A living art exhibit at a British concert hall experimented with sound by combining 40 zebra finches with plugged-in electric guitars for perches and cymbals filled with water and seed as feeders. As the birds landed on various instruments the "music" was amplified for gallery visitors. No word on how well the birds played, but we do know they behaved like typical musicians, trashing the place.
We're not sure what statement women who buy Bangkok jewelry designer Lotus Arts de Vivre's $39,000 parrot-shaped handbag with "676 hand-set scarab wings" are hoping to make, except maybe "I'm strangely ostentatious," or "I was Cleopatra in a former life." Definitely, "I am gratuitously rich."
The owners of a 17-story office complex in Toronto are being sued by eco-lawyers for the deaths of thousands of birds that have flown into the mirrored towers. Consillium Place was built a decade ago, so it did not have to comply with new building guidelines that call for patterned exteriors.
According to the Fatal Light Awareness Program, a nonprofit that monitors bird deaths from building strikes, the Toronto complex is one of the deadliest in the world during migration season. On one particular day, May 12, 2001, FLAP volunteers collected 500 injured or dead birds in six hours. (Photo: Avian victims, courtesy of FLAP.)
Youse wanna meet some of dose famous Quaker parakeets dat live wild in Brooklyn, eh? Well aw right, den! Steve Baldwin, owner of the site BrooklynParrots.com, leads real-world tours of the birds, too. The next Brooklyn Wild Parrot Safari will take place Aug. 7 at the parrots' own "Ellis Island", the site of the first big Quaker nest, at Brooklyn College. See yis dere!
Don't buy your male enhancement pills online, and never buy them in New Zealand airports. They could be made of bird droppings.
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July 22, 2010Glider perches like a bird
Imagine a plane that lands like a parakeet. Scientists who have developed the experimental aircraft envision the technology being used to allow robot planes to recharge themselves by perching on electric power lines. Glad the major airlines are passing on this idea; landings are rough enough already.
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July 21, 2010U.S. soldiers take eagle under their wing
Navy SEALs rescued a steppe eagle, a large bird of prey common in Afghanistan, after it was purposely shot by an Afghan soldier being trained on a rifle range. The U.S. soldiers have been trying for weeks now to arrange for the wounded bird to be brought stateside for better care. They contacted a bird sanctuary in New York state, which in turn contacted New York senator Charles Schumer, whose office called the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Numerous permits are needed to bring the eagle to the U.S. for rehabilitation, including a written release from Afghanistan, where the bird is an endangered species. Schumer's office is trying to streamline the process before the soldier's unit leaves Afghanistan in September.
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July 20, 2010It's official: The chicken came first
The New York Daily News reports that researchers have answered the age-old question, and perhaps it's no surprise that it's the chicken, not the egg, that was first on the evolutionary scene.
"It all comes down to one protein - ovocledidin-17 - which helps in the formation of the egg's hard shell," wrote scientists from universities in Sheffield and Warwick. "This essential ingredient in the formation of the egg can only be produced inside a chicken," the research paper concludes.
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July 19, 2010Tough old buzzard
Talk about keeping your cool. A helicopter pilot and his passenger were flying over Miami shooting videos when a vulture crashed through the front window and landed in the pilot's lap. The video is understandably jerky and does not show the entire bird but look for the turkey buzzard's bald red head. When the chopper safely landed 20 minutes later and the passenger side door opened, the bird unceremoniously flapped away. The pilot suffered cuts.
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July 16, 2010Ask Dr. Speer
ParrotChronicles and The Daily Bird blog are delighted to welcome Brian Speer, DVM, to the site to answer your questions about bird health.
Dr. Speer, founder of The Medical Center for Birds in Oakley, Calif., and coauthor of Birds for Dummies, is famous for his expertise in avian medicine and warm bird-side manner. In fact, TDB's own blue-and-gold macaw, Lou-Lou, is personally beholden to Dr. Speer for relieving her of a stuck egg. That means you, dear bird-loving reader, are in most excellent hands!
In his first column Dr. Speer helps a reader who fears her bird's new feathers are growing in with some sort of strange, waxy buildup.
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July 15, 2010Bank of America kidnapped bird
You know it's bad when they foreclose on your parrot.
According to The New York Daily News, back in October Bank of America hired a local company to padlock a woman's house for back mortgage payments. Trouble is, BoFA had her mixed up with another customer - and the third-party company ransacked the woman's house and bird-napped her blue-and-gold macaw, Luke, for good measure. Angela Iannelli, who had to wait a week before she was allowed to retrieve her bird, has decided BoFA's apology was not enough. She's suing.
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July 14, 2010Party line
An estimated 50,000 rooks, the British relative of the crow, strain telephone wires.
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July 13, 2010Geese die so we can fly
Ever since the 2009 ditching in the Hudson River of a U.S. Airways flight, New York officials have been on a goose-culling mission, according to the New York Times. In the latest effort, 400 geese, including fuzzy goslings and a bird that recently made headlines after surviving being shot in the neck with an arrow, were rounded up in Brooklyn's popular Prospect Park and gassed in a nearby building. The goal is to eliminate geese within seven miles of New York City's two major airports. That's harsh.
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July 12, 2010Rare white ravens
In literature and in movies ravens are creatures of the night, portending evil and death. Makes you wonder what Mr. Poe might have thought about white ravens, ghostly looking cousins of the black raven that are rarely seen in nature. Indigenous Canadians believed that the sight of a white raven meant the end of the world was near. Most recently two were photographed in British Columbia by local bird expert Mike Yip.
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July 10, 2010The pet bird that makes you breakfast
The Wall Street Journal reports that pet chickens are becoming such a popular pet that a cottage industry is springing up to serve their owners. Sites such as mypetchicken.com and backyardchickens.com are dispensing everything you need to keep chickens, from pens, food and baby chicks to diapers for chickens who will live in the house.
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July 9, 2010My bird can beat up your bird
It sounds unbelievable, but in Brazil, where it was outlawed 20 years ago according to this Boston.com story, it's known as canary fighting. Now it's popping up in the U.S. In the last year there have been two stings on finch fighting rings, the last in the Boston area. Male saffron finches, pretty little yellow birds that are very territorial in the wild, fight to the death in small cages, egged on by a female finch kept nearby. Owners sharpen the birds' beaks to make them more lethal.
July 8, 2010Who's your Baba?
Parrots taught to pray to Allah and quote the Quran fetch prices up to $10,000 in Dubai, notes the Al Arabiya News Channel. Insert your own tasteless bird-in-tiny-suicide-bomber-vest joke here.
July 7, 2010This would take guts to buy
Nothing says "I love you" more than a parrot skull necklace complete with entrails, don't you think? According to this
LA Weekly blog entry it's part of artist Tithi Kutchamuch's Secret Friend collection.
July 6, 2010Baby gets new shoes
A rare crowned crane chick born with deformed feet received corrective booties from zookeepers. As an adult crowned crane (inset), this little cutie will stand four feet tall.
July 3, 2010Independence Day
The Daily Bird is pleased to be living in a part of the world where people can flag diaper their parrot without fear of persecution. Viva America!
July 2, 2010Canada needs a national bird, eh?
Canadians have been asked to suggest birds that "the general public will be able to identify and see on a regular basis in their daily activities."
If Canadians are as inundated with Canada geese as Americans are, then the goose is the obvious choice. Clearly it's a cut above the loon, currently the defacto national bird of Canada. In fact, if ubiquity is the deciding factor, Americans should dump our bald eagle and switch to the Canada goose before the Canadians grab it. How many times have you seen an eagle in the last year? How many times, on the other hand, have you stepped in goose poop?
If the U.S. can't switch to the goose, we should go with another bird every American sees on a regular basis: the English sparrow, the English starling, or a bucket of KFC.
July 1, 2010The race to save a parrot that never was
The video is poignant. Images of a doomed species of parrot, slaughtered for its green feathers, which are then made into Carnaval costumes. It's the rare Galvao, pushed to the brink of extinction; only two are left in Brazilian rainforests. But you can help. Simply by retweeting the words, "Cala Boca Galvao," you can generate a 10-cent donation toward saving this magnificent bird: "One second to tweet, one second to save a
life."
It's all so sad, so moving, so...fake.
Anyone who knows anything about parrots will instantly recognize the "Galvao" as an decidedly un-endangered green Amazon parrot. And if you happen to know Portuguese as well, you'll know that "cala boca Galvao" means "shut your mouth, Galvao!" Who is Galvao? He's a sports commentator considered so obnoxious that Brazilians mute their TVs rather than listen to his rants.
GrrlScientist, "a colorful parrot who writes by typing with her beak," exposed the Twitter hoax in her blog last week. But that hasn't stopped other Galvao YouTube videos from being made - the second one depicts a dusky lory - or over a million people from viewing them. For the moment, though, Galvao is no longer a trending tweet.
