View allAll Photos Tagged Behaviour
These huge boulders are called glacial erratics ... dropped here like this eons ago when the glaciers that covered the island during the last ice age melted.
This is not really erratic behaviour for erratics, since it is not uncommon to find them perched in precarious places such as this. These are up on top of the Annieopsquotch Mountains. I have a photo on my photostream taken from the other side. A photo that really is an optical illusion. This one is a straight on photo taken just today.
www.flickr.com/photos/33774669@N00/4463751866/in/dateposted/
The Birds of Ireland: A Field Guide with Jim Wilson
Shorebirds of Ireland with Jim Wilson.
Freshwater Birds of Ireland with Jim Wilson
www.markcarmodyphotography.com
A mixed bag of a flock containing predominantly Black-tailed Godwit, with Eurasian Teal and Black-headed Gull thrown in for good measure. This was part of a low-tide feeding frenzy at Poolbeg in Dublin Bay recently.
OBSERVE Collective
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germanstreetphotography.com/michael-monty-may/
Another from yesterdays visit to Priddy Mineries with quite a bit of cloud and a gentle breeze, managed to find a fairly sheltered spot and after a quick look around found a few Cinnabar moth caterpillars on a couple of Ragworts.
I noticed these two were in the right position to get both in focus though the head of the one on the left is slightly out of focus as it just wouldn't stop eating!!
Best viewed very large.
Visit Heath McDonald Wildlife Photography
You can see more of my images on my other flickr account Heath's moth page
I found these two trees while walking in a local forest park. The pair looked out of place in amongst the conifers, especially with the larger tree apparently reaching out a spindly almost threatening “hand” while looming over the smaller timid looking tree........ strange what tricks your mind plays on you while alone in the forest 😆.
Shorebirds of Ireland, Freshwater Birds of Ireland and The Birds of Ireland: A Field Guide with Jim Wilson.
www.markcarmodyphotography.com
The Great Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) is a widespread member of the cormorant family of seabirds. It breeds in much of the Old World and the Atlantic coast of North America. In European waters it can be distinguished from the Common Shag by its larger size, heavier build, thicker bill, lack of a crest and plumage without any green tinge. In eastern North America, it is similarly larger and bulkier than Double-crested Cormorant, and the latter species has more yellow on the throat and bill. Great Cormorants are mostly silent, but they make various guttural noises at their breeding colonies.
Many fishermen see in the Great Cormorant a competitor for fish. Because of this it was nearly hunted to extinction in the past. Thanks to conservation efforts its numbers increased.
Cormorant fishing is practiced in China, Japan, and elsewhere around the globe. In it, fishermen tie a line around the throats of cormorants, tight enough to prevent swallowing, and deploy them from small boats. The cormorants catch fish without being able to fully swallow them, and the fishermen are able to retrieve the fish simply by forcing open the cormorants' mouths, apparently engaging the regurgitation reflex.
In North Norway, cormorants are traditionally seen as semi-sacred. (wikipedia)
There are many Cormorants that fish along the shoreline of Dublin Bay. This adult was coming into the base of the east pier, Dun Laoghaire, Dublin.
Photo taken in downtown Reykjavík.
P.S. Many of those people are foreign visitors.
Tourism to Iceland has formally exploded in the years after the famous volcanic eruption in the glacier Eyjafjallajökull, which caused delays in flight all over North and Western Europe. Foreign tourism has remained at an extreme level; today more than a million tourists visit Iceland yearly, while the population is only about 330.000 - was around 200 thousand a decade and a half ago.
Avian influenza survivors
This pair of gannets on Bempton Cliffs were showing the characteristic greeting behaviour when one returned to the nest. If you examine their eyes, you can see they have a mottled appearance, rather than vivid blue irises. Gannet populations have been badly affected by the high pathogenicity avian influenza virus that has swept through the sea birds around the UK. Gannets that have survived infection have been found to have alterations to their irises which range from mottled (as seen here) to black.
See: www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/04/irises-of-gan...
It is not known what the long term effect of these changes are, but this pair appeared to be thriving, and were incubating an egg on the nest.
More of beautiful Bo, the hare I've been following as she transitions from her winter to summer pelage.
Self-anointing is a behaviour exhibited by all species of Hedgehog, but nobody really knows why they do it. I have never seen a wild Hedgehog self-anoint, but rearing this orphaned youngster has given me plenty of opportunities to witness it. They create a foamy saliva then undergo contortions to cover those hard-to-reach bits using their surprisingly long tongues. You can see the foamy saliva on that ridge near her tongue. My Hedgehog self-anoints when she tastes or smells something new, such as the first time she tasted cat-food, a worm, marjoram, and even after licking my son's feet. But sometimes she just does it for no apparent reason. The term self-anointing was coined by Maurice Burton, and was first used in a 1958 paper in New Scientist documenting the behaviour. But the behaviour was first recorded by German zoologist Ludwig Heck in 1912, when he called it selbstbespuchen, or ‘self-spitting’. Various theories have been put forward to exlain it (eg masking their smell, creating an extra irritant for would-be predators, deterring parasites) but for each idea there are examples that run counter to it. Anyway, there seem to be very few photographs on Flickr showing this behaviour, and it is something I wasn't previously aware of, so I thought I would share it. If you want to read more about the various theories attempting to explain the behaviour this is the best site: www.wildlifeonline.me.uk/animals/article/european-hedgeho...
A small group of Oystercatchers flew overhead and were showing signs of coming in for a landing in this spot, yelling continuously. These two were having none of it, and responded by doing some yelling of their own, repeatedly alternating between holding their heads high and then bowing down. The small flock went away after much screeching and never did land here.
Juvenile
Brown Thrasher BRTH (Toxostoma rufum)
tentatively or
experimentally feeding
Carmichael, Saskatchewan, Canada
DSCN9636
******
Mike McGrenere found one in Greater Victoria July 11th...Great Find Mike!
The behaviour of the "Cardinal fish " in the breeding season with the incubation of its fry in the mouth resembles that used by freshwater cichlids that incubate and protect their fry in their mouths, so we can say that the "Wren" is the cichlid of the Mediterranean.
Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission ©2022 José Salmerón - all rights reserved.
El comportamiento del "Apogon Imberbis" en la época reproductiva con la incubación de sus alevines en la boca se asemeja a la que utilizan los ciclidos de agua dulce que incuban y protegen a sus alevines en la boca, por lo podemos decir que el "Reyezuelo" es el ciclido del Mediterráneo.
Always entertaining to watch but once you see them coming together you've missed it, just managed to spot the build up with this pair.
St Aidan's Nature Park.
This Robin swayed and rocked from side to side for quite a while (minutes at least) with puffed feathers and beak slightly opened, displaying to another one sitting just above it. Amazing behaviour to witness. Had never seen this before.
These guys were not playing, the dust they were kicking up , the heat haze off the path, plus a large crop, messed with things here, as did having to quickly drop to one knee and hand hold., these excuses aside, worth sharing I thought.
Taken at RSPB Titchwell, on the main path, MORE IN THE SERIES BELOW IN COMMENTS
Canon EOS-1D X
ƒ/10.0
700.0 mm
1/5000
iso 1250
Found plenty of these Bloody Nosed Beetles yesterday morning over at Priddy Mineries, you are able to spot them from some distance as they like to climb the reed stems, amongst them were also several mating pairs, so it was just a question of which was the most accessible with the camera without disturbing and causing them to perform that great beetle trick of retracting the undercarriage and dropping into the undergrowth. (which is why I don't have many shots of Weevils!)
Best viewed very large.
Visit Heath McDonald Wildlife Photography
You can see more of my images on my other flickr account Heath's moth page