#ornithology

The Inti Tanager Bird in Peru is Nicknamed the "Kill Bill Tanager" Because it Looks Like Uma Thurman's Yellow Jumpsuit in Quentin Tarantino's MovieOn October 10, 2000, a bird's song attracted the attention of ornithologists Daniel Lane and Gary Rosenberg as they led a tour group on the Kosñipata road in southeastern Peru. The captivating warble came from the forested hillside. Rosenberg recorded the sound while Lane surveyed the area with his binoculars. The latter then spotted the bird on a branch, and the two got a glimpse of the bird. It was a yellow bird with a pink bill. It was a bird unknown to the region.Unfortunately, the ornithologists had to leave the area that day, but they would return to look for the mystery bird. They would find the bird again almost after three years, on October 7, 2003. This time, they got a good view of it, and one pointed out the similarity between the bird and Uma Thurman's character in Kill Bill (the yellow tracksuit). The bird earned the nickname The Kill Bill Tanager, and it became a legend among ornithologists.The bird was just recently given an official name 21 years after its sighting: the Inti Tanager. Because of its very different features, the bird was classified as a new genus.More about this over at Audubon.(Image Credit: Daniel Lane)#Ornithology #Tanager #Taxonomy

Kleptotrichy: Birds Steal Hair From Living MammalsTitmice and their closest bird kin engage in some weird behavior. All sneaky-like, these birds would land on unsuspecting mammals and then pluck out some hair from their targets. When Jeffrey Brawn and Henry Pollock once participated in a spring bird count in central Illinois, Brawn noticed a titmouse plucking out some hair from a sleeping raccoon. Surprisingly, the raccoon didn't wake up. Intrigued, Brawn decided to study the matter. As the study authors consulted literature, they only found 11 instances of the behavior. When they checked YouTube, however, they found dozens of examples. Some of these birds even pluck some hair out of mammals who are wide awake. The question is, why would these birds risk their lives? The authors note possible reasons. The first reason was the birds needed some insulation in their nests. The second was that the odor associated with the mammal could deter predators. Another possible reason could be the hair capable of repelling parasites, a threat to chick survival. The authors have called this behavior kleptotrichy, from the Greek words "klepto" and "trich", which mean "theft" and "hair", respectively. The paper, published in the journal Ecology, is titled, “What the pluck? Theft of mammal hair by birds is an overlooked but common behavior with fitness implications." It is available online. Learn more about the study over at Illinois News Bureau. (Image Credit: Texas Backyard Wildlife) #Titmouse #Kleptotrichy #Ornithology #BirdBehavior #AnimalBehavior #Weird

This Goose is Flying Upside Down in an Aerial Maneuver That Birds Sometimes Use to Avoid PredatorsAmateur Dutch photographer Vincent Cornelissen captured this curious photograph of a goose that seemed to be flying upside down. The goose's body and wings are upside down, while its head is right-side up."The weather was bad, so I put on my waterproofs and sat with my back against a tree looking over a lake," Cornelissen said to KJZZ, "I saw that one of the three had trouble flying in a straight line. He was having a hard time which I thought was because of the wind. He seemed to be struggling, so I took some pictures of him.""I immediately realized that I had captured something special, but at the same time, I was afraid that no one would believe me. The image looked like it was edited in Photoshop."It turns out that birds do sometimes fly upside down in a maneuver that ornithologists call whiffling. The aerial maneuver causes the bird to briefly plummet towards the ground, before it reverses itself and fly like normal. The erratic motion looks like a falling leaf, and is often used to avoid predators.Image: Vincent Cornelissen#goose #flying #upsidedown #whiffling #ornithology #animalbehavior