fwap!

Darwin Award contestant:

The 19-year-old skateboarder was riding westbound on 45th in the street when he entered the intersection at University Way and slammed into the articulated bus, police spokeswoman Renee Witt said.

"The skateboarder ran into the side of the bus and then fell under the rear wheel," she said.

NB: Westbound through this intersection is downhill. He was probably going too fast to stop. The bus had a green light.

In other news:

Yikes!

A shark believed to be a great white killed a 66-year-old swimmer with a single, giant bite across both legs Friday as the man trained with a group of triathletes, authorities and witnesses said.

Dave Martin, a retired veterinarian from Solana Beach, was attacked at San Diego County's Tide Beach around 7 a.m., authorities and family friend Rob Hill said.

He was a veterinarian, so he probably loved animals. How ironic.

More animals!

Pierre was outfitted with the suit about six weeks ago. Since then, he has gained weight, grown back feathers on his hind parts and is again acting like his feisty, alpha-male self.

On a recent visit, Pierre waddled around the tank, taking brief dips and standing on a rock next to his mate. He blended in well, although he was the only penguin with a black tummy.

And do watch the video. Very cute!

busy busy

I have not been posting a lot lately, things are busy! At work I have been busy writing the various reports that are due this time of year on our marine mammal work, plus we are doing some interesting work on species for which there aren't many data, and a few of these might be worth a publication.

At home, things are going well, Kianga seems to be gearing up for Spring, which means there will probably be new egg blogging soon!

Happy Vernal Equinox!

Friday wildlife blogging

Last Sunday, we went for a drive up the Skagit River to Rockport. At a park along the river, it is possible during the winter months to see many bald eagles awaiting the winter chum salmon run.

When we arrived, there was heavy fog, but it began to lift even before we got our jackets on.


After seeing some eagles from the nearby bridge, we went for a walk towards the west on the north side of the river. On the way, there was a fellow with a much better camera, attempting to get some photos of this magnificent bird:



This was such a huge bird, perhaps a female. She was facing away from me as I took this, alas.

A great day - it was sunny and brisk, we saw about 20 eagles during the day, as well as large flocks of snow geese and tundra swans while driving through the Skagit valley, many of them just south of Mount Vernon and not far off the freeway.

oh noes!!1!

Here is a closeup of Kianga from Sunday morning:

She is looking very fierce because of:

Yes, kids, she laid again! She laid two in March, and I let her sit on them, and thought that was it for the year. The past few weeks she had been acting a bit hormonal, trying to feed my hand when I had her out, and getting very excited. When she made a pest of herself, I just put her back in her cage. I didn't think she would lay again this year. But Friday evening she was sitting on the bottom of her cage all evening, and when she got up on her perch, I saw this egg. She laid a second one Tuesday night, a longer delay than usual. Hopefully, she will sit on these and we won't have any problems - like her trying to lay more. The worst part is that I'm visiting my parents, so I can't keep an eye on her myself. I am getting reports from the homefront, however, and she has been eating and otherwise seems fine.

godwit migration

The godwit migrates between New Zealand and Alaska, without even stopping to feed. The flight is over 7,000 miles. Simply amazing.

very sad

Alex has died at 31:

But last week Alex, an African Grey parrot, died, apparently of natural causes, said Dr. Irene Pepperberg, a comparative psychologist at Brandeis University and Harvard who studied and worked with the parrot for most of its life and published reports of his progress in scientific journals. The parrot was 31.

Now, many parrots are kept under less than ideal conditions, and die prematurely. African Grey parrots in captivity should live twice as long. Alex always showed signs of being stressed, for example, his feather picking. As a wild-caught bird, I think Alex was less suited to being a research subject than perhaps the two domestic Greys Pepperberg has more recently been using.

I do hope I can avoid losing any of my Greys at this young an age - I certainly have the expectation that they would even outlive me. That said, Alex has done much to further our understanding of what birds are capable of cognitively speaking - between his language skills and the problem-solving abilities displayed by corvids, we have a whole new appreciation for "bird brains."

Be in peace, Alex.

Update: Reading more about Alex, it appears that he may have been a domestically bred bird after all, though I had read before that he was wild-caught. Still, hopefully birds Griffin and Wart will prove to be less stressed out as research subjects than Alex obviously was at times.

parrot update

Since it has been awhile since I have posted one...

Aziza still seems to be doing well - she is showing normal energy and a good appetite. She has also been very affectionate. She has been molting, and so she has pinfeathers that she needs help with on her head and neck, and I'm happy to oblige her. She did lose some weight between her last two vet visits, and we are keeping an eye on that, but when I last weighed her she seemed to have gained some of that back.

She does have one problem resulting from her hernia, which is that she can no longer reach all the way back around to her rump when preening - when she has tried it, she has let out a squawk (sharp pain?). As new feathers have come in on her rump and tail, I have had to restrain her and remove the sheath myself, because they are very obviously bothering her. She doesn't like being held down, so I try to minimize it to when she's getting a hormone shot, when I have to restrain her anyway. I bought a bird restraining strap at the vet's office. This is a vinyl piece with three rows of velcro-tipped straps; you wrap the bird in a small towel, and fasten a strap around the towel at the bird's neck. The bird is usually distracted by the strap and chews on it, which lets you do what you need to do. It doesn't put pressure on the bird's chest and abdomen, so breathing isn't impaired.

This strap has made things much easier (on both bird and human) than the towel alone; injections and such can be done without the help of another person. While she takes out her frustration on the velcro, I use one hand to hold her legs, and have the other free to remove her overgrown feather sheaths, then give her her shot, which is done in the chest muscle. It's a very small needle, and the only time she's ever expressed any discomfort at all was once at the vet's office, when they had just drawn the (refrigerated) serum (so she got a cold shot). I make sure the syringe has a few minutes to get to room temperature before I give her her shot at home, and she always seems more pained about the restraint part of things. She is due for another shot this Saturday. So far they seem to be working, though she is acting a bit "nesty" again as the days grow shorter (why she should go into season in the fall rather than in spring is anyone's guess, but I guess it is not uncommon in parrots kept in the US, including Pionus and African greys).

We have settled into a morning routine now. She really has been enjoying time out of the cage, so I try to make sure she gets some every day. Every weekday morning when I come from the shower, I stop and open her cage door. She is usually waiting on her lower perch right in front of the door, and offers her head to be scratched. (If you aren't familiar with bird behavior, birds will solicit scratches by lowering their heads slightly and raising the feathers on their necks and cheeks.) She usually wants me to scratch her for several minutes before she is ready to step up onto my hand, when I take her to the headboard of the bed. She sits there and watches the other birds, sometimes chattering or displaying, while I get ready for work. I go to the kitchen and prepare the birds' breakfast, then dump out their dishes and feed them, then I will call her over to go back into her cage and eat, which she is usually eager to do.

Everyone is still enjoying their diet. Corn has been in season, so I have been adding fresh corn shaved off the cob to their bird bread mixture. Aziza especially enjoys this treat, along with chopped carrot. I have a mango I need to cut up; Kelele is fond of those. Kianga likes grapes best. Koga will eat just about everything, but she is a funny bird - she likes to sip Hansen's soda (which she doesn't get very often, because we just don't drink much soda). I am still trying to figure out what Ti'iki, my Pacific parrotlet, likes best of all, though he eats the bird bread and his pellets with plenty of gusto.

I will need to post some new photos soon, because Aziza looks so much better now. She had been rubbing off all the feathers around her ceres (nostrils), but these have molted back in, and so she now has the rust-colored patches next to her nostrils so distinctive in the dusky Pionus.

Friday bird blogging

A seagull in Aberdeen, Scotland has taken to thievery in order to get his fix of Doritos. Go read and watch the video. Cheeky monkey!

extinct...or maybe not

Great news if true:

A species of egg-laying mammal, named after TV naturalist Sir David Attenborough, is not extinct as was previously thought, say scientists.

On a recent visit to Papua's Cyclops Mountains, researchers uncovered burrows and tracks made by the Attenborough's long-beaked echidna.

The species is only known to biologists through a specimen from 1961, which is housed in a museum in the Netherlands.

The team will return to Papua next year to find and photograph the creature.

The month-long expedition by scientists from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) involved travelling to parts of the mountain range, covered by thick jungle, which had remained unexplored for more than 45 years.

I'm going to have to do some Googling, but it seems that this isn't the only species named after Sir David. However, it would be really cool to 'rediscover' this one within his lifetime.

funny

A funny video of two chickens breaking up a fight between two rabbits. They really put some whup-ass on those naughty bunnies.

As the chickens walk off at the end, it looks like they're saying "well, our work here is done."

hooray!

Saturday, Aziza had her checkup to see how her respiratory illness is resolving. And guess what? The x-ray was totally clear! So she is off the terbenefine now.

She will still be getting hormone shots, so she doesn't make herself ill trying to make more eggs, but her lungs and air sacs are clear of fungal infiltrates. The vet did note that she seems to have some arthritis in her left knee, and I did notice around February that she was starting to rest more on her right leg...but I thought it was due to her hernia bothering her. Anyway, this s mostly very good news, now we just have to get her weight stabilized, but she has been acting much more like her old self recently. She's also molting in a whole bunch of new feathers, so she has been very affectionate, wanting help preening the feathers she can't reach on her head.

parrot update

As far as the domestic front goes, Aziza is doing a lot better, though she still needs to put on some weight. I am covering her at night, and trying to figure out a schedule so that she only gets 10 hours of sunlight per day. On the 23rd, she gets another x-ray to see if her respiratory infection has resolved.

The other birds are good. Kianga has been cracking me up, exclaiming "woo!" at oh-so-appropriate moments. We are 3/5 done with the yearly project of dismantling and scrubbing down the birds' cages, toys and perches; the remaining two will be done as the weekend weather cooperates (it is no fun spraying bird shit on a cold day, let me tell you).

As has been usual now for the last 6 months, the birds have been eating well. Every morning and afternoon, they get several tablespoons of a mixture on top of a bed of Roudybush pellets. The mixture is bird bread, bean mix, chopped fruit, and a few teaspoons of Harrison's mash, all mixed together. The bird bread is a low-cal corn bread that includes edamame, corn, chopped spinach and diced peeled yam, sometimes with blueberries added. The bean mix is a dry chili mix purchased from the bulk section, soaked overnight and then cooked with split peas, brown rice, raisins, and date pieces. We crumble a piece of bird bread into a container, add a few spoons of bean mix, pop that in the microwave to warm it, add the mash and a few spoons of fruit, then mix it all up before dishing it out on top of the pellets. And yes, some of them actually even eat the pellets too. They also get Nutriberries (though not for long, as the vet has discouraged this, so I'm using up the last container), corn on the cob, and occasionally, some of what we're eating (cooked pasta or veggies). The fruit can include apples, oranges, kiwi, mango, papaya or grapes, depending on what is in season. I'm going to have the best fed parrots evah. The best thing is how excited the get when they are waiting to be fed, and the happy munching sounds that ensue.

giant birdlike dinosaurs found

Now this would have been one scary bird:

The remains of a giant, birdlike dinosaur as tall as the formidable tyrannosaur have been found in China, a surprising discovery that indicates a more complicated evolutionary process for birds than originally thought, scientists said Wednesday.

Fossilized bones uncovered in the Erlian Basin of northern China's Inner Mongolia region show that the specimen was about 26 feet long, 16 feet tall and weighed 3,000 pounds, said Xu Xing, a paleontologist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology & Paleoanthropology in Beijing.

Here, chickie chickie!

Friday bird blogging

Not my birds, today....but I thought I would share this clip from David Attenborough's The Life of Birds.

This is a QuickTime clip of a lekking Superb Lyrebird, from Southern Australia. Lek describes a mating system in which males call and display their plumage in order to attract females, often in an arena scratched out on the ground, or sometimes perched in trees. Sometimes it is done competitively (lots of males within sight of each other), in other cases the males are solitary. Lots of different birds (and apparently even some mammals) use this mating system, from the grouse and peacock to the kakapo (a flightless parrot from New Zealand).

Mike Reynolds

Mike Reynolds, who was a founder of the World Parrot Trust, has died in Cornwall, England, at the age of 76.

Fortunately, he lived to see the enactment of a ban of importation of wild parrots and other birds into the EU, something we have had here in the US since the Wild Bird Conservation Act of 1996. Rest well, Mr. Reynolds.

another Tuesday parrot update

For those who are following the parrot saga....

Aziza got her third shot on Saturday as scheduled, as soon as I got home from my conference. She seemed a bit sleepy, apparently, through Friday, and looked a bit run down on Saturday as well, though she was eating well. Since Sunday morning, however, she has been acting really different...more like the Aziza I used to know - a regular chatterbox of Pionus squeaks, flaring her tail, and offering her head for scritches. Don't know what's gotten into her. But the past few days she has seemed much better, though she is still too thin. She's also drinking an unusual volume of water, I'll have to ask the vet about that. So far, no more eggs (knock on wood). Her next injection is scheduled for this Saturday morning.

Wednesday wildlife blogging

Just so you know things haven't been all doom and gloom, here are some neat pictures of critters we've seen recently around the place.

Here is a moth that was in the house, trying to blend in on a wall:


And here are a couple of photos of the pileated woodpecker that has been hanging around the past few months, working on a snag left after the mid-December storm:



The woodpecker is interesting to watch - he is perfectly aware that you are approaching, but he's big enough, I guess, that he doesn't seem too concerned about it, and he lets you get pretty close. He's really been excavating this snag, and finding ants and other insects to eat. As the excavation area widens, he strips the ivy down, out of his way.