Would you like to know something interesting about falcons?
YES
Mid-century use of DDT and related pesticides caused a massive decline in wild raptor populations. They built up in the brids’ fatty tissues and caused their eggshells to become too thin, meaning many chicks did not hatch. Peregrine falcons became endangered in many parts of the world as a direct result.
Conservation efforts to save the species began in the late 1960′s, but there was one alarming problem: without parents of their own species to see, falcons raised by hand imprinted on humans. When these falcons reached sexual maturity, they had no interest in other falcons – they recognized their keepers as their mates and would not copulate with others of their own species.
So, falconers and conservation biologists did the logical thing: they developed special Falcon Sex Hats. They’re large rubber hats with a rolled brim, covered in a honeycomb of… orifices. The conservationist will wear this hat and then “court the male falcon by mimicking a female’s head bobs and vocalizations. If it works, the falcon will land on the hat and inject its genetic material into one of the honeycombs. It is then collected from the hat and used to artificially inseminate a female falcon.
It worked, and the peregrine falcon was removed from the Endangered Species list in 1999.
Here is a video of the hat in action:
Nowadays people mostly try to raise peregrine falcons using falcon puppets so that the chicks do not imprint upon human beings. Still, you can buy Falcon Sex Hats online, if you’re a falconer and wish to breed your birds that have eyes only for you.
the dodo might hold the crown as the most famous extinct animal, and granted, they deserve it. they were the first species that humans acknowledged they had led to the extinction of. that’s a really significant title! but comparatively speaking, the death of a species of fat flightless pigeon with no natural predator on a tiny island isn’t half as horrifying as what happened to passenger pigeons.
the sheer scale at which these birds existed, and their subsequent extinction, is something i cannot wrap my head around. i know what happened – i’ve read novels upon novels about this, i’ve seen the pictures, i know all the details, but the more i think about it the more i realise i can’t possibly process it to its fullest extent because i wasn’t there. i didn’t live through that. i’ll never be able to fully understand how sudden it was.
these birds were over 5 billion strong at their peak. when they travelled, they allegedly blacked out the sun for thirty minutes at a time. they formed rivers in the sky, and there’s art and record of this from dozens of people. it wasn’t just one person’s poetic interpretation. these birds existed in an overwhelming quantity, and no doubt because of that that people took them for granted.
they were plentiful. they were obnoxiously plentiful, and yet humans took them out so cleanly and quickly and efficiently that from this species, from this five billion-strong species, we have only a single picture of a passenger pigeon squab.
these birds faded out of existence in the span of someone’s lifetime.
And now you know why we have the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. It’s not to inconvenience those who whine when you can’t keep a crow feather you found on the ground or a taxidermy owl without papers at an antique shop. It’s because by the time the law was passed in 1918 the commercial hunting of birds was so incredibly destructive that it was already to late for several species, and many others were on the brink.
We have a HUGE abundance of wildlife compared to how many places in the US were by the turn of the 20th century. Not just birds, but mammals and other species. From the MBTA of 1918 to the Endangered Species Act of 1973 to the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act of 1940, all of these and more are there to keep us from doing the same damned thing we did before. Only now we have SO MANY MORE PEOPLE who are sucking up even more habitat and other resources wildlife need.
One of commissioned OCs, but I just fell in love.Due to many symbolic connotations with ravens, drew her as Veshnitsa-Soroka (Magpie-foreteller) — shapeshifting witch from slavic folklore.
It’s time for another Installment of Family Lore from my wierd-ass childhood!
Story contains: poor childhood decisions, profanity, extremely poor animal handling practices, and a semi-graphic description of an injury. Mind the content warnings, your health comes first. As usual, all names have been changed to protect everyone’s privacy. rest of the story under the cut to avoid a five-mile post.
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This is the story of the first time I said the word “Fuck” In front of my mother.
When I was a kid, my parents would drive to Ohio from California every other summer of so to visit my Mom’s family, who never figured out that they can escape. Four days is a long ass time to be a small child in the back of an unairconditioned van with a bunch of rotting bananas but it was worth it for being able to more or less run wild through the Ohio woods.
My mother’s family consisted of my grandparents Polly and Bobby, and her younger brother, Bobby. Bobby has a saint of a wife named Stephanie, and three children. My sister was very fond of cousins Samantha and Amanda.
Due to a combination of Ye Olde Misogyny and post-delivery drugs, for about five generations there, the men had been naming all the children, so literally every AMAB person born into the family was named “Robert” and immediately shortened to “Bobby”. Uncle Bobby very nearly did this to his firstborn, wich would have brought the total number of Bobbies to 8 between the miscellaneous cousins and uncles, when Stephanie put her foot down and named him Jonathan Jackson the second she found out what sex he was.
Cousin JonJack is still my favorite cousin- he has a heart big enough to house every creeping and crawling thing on this planet, and a quiet determination to make things right with the world, even if that means doing something completely batshit insane.
We were camping at a place near West Branch State Park, at what is advertised as a “Luxury Campground next to a Private Lake” but is really an RV collection next to a glorified sump. It has the extremely redeeming feature of being smack in the middle of Northeast Ohio’s dense hardwood forest, and since we had parents that grew up in the area and had passed a reasonable amount of scouting knowledge onto us, we were turned lose after breakfast and told to return by dark or if anyone got hurt. This was splendid, as the woods were full of interesting things like nests of day-old rabbits, their hearts visible as they beat against their delicate rib cages, shimmering black rat snakes longer than we were tall, hives of wild bees, intricate in their geometric structure and remarkably patient as long as you didn’t poke them.
The Sump was even better- it had dozens of baby snapping turtles for the catch-and-releasing, catfish twice the size of any cat, a plethora of bugs and worms and crawdads and families of duck and best of all, Arthur, The Swan.
crows have been documented holding ‘funerals’ for many years. however, researchers suggest that they may not be mourning; evidence indicates that crows may be examining the body & surrounding area for potential threats to the rest of the flock.
DarkestElemental616 