siberiantrap - Tumblr blog

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Mourning doves showing love today on Earth

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Greater Prairie Chickens (Tympanuchus cupido), displaying and engaged in ritual dance off-combat, family Phasianidae, order Galliformes, Phillips County, KS, USA

photograph by Tom Duncan

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People are really starting to forget that Emily Willoughby is a Nazi. Her artistic talent is irrelevant to the fact that she's a eugenicist piece of shit. For reference, her PhD was just "white people are genetically predisposed to having a higher intelligence than people of color". She has never taken accountability and has continued to double down with the classic "sorry but that's just the truth". There are professional paleontologists on Facebook praising her. Why is she still allowed in these circles or anywhere in science? Why are her opinions still valued?

Her continued presence in these spaces puts people's complacency on full display. She throws people of color and Jews under the bus and the fact that she hasn't been fully shut out tells me a lot about our field.

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butch fish suggests: redtail catfish, cabezon, dunkeleosteus <3 ur fish women give me life and sustenance

Redtail catfish and Cabezon girlies being a bit rowdy

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Interesting new paper from Cau, which concludes (among other things) that the evolution of Cenozoic birds/dinosaurs is not separate from, but a continuation of, Mesozoic theropod evolution

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reduction linocut design :3

available for preorder, very limited run with all profits to trans mutual aid

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gray heron playing in the snow (18.04.2024)

@todaysbird

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weird dyke4weird dyke

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Ghost Stories

Canebrake Warbler

Jumping over to the American warblers, our final ghost story is the canebrake warbler (Vermivora bachmanii). These recently-departed passerines once inhabited the eastern United States and Cuba.

Canebrake warblers (more commonly called "bachmans" warblers, but we don't fuck with eponymous names here when alternatives exist, especially ones honoring slave owners) were typical-looking warblers with olive backs & wings, yellow faces & underparts, black bibs in the males, and thin pointed beaks. Like other parulids, they fed on small invertebrates, likely gleaning among the foliage. In the breeding season, they haunted the gulf coast and Southern coastal plains along the Atlantic. Their preferred habitat was swampy bottomland forests, but they were especially reliant on their namesake "canebrakes", dense stands of giant river cane, a native species of bamboo. The clumpy nests of these birds were often found among the canes. In the nonbreeding season, canebrake warblers migrated to Cuba, inhabiting the variety of forests available there.

Canebrake warblers were most likely driven to extinction by the destruction of their required breeding habitat in the United States. Clearcutting of swamp forest and destruction of canebrakes for industry & agriculture were rampant due to capitalism & colonialism. The last reputable sighting was in Louisiana in 1988. In 2023, the USFWS officially declared the canebrake warbler extinct, though the IUCN continues to hold them at critically endangered.

(Art by Megan Kissinger)

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Tarantula: May I have a coke please

Waitress: All we have is Pepsis is that okay?

*Tarantula sweating nervously*: Y-you have what

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Ghost Stories

Po'o-uli

On another branch of the Hawai'ian honeycreeper tree, we have the po'o-uli (Melamprosops phaeosoma). These manu were endemic to the Hawai'ian island of Maui.

Po'o-uli were stocky passerines with black faces, white cheeks & neck, and brown wings & back. They lived in the wet forests of Maui, where they fed on small invertebrates, often in mixed-species foraging flocks. Nests were placed in 'ōhi'a trees, where females brooded the eggs and males delivered food.

Though undoubtedly known by indigenous people long before, the po'o-uli wasn't known to western researchers until 1973. Fossils have revealed that these birds once inhabited larger portions of the island, but were driven to higher elevations on the wetter eastern side by the time of their study, likely due to introduced mosquitoes and their invasive malaria brought by European colonizers. Feral pigs, rats, and other invasive species have also impacted their populations. Only a couple hundred po'o-uli were estimated to exist at the time of their "discovery", which declined rapidly to just 5 by 1997, and 3 by 2002. Conservationists captured and released a male in 1997, and later captured a female in that 2002 to release her into the territory of the last male, in the hopes they would breed, but the effort was unsuccessful. In 2004, the male was recaptured, missing an eye, to hopefully establish captive breeding. Unfortunately the old male did not take to captivity well. On 26 November 2004, sometime between 10 and 11:30 p.m., he passed away from organ failure. This would be the last time a po'o-uli would ever be seen. The researcher who worked with him, Paul Baker, recalls weeping for the species when he heard the news, another manu of Hawai'i lost forever.

(Art by Ricardo M Lalinde)

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I reject the false dichotomy between Pigeon Lovers and Parrot Lovers

Both are amazing, both are wonderful, both are perfect

Reblog if you too love BOTH pigeons AND parrots!

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Whooping Cranes (Grus americana), family Gruidae, order Gruiformes, Lamar, TX, USA

ENDANGERED.

At one point, there were only about 15-20 wild adults (due mainly to overhunting). Conservation efforts have helped them recover to a population of somewhere over 800 adult birds.

photograph by David Paulissen

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this thing contains the divine spark. it evolved from ancient ungulates like whales did