And how was your Saint Patrick’s Day?

This stork apparently belongs to Bey El-Arnaut Abdim, who was the Turkish Governor of Wadi Halfa in Sudan.

However, he died in 1827, so it’s probably owned by someone else now.

I’ve spent half of an episode of X-Files trying to identify this bird. It’s the one with the lake monster (the episode, not the bird). I know it has a black neck and a brown crown (the bird, not the lake monster). However, none of the online search sites seem to be able to help me figure out what it is (the bird, pretty sure the lake monster is an alligator).

Oh hey, look at that. It actually is an alligator. Also, Mulder’s gun sure has a lot of bullets in it.

Still need help with the bird though.

In addition to protective camouflage, many animals will grow strange protuberances to break up their outline to make it harder to predators to see them when silhouetted against the sky.

Herons, however, are not prey.

According to Wikipedia, there are about 500 wild birds remaining in southern Morocco, and fewer than 10 in Syria. Odds are, given recent events, there’s substantially fewer than 10 in Syria.

I see them in a lot of zoos though.

There are a lot of stories out there, talking about how elephants don’t breed well in captivity and need more space than zoos can give. They have a point. It is very hard to sustain certain species in captivity. However, they then jump to “therefore we need to close all zoos”, which is poor logic and manipulative.

The truth is that, with zoos focusing on captive breeding of critically endangered species, we stand a better chance of keeping them alive without them. Even ignoring all the work zoos do to raise environmental awareness and convey an appreciation of animals, hundreds if not thousands of species are still around just because of the work they do.

The orthocenter, the centroid, and the circumcenter of a flamingo triangle form the Euler line, not that the flamingos care at all.

For years, I’ve been told that bird feathers have no colour, but do prismatic effects with light. I’ve even seen a fascinating display at a museum which had three different feathers and, with a switch, you can move between top and back lighting. When back-lit, they become monochromatic, which pretty much convinced me.

Then, in researching what to say about this guy, I learn that turacos have both green and red pigments in their feathers.

Of course, this bird is neither green or red, and I’m red-green colourblind … so I can only conclude that the universe is messing with me.

Q: What has six legs and can fly long distances?
A: Three albatrosses.

Q: What happens if you cross a duck with a firework?
A: You get a firequaker.

Q: How do you catch a unique bird?
A: Unique up on it.

Q: How do you catch a tame bird?
A: The tame way.

Q: Where do flocks come from?
A: Planted birdseed.

Q: Why did the farmer cross the road?
A: To get all his chickens back.

Q: Why does a stork stand on one leg?
A: Because if it lifted the other, it’d fall down.

A Frenchman walks into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder. The bartender asks, “Where did you get that?” The parrot replies, “In France, there’s tons of them.”

Ha!

Just as humans sometimes swim for exercise, some birds have taken up mountain climbing.

For safety reasons, they start their training in a gym.

Water does not evenly flow off of a flamingo.