I went to the local aviary today and they had some really mean things to say about owls.
I can confirm that most birds have a detectable amount of wiring behind the eyes – blinking lights and buttons and sliders and frizzy things that spark and chirp and beep. They also have a lot of soul that can communicate with ours because the programming is fairly compatible. Vultures are clever and curious, swans are clear and lawful, chickens have a lot of personality, caged parrots are dissociated and disinherited and frankly worrying, falconry-trained birds of prey are tremendously businesslike.
And owls are absolutely lovely beasts with their own irreplaceable validity. but they are basically stuffed with polyester fiberfill. They have one button, like a child’s toy dinosaur that opens and closes its mouth when you press the back of its head. And it isn’t even a sophisticated electronic button it’s just a lever that rocks back and forth to make the claws open and close. I think they may have actually evolved independently from sponges. Their skulls simply exist to create holes that funnel sound and light, and as a place to hang a giant hinged beak. An owl is just an empty tube like a windchime that the wind whistles through, and you can drop meat down it. They use the meat to generate feathers, and then emit the bones in pressed little packages like those machines that flatten a penny and stamp it with the logo of a theme park. I think that’s the gist of it – most birds are electronics of varying levels of sophistication, but owls are just a system of levers and pulleys. No elevator music in those skulls, just the wind echoing through empty caverns of slightly irritating design. Absolutely fantastic.
Are owls smart? Lord no.
Are owls efficient? So much so, that they don’t need to be smart.
Tags:
#birds #owls #that one post with the thing #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
Did you know that peafowl are born with a full set of flight feathers? It only takes them 3-4 days to remove the sheaths and put a little length on them, and then they are capable of flight!
It’s very obnoxious!
glad that came through in text
Tags:
#birds #the more you know #adorable #(…from a safe distance) #cat on keyboard threeeee-d! #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
#birds #art #comics #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
#art #fanart #birds #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
Extremely Important Update: in April 2023 the World Bird Sanctuary had an orphaned eagle chick in need of care, so they decided to see if Murphy could live up to his parental ambitions.
He successfully raised the chick, which is now thriving with the other juvenile eaglets!
Congrats Murphy, you made it happen through sheer determination.
(Pictures are from the Facebook page of the World Bird Sanctuary; I can’t link them directly because I don’t have a FB account and the site is a nightmare to interact with if you’re not logged in, constantly resetting and kicking you to registration pages.)
This bird took care of an effigy of a baby until the fae gave him a real baby
Tags:
#(I kind of thought I had queued a version of this update already but I can’t find it anywhere) #(apologies for any accidental duplicates) #birds #oh look an update #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #embarrassment squick? #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once #(P.S. found the other copy I was thinking of) #(it was in an open tab‚ not yet queued) #(so we’re good)
Higgledy-piggledy
unparliamentary
green parrots quarrel
outside in the trees
Squawking out epithets
uncomplimentary
Squads of unmannerly
Oversized peas.
i loved this poem so much that i memorized it and to this day i sometimes mutter it under my breath to keep my welding tempo even
Tags:
#this isn’t quite a that-one-post-with-the-thing but it *is* a surprised-I-haven’t-already-reblogged-this #poetry #birds #my past self has good taste #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
If you ever wanted to be a swan, move to the UK and you can become one.
[ID: Newspaper ad with picture of swan. Want a New Challenge? Retrain as a Swan. Two Day courses; no experience necessary. Full tuition in:
Honking
Gliding serenely
Eating bits of bread
Breaking a man’s arm
Earn up to £40 working on one of Britain’s illustrious waterways. Book online at Cygnusjobs-4-u.net /end ID]
Tags:
#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #birds #adventures in human capitalism #(sort of) #make sure to go to the website #violence cw?
Brinens and Things 