The possibility of seeing an American Woodcock (AKA timberdoodle, mudbat, bogsucker, night partridge, and Labrador twister) is the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning.

love when birds are freakish and strange

long wattled umbrellabird

black skimmer

sage grouse (please look up what these sound like)

guianan cock of the rock

pied avocet

marabou stork

hoatzin

twelve wired bird of paradise

standard winged nightjar

Humble addition

Jungle fowl :)

Bearded Vulture (Gypaetus barbatus)

© Marc Gálvez

fascinated by this beast

Dovekie (Alle alle)

"The flight is direct, with fast whirring wing beats due to the short wings."

Dovekie are also known by a few other names, such as little auk, rotch (or rotche), and sea dove, although sometimes that can refer to the black guillemot as well. They typically eat crustaceans, and will eat up to a fifth of their body weight daily!

Little auks breed in large colonies on marine cliffsides. They nest in crevices or beneath large rocks, usually laying just a single egg. Their typical predators are glaucous gull and Arctic fox, though there have been reports of polar bear feeding on dovekie eggs.

Despite being tiny little guys, there are a few different types of food that can be made of little auk. One dish, known as Kiviaq, is Inuit in origin, from Greenland. A seal skin is stuffed with 300-500 dovekie, then sealed with seal fat and left to ferment for 3-18 months, where it will then be eaten during the winter. In Newfoundland, the birds were stuffed with savory dressing and oven-baked, but were known as a food of last resort in order to prevent starvation. This is likely due to the fact it would take 5 to 6 birds to feed a person, and that the meat is lean.

Sources:

Cinerous Vulture & Common Raven

Rose-bellied Bunting - ML477794, Luke Seitz via Macaulay Library

Happy Birdsday! Dovekie.

She has 10 eggs omg how did her little body make so many eggs I’m going to cry

Her bird husband keeps bringing her little green worms to eat and every time she hears him outside she does these happy little chirps ahhhhh

she’s sleeping right now…

UPDATE: all ten eggs have hatched :)

UPDATE:

All ten babies are getting ready to fledge!!!

Thank you for posting a pine cone for reference but I’d like to see what the bird looks like too, please.

birds have truly mastered feathers like what do you Mean they can be shiny. how fucking cool is that

glossy ibis

european starling

greater blue eared starling

nicobar pigeon

purple martin

glowing puffleg

violet backed starling

+ special shoutout to rob garren and his purple poultry project. he is breeding his chickens to be very shiny and very purple

i’m also taking the opportunity to gush about one of my favorite birds: the cedar waxwing! i think they’re so lovely.

they’re found all over north & central america and aren’t very rare. but i think they’re very interesting! they eat almost nothing but fruit. big groups of them will find a fruit tree, eat everything they can, and then move on.

one of the things i think is really cute is that sometimes, they’ll all line up on a branch. one of them will pick a berry and then pass it down the line so that every bird gets to eat.

i also think their courtship is funny and cute. two birds will take a small item like a flower petal or a bug and pass it back and forth. they also accidentally get drunk sometimes by eating fruit that’s gone bad and started to ferment.

i think they are very cute and handsome birds.

“i grew out of my dinosaur phase” shut up. your dinosaur phase isn’t something you “grow out” of. real adults know that dinosaurs are cool as fuck.

the dinosaur to bird pipeline is real and it’s because they are the same thing

My favorite birds right now:

Dovekie

Kiwi

I thought I’d share something pure ~

Lesbiinae

Say a Happy Pride to the best group of dinosaurs (birds) you may not have heard of - subfamily Lesbiinae!

This is a group of hummingbirds and, yes, they were named for Lesbos. And Sappho.

While there are many genera in this wonderful group, there are three species divided among two of them which are worth pointing out:

Lesbia victoriae, the Black-Tailed Trainbearer

The Green-Tailed Trainbearer, Lesbia nuna

And lastly, the Red-Tailed Coment, Sappho sparganurus

I am genuinely confused why these are not more popular on the Queer Site, but here we are: the three Dinosaurian lesbian icons, Lesbia nuna Lesbia victoriae and Sappho sparganurus.

Gd they're so cute I can't

Remember to read about the contestants before voting!

Superb Bird of Paradise!

This little dancing bird should be recognizable to most internet patrons. Their distinctive dance, in which their feathers form an elliptical disc around their face with the vibrant blue popping against the dark black as they hop about the female, is mesmerizing to say the very least. The female to male ratio is considerably different, and with there being less females to woo, this gives the males a better incentive to have an elaborate dance. Learn more!

California Condor

The blast from the past, the California Condor is not entirely unlike the Coelacanth. They are from a time of giants, a prehistoric creature who is STILL WITH US today! This particular Condor is sporting an asexual flag because there is evidence that they have performed parthenogenesis! An asexual icon! There are so few of them, almost all of them are tagged with particular names. It was brought back from the brink of extinction, and we are very lucky to still have them here with us. Learn More!

(Superb Bird of Paradise gif by BBC) (California Condor Art by @tertain-the-original )

People describe shoebill storks as being scary or ugly birds and always use one image to make their point. When in every other photo they look like this

More like shoebill dork

Some turkey vultures 🖤

@todaysbird

#440, a northern lapwing.

Requests for birds are open, updates happen on Thursdays. [project tag] | [kofi] [commissions] Find me on: [twitter]

XLII: Charadriidae

Next up in Charadrii is the namesake Charadriidae: the plovers. There are 68 species with a cosmopolitan distribution. Pictured are the ngutuparore (Anarhynchus frontalis), the only bird with a beak that curves to just one side (always to the right), and the northern lapwing (Vanellus vanellus), the national bird of Éire.

Plovers are perhaps the most familiar of the shorebird clade, and are synonymous with the wader ecology. They have a characteristic "run, stop, and pick" foraging behavior to feed on invertebrates just below the ground's surface. The habitats in which they reside are generally open areas, but they range from the Arctic tundra to costal shores to deserts, and most things in between. Chicks of certain species, most notably the golden plovers (genus Pluvialis) are exceptionally camouflaged, with plumage that makes them indistinguishable from the mosses around them.

On the other end of the spectrum, some lapwings have bright and distinct face wattles and wing spurs. Despite the urban legends, however, these birds cannot inject venom through their spurs. On the topic of wings, species like the kildeer are famous for feigning a wing injury if a predator comes close to their nest. The parent leads the predator a safe distance away before seeming to miraculously heal, flying away in the hopes that the predator won't find the camouflaged nest again.