birdography

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Spring time in Australia be like:

🎵So you're a heck guy,

Like to really peck guy

I'm that mad type

Just don't give a fuck guy

Always screaming back guy

Attack your mumma mid flight

Give your girlfriend big fright

I'll fuck up your dad type

IM THE MAAAAGPIEE 🎵

But seriously guys, respect magpies, dont ride bikes near their nests so they feel the need to protect their babies. We don't need anymore killed for swooping issues because they're doing something that a bird naturally does.

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me? I’m a simply guy, I see a pigeon with even the slightest difference in color or pattern than the average pigeon, and I say “wow look at that pigeon!” it���s just who I am

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Check out my fancy work mate Pablo.

The cold, rainy weather had him come to me for some tasty seeds.

He got plenty!

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Correct

Cosy friend

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Cosy friend

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So I was told that Human Planet had a segment about pigeons in the Cities episode that I might be interested in and I was honestly so underwhelmed. I haven’t finished the episode so maybe there’s more pigeon stuff but I feel like all I saw was more Birds Of Prey Are The Only Cool And Acceptable Birds and pigeons are Trespassers In Our Urban World Who Shit On Everything And Are Useless On Top Of It. Which isn’t true and I’m so tired of this being framed as some horrible burden that humanity must face. Pigeons are the victims here, not us. 

Hate of pigeons didn’t start until the 20th Century. Before that was about 9,900 years of loving them. The rock pigeon was domesticated 10,000 years ago and not only that, we took them freaking everywhere. Pigeons were the first domesticated bird and they were an all-around animal even though they were later bred into more specialised varieties. They were small but had a high feed conversion rate, in other words it didn’t cost a whole lot of money or space to keep and they provided a steady and reliable source of protein as eggs or meat. They home, so you could take them with you and then release them from wherever you were and they’d pretty reliably make their way back. Pigeons are actually among the fastest flyers and they can home over some incredible distances (what fantastic navigators!). They were an incredibly important line of communication for multiple civilisations in human history. You know the first ever Olympics? Pigeons were delivering that news around the Known World at the time. Also, their ability to breed any time of year regardless of temperature or photoperiod? That was us, we did that to them, back when people who couldn’t afford fancier animals could keep a pair or two for meat/eggs. 

Rooftop pigeon keeping isn’t new, it’s been around for centuries and is/was important to a whole variety of cultures. Pigeons live with us in cities because we put them there, we made them into city birds. I get that there are problems with bird droppings and there’s implications for too-large flocks. By all means those are things we should look to control, but you don’t need to hate pigeons with every fibre of your being. You don’t need to despise them or brush them off as stupid (they have been intelligence tested extensively as laboratory animals because guess what other setting they’re pretty well-adapted to? LABORATORIES!) because they aren’t stupid. They’re soft intelligent creatures and I don’t have time to list everything I love about pigeons again. You don’t need to aggressively fight them or have a deep desire to kill them at all. It’s so unnecessary, especially if you realise that the majority of reasons pigeons are so ubiquitous is a direct result of human interference.

We haven’t always hated pigeons though, Darwin’s pigeon chapter in The Origin of Species took so much of the spotlight that publishers at the time wanted him to make the book ONLY about pigeons and to hell with the rest because Victorian’s were obsessed with pigeons (as much as I would enjoy a book solely on pigeons, it’s probably best that he didn’t listen).  My point is, for millenia, we loved pigeons. We loved them so much we took them everywhere with us and shaped them into a bird very well adapted for living alongside us.

It’s only been very recently that we decided we hated them, that we decided to blame them for ruining our cities. The language we use to describe pigeons is pretty awful. But it wasn’t always, and I wish we remembered that. I wish we would stop blaming them for being what we made them, what they are, and spent more time actually tackling the problems our cities face.  

I just have a lot of feelings about how complex and multidimensional hating pigeons actually is

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Source: [x]

Click HERE for more facts!

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LOOK at this frightened peregrine falcon that came into work today!

They got me! The bird nurse to handle him. Heck i ain't even touched a bird of prey before so i was slightly nervous, had gloves and a towel and everything went smoothly. As you can tell he was more scared than i was and presumed talon attack mode. He was just slightly concussed after noisy minors chased him into a window. He will be released within the next few days.

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Would anyone like to see pictures of this bird I’m friends with

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Merry Christmas from the fam.

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Mr cheeky lorikeet is alot better. I think he can be released tomorrow

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We have a rescued lorikeet. It was found hanging off the fence next door. Not sure whats happened but there was blood on him, was worried it was beak and feather or lorikeet paralysis disorder. I think i can rule this out. I was going to leave him in a tree however the larger birds were swooping him protecting their nests as its breeding season. So hopefully some r&r is all this pretty bird needs. He has some naughty seeds mixed with honey and some water. Obviously isolated from av and lou and i haven’t touched anything in the house without washing my hands first incase of any contagious diseases. Fingers are crossed for this baby. If his condition declines ill take him to the vet but he has picked up a little.

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the zebra finch is a small passerine bird native to central australia and indonesia. the finches are very social, and live in large colonies. their diet consists mainly of grass seeds; they breed based on availability of water, as they feed their young ripening seeds, not dried seeds.

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"What they lack in manners they make up for in style"

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Sir David Attenborough imitating a pterosaur - the one animal he’d wish to come back from extinction.

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FUN FACT: Australian birds are generally goofy.