Once A Bafflement To The Finest Minds At The Academy Of Bird Sciences, The Remarkable Mystery Surrounding

Once a bafflement to the finest minds at The Academy of Bird Sciences, the remarkable mystery surrounding the diurnal behaviour of Burrowing Owls has finally been solved with an unexpected twist: they are completely blind and they are not diurnal. What were once hypothesized to be protective ‘hatless brim’ feathers are actually specially shaped to channel forward-facing sound into their ear holes, allowing effective around the clock hunting. The belief they were diurnal was easily debunked upon realising every ornithographer contracted by TABS to study these birds would retire to bed at a reasonable hour.

Historically used as high-visibility life preservers on fast warships, Frigatebirds are island-dwellers who opted for millennia of laborious evolution rather than learn to swim. By inflating their gular pouch, these indolent sea-birds can float about on the surface of the water, waiting to snap up any small fish who wander by. Unfortunately the bright red sac is visible even below the water’s surface, making these clumsy swimmers prime targets for hungry dolphins.

Barn Swallow nestlings have a dual-vocal structure much like adult Grebes. This doubling of sound production allows the baby birds to stun interloping predators and help parent Swallows find the nest again in time for feeding. Unlike grebes however, the laryngeal portion diminishes as they become fledglings, ultimately disappearing shortly after striking out on their own.

Monopodal due to poor diabetes care, American Robins are one of the most iconic birds of the United States. Tipping the scales at three times the weight of their European counterparts, these birds can be found feasting on a wide variety of insects, seeds, and fast-food dumpster overflow. Don’t be fooled by their sub-par healthcare outcomes and generally unapologetic dietary habits however, as these birds are highly aggressive and will attack any birder that makes public note of their many and glaring flaws.

Do birds have their own religion?

This is actually a fascinating question so I apologise in advance for breaking format today! In short, yes birds do but that is such an incredible reduction as to be nearly meaningless.

To turn it around a bit, consider the question: Do humans have their own religion? Birds are equally complex in their religiosity. Migratory birds tend to have different belief structures as compared to nonmigrants, seed-eaters have different rituals from insectivores, and even on the intraspecies level there exist fascinating rifts, allegiances, schisms, and reformations.

By way of a ‘for instance’, European Starlings were introduced to the Americas in an incredibly misguided effort to bring all birds mentioned by Shakespeare to the New World. In a great fit of cosmic irony, these birds loathe his writing and self-segregate into religious orders that each focus on different works to abhor. While some may argue that hatred cannot be the basis of a religion, I would like to point out the Westboro Baptist Church exists and is recognised as a religious institution.

What’s more intriguing though are how human religions and bird religions intersect, influence, and mirror each other. For an example on the last one, whereas many human religions share diluvian themes, bird religions often feature celestial objects falling from the sky and lighting the world aflame. One hypothesis is that they’re both expressing fears of easy habitats being destroyed but personally I think birds are retelling the K-T extinction event.

One intersection of bird and human mythology comes from the Lenni-Lenape. They’ve passed down a story about the Sun coming far too close to earth, and only through the heroic efforts of the Turkey Vulture was it returned to its rightful place. This story is lifted directly from the bird’s own mythology, hence the great pains taken to emphasize how beautiful and strong and glorious they were before pushing the sun back into the sky burned off all the feathers on their head while charring most everywhere else.

All that said I’m not a comparative theographologist and so I may be a bit fuzzy on the details but yes absolutely birds do have almost as many religions as there are birds. If anyone has other examples please feel free to share!

After years of scholarly research, the reason for the Waxwing's incredible painting-like appearance has finally been uncovered in the diaries of a young man who briefly worked in then-amateur naturalist (and professional wizard) John James Audubon’s studio. Unbeknownst to the youth, Audubon had inserted several alchemical reagents in the various dyes used in the collotype printing process; upon completion of the print these magnificent birds sprang from the page and completely overtook the natural population in both looks and reproductive capacity. If you’ve ever wondered at the stark difference in living and preserved specimens, this is why!