View allAll Photos Tagged Behaviour
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.
Mala Mala Game Reserve
Near Kruger National Park
South Africa
Happy Caturday!!
The leopard (Panthera pardus) is one of the five species in the genus Panthera, a member of the Felidae. The leopard occurs in a wide range in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia and is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List because leopard populations are threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation and are declining in large parts of the global range.
Contemporary records suggest that the leopard occurs in only 25% of its historical global range. Leopards are hunted illegally, and their body parts are smuggled in the wildlife trade for medicinal practices and decoration.
Compared to other wild cats, the leopard has relatively short legs and a long body with a large skull. It is similar in appearance to the jaguar, but generally has a smaller, lighter physique. Its fur is marked with rosettes similar to those of the jaguar, but the leopard's rosettes are smaller and more densely packed, and do not usually have central spots as the jaguar's do. Both leopards and jaguars that are melanistic are known as black panthers.
The leopard is distinguished by its well-camouflaged fur, opportunistic hunting behaviour, broad diet, and strength (which it uses to move heavy carcasses into trees), as well as its ability to adapt to various habitats ranging from rainforest to steppe, including arid and montane areas, and its ability to run at speeds of up to 58 kilometres per hour (36 mph).- Source Wikipedia
I make a point of not seeking out photos of birds on nests but on this occasion, i was startled after trying to get some decent photos of a pair of Rufous Fantails in constant flight when one of the pair landed on this nest which I was completely oblivious too. A stunning bird! The nest was a pice of art - suspended from a thin branch about 2 metres above a running creek within the Lyrebird Forest Walk near Mirboo North, Central Gippsland, Victoria.
Found this an entertaining behaviour. This is my third images of these two: they are taken from distance and cropped but i find them interesting behaviour shots. A close up of the marmot showed some scares on his face and his approach was very cautious; i think this might be a repeated behaviour :)
OBSERVE Collective
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germanstreetphotography.com/michael-monty-may/
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 😆.
Repost from earlier this year. One of the Pool Bridge Farm Kestrels coming of a perch straight towards me.
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.
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.
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.
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...
House Finches
April 8, 2025, Rondeau Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada.
In the hedge in the yard a pair of house finches displaying courting behaviour with the male giving seeds to the female.
Haemorhous mexicanus
The red of a male House Finch comes from pigments contained in its food during molt (birds can’t make bright red or yellow colors directly). So the more pigment in the food, the redder the male. This is why people sometimes see orange or yellowish male House Finches. Females prefer to mate with the reddest male they can find, perhaps raising the chances they get a capable mate who can do his part in feeding the nestlings.
House Finches feed their nestlings exclusively plant foods, a fairly rare occurrence in the bird world. Many birds that are vegetarians as adults still find animal foods to keep their fast-growing young supplied with protein.
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.