Commercial hunters would shoot birds out of the sky and sell feathers by the pound, in literal huge crates. Egrets were especially sought after for their beautiful breeding plumage, which was used in fancy hats and accessories. This wrought havoc on the poor birds because they only ever had this plumage during breeding season, so not only were the breeding birds dying, they were leaving next generation's chicks and eggs behind to die of neglect.
Beyond hats, the gentleman's art of fly tying was also a popular art form, more for the sake of showing off one's rare collection of feathers and art than for actual fishing.
There was some meat hunting as well before the banning of commercial hunting, mostly ducks and geese, which also drifted close to extinction as they were taken to be sold in markets.
Even white tailed deer, the ubiquitous animal that's found all over north America in truly ridiculous numbers, came dangerously low. But meat wasn't where the money was when it came to birds. It was feathers.
The Lacey act banned commercial hunting in the United States, putting an end to the constant unregulated commercial killing to fill market stalls with meat (which incidentally is why you don't see venison in most supermarkets in the states. Only farmed deer is legally allowed to be sold.)
And the Migratory Bird Treaty Act made it a crime to not only kill a bird, but to even posess a single feather from one. Most people won't buy a hat that would get them arrested if they wore it outside, so the market for feathers was gutted.
Even though feather hats aren't popular in this day and age, nobody is in a hurry to amend these laws, as birds in general are well loved and popular animals and still very much threatened by other stressors such as pollution and habitat loss.
So, in the off chance you find one, what....do you do with a feather? Leave it? Report it to local authorities?
You take a picture of your cool find and leave it on the ground
PARENT BUS PARENT BUS
WHERE ARE THEY GOOOOOING
ON A FAMILY VACATIOOOOON
The last picture is, in fact, a duckling! The parents lost their baby and adopted an orphaned duckling and raised it.
FAMILY VACATION
Okay so like, I can’t get over this adopted baby duckling. In relation to loons, ducklings are an r-selected species. Like, there’s the understanding that some baby ducklings get eaten by turtles and so they lay big batches of eggs to make up for it.
But loons are k-selected and invest a ton of time into their babies. They only have one or two babies, both parents take care of them, and they ride around on their parents so they don’t become turtle food.
This is like, the best taken care of duckling in the world. They are gonna be such good parents, even though their kid is a weird vegan who can’t swim underwater.
I love these birds 😍
Never one to back down from a challenge, this blustery defender of the coast is always ready for a battle – of wits, words, or blades.
– Inspired by crashing waves on rocky shores, by stormy skies, and by objects just a bit more beautiful than they are practical.
Painted in watercolor, and gouache on 140lb Arches hot press paper. Accented with metal leaf, and framed in a carved wooden frame.
For sale on Every Day Original: https://everydayoriginal.com/product/nautilus-knight/
And what was up there? A honey buzzard. I will always be thankful to you, enchanting mandarin duck. 🥲
Mandarinente ♂️ (mandarin duck) am Unisee, Vaihingen.
as a huge lover of birds, 90% of the concern against wind turbines being used for energy is literally just pro fossil fuel propaganda. birds ARE at a risk however there is a lot of strategies even as simple as painting one of the blades that reduces a lot of accidental deaths. additionally renewable energy sources will do more in favor of the environment that would positively impact birds (and all of us). one study found over one million bird deaths from wind turbines. while that is a shockingly high number and we should work to drastically shrink it, at least 1.3 billion birds die to outdoor cats on a yearly basis. it was never about caring about birds
Bachman’s Warbler, Vermivora bachmanii, described in the 1980 edition of Peterson’s field guide as “the rarest North American songbird.” Now largely considered extinct.
Bird identification is so fucked up in a really fun way you can’t understand until you get into it. For example, there is a type of goose called the cackling goose that looks exactly like a Canada goose except smaller and “cuter”. The cackling goose is way, way, more rare in most places than its relatively common cousin, so it’s on tons of birders life lists. Everyone wants to see a cackling (look in any bird ID group to see lots of hopeful people posting petite Canada geese). The two species regularly commingle, so sometimes a flock of those common parking lot birds will have the equivalent of a Pokémon shiny just hanging out in the middle of them.
How ridiculous and fun is that? I can never look at a big group of Canada geese without scrutinizing their ranks for an adorable little extremely rare cutie pie cackling goose. It reminds me a bit of mushroom harvesting minus the risk of death if you get it wrong
Feather illustration for non-biologists! It occurred to me that some of you might find this useful. It starts with a necessary biology lesson, because I find that understanding the structure and function of feathers will greatly improve accurate rendering of those feathers.
A lot of this is general - obviously you can find all kinds of exceptions in the natural world (penguins, ratites, I’m looking at you guys). But it should cover the bulk of the illustration needs if you’re not comfortable drawing feathers and want some ideas on how to improve.
For photo references, I highly recommend birdpixel (a very generous online art reference created by Leena and Vivek Khanzode), Cornell’s Macaulay Library, and Piranga, which is mostly aimed at North American bird banders but shows excellent close-ups of a variety of species.
