Perennial Hoodlums, Red-winged Blackbirds Have Finally Broken The Law Of Gravity. While It Is Easy Enough

Perennial hoodlums, Red-winged Blackbirds have finally broken the Law of Gravity. While it is easy enough to simply grip tightly to their perches from now on in order to prevent slowly drifting away, this remains quite an inconvenience for daily flight as these playful scamps need a crash course in orbital mechanics in order to navigate. Above, a Red-winged Blackbird crawls down a Cattail in order to reach water.

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Large corvids and parrots possess the largest avian brains, harboring the highest absolute numbers of neurons (Fig. 1 D and E and Fig. S4C). Their total numbers of neurons are comparable to those of small monkeys or much larger ungulates (Fig. S5).

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/06/07/1517131113.full

the whole paper is a trip, read it if you’re interested in comparative neurobiology with a focus on avian brain structure. tl:dr is: bird cells are smaller than mammalian cells, and as a consequence can pack in twice to four times as many neurons in the same space. bonus: as avian brains scale up they preferentially devote space to the telencephalon with three times as many neurons proportionally in the pallium as compared against humans and holy fuuuuuuuuuck this is the dopest shit read it read it read it

recovering from trip to new york

sorry i don’t have a bird prepped; writing time last week was swallowed up by planning and packing. on the bright side, i managed to obtain a couple of previous-millennium artifacts, visited a bird penitentiary, and even got to spend an evening with one of the leading ornithographists of NYC! so i have some interesting content as soon as i get photos developed, track down the list of incarcerated birds (i swore i put it in my purse but I can’t find it), and independently confirm the provenance of the artifacts. exciting stuff!

Held responsible for the assassination of a prominent diplomat in the ongoing negotiations between Blue Flycatchers and humans, Kelli Cyornis is currently serving a life sentence at the Hua Mei Ornithopenitentiary. In an attempt to understand I asked him why he would commit such a murder, one that deeply wounded the peace treaty. “████ you, milkmeat. You destroy our land and have the gall to demand answers. Rot.”

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members of the board, yes there are some blemishes on my investment record but just yesterday I got two mangoes for 98¢ the one that was ripe and the one that I dropped, that’s what I bring to this company decisiveness and responsibility

“It’s a case of mistaken identity,” Gary told me. “Well, kind of. I did it, but I didn’t know what I was doing; guy said he’d gimme money to sing a song a certain way so I do and next thing I know I’m on the ground tackled and the Feds’re accusing me of belonging to a terrorist faction. I never even got paid!” While the charges of conspiracy to commit a terrorist act were eventually dropped, Gary was still sentenced to twenty years imprisonment at Hua Mei Ornithopenitentiary for materially aiding a terrorist organization.

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