Western Gull
Animal portraits have become a favorite. This gull was hanging out on a picnic table at a nearby state park and was very patient. The droplets of water on its face remind me of how well these birds are adapted to surviving the harshest environments.
#seagull #westerngull #portrait #birds #birdwatching #birdportraits #animalportraits #nature #washington #pnw #stateparks
La huppe qui chassait dans le jardin s'est faite surprendre par une averse et s'est réfugiée sous la toiture devant la fenêtre.
These little striped cuckoo chicks sport plumage that mimics a pine cone.
After all, what idiot would want to swallow a pine cone for dinner?
Smart. Very smart.
Red-winged blackbird on a clear morning.
#birds #birding #BirdPhotography #wildlife #WildlifePhotography #nature #NaturePhotography #photography #AltText
We have baby swans! I counted 4
#NaturePhotography #Birds #Wildlife #Photography #BirdPhotography #BirdWatching
Patience....
At Merkinch Nature Reserve, amazingly not a mile from Inverness City Centre, as the heron flies, yesterday.
They say the trick in life is to get your .....
#Birds
At Muirton Basin, Caledonian Canal, yesterday
Vultures eat anthrax, botulism, rabies, & cholera for breakfast.
Their stomach acid is among the most corrosive in the animal kingdom, with a pH around 1, low enough to dissolve the bones, hide, & pathogens of dead animals that would kill almost anything else.
A vulture eating a diseased carcass isn't a vector for disease, it's the end of the line. The disease chain ends in the vulture's gut, & that's pretty hardcore.
When vulture populations crashed in India in the 1990s, rotting livestock carcasses sat where vultures used to clean them.
Feral dogs and rats took over the cleanup, both of which actually do spread rabies. Researchers later linked the vulture collapse to roughly 500,000 deaths in India over the following decade.
The same collapse is now underway in sub-Saharan Africa. 6 of 11 African vulture species are threatened with extinction, primarily from poisoned poaching baits.
The animals nobody finds cute are doing more public health work than most of the species we actively protect.
#Birds
