Bird Behaviour in Action
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the horbills are quite large birds used to feed on fruit and mainly insects,arachnids and small vertebrates.
but they are not used to kill aduld birds.
in this case an African Grey Hornbill (tockus nasutus) has cought and killed a social weaver.
"a strange behaviour"
Etosha National Park ,Namibia
original 3K file here:
GAMBIA FEB 2019
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NORMALLY VERY PLACID HERON, with no neck showing, but something came near, did not see what it was, it reeled out its neck , with a feather duster look, with a loud grunting type call, was quite taken back with its very long neck behaviour. Have shown the normal pose thirty seven images back, if you want to compare
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THANK YOU for your visit and kind comments, they are very appreciated, enjoy your day, stay well and safe, God bless....
.................................................Tomx.
A black Swan attacking a Muscovy duck.
Hope you will enjoy this shot.
Many thanks to everyone who chooses to leave a comment or add this image to their favorites, it is much appreciated.
©Elsie van der Walt, all rights reserved. Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission. If you are interested in using one of my images, please send me an E-mail (elsie.vdwalt@gmail.com).
A Red-tailed Hawk mantling a lure at the Northwest Raptor Center.
The adrenaline involved in taking down prey/lure is such that after landing it takes a good five or more minutes for the raptor to let go of it's catch. Mantling hides their catch from other predators while they recuperate from the hunt and eat.
As the hawk landed near the edge of the flying field, just in front of me, I didn't think twice about laying down in the dirt to capture this behaviour.
Please don't use this image on websites, blogs, etc. without my permission.
I was observing a group of sea gulls next to the Yarra River when I took this shot.
I am sure you would have seen these postures and calls before.
I was also curious about these postures and their meanings.
Here you can see two common postures.
The gull in the front is showing the Forward Posture.
As the name implies, this posture is all about displaying a forward motion by holding the body roughly horizontal or slightly diagonally with the neck kinked characteristically.
The tail can sometimes be spread; the bill is either slightly opened or closed.
The Forward posture is used in the following situations:
1) hostile encounters
2) pair formation sequences
3) as a response to a bird approaching in flight
When used in hostile encounters on land, it often includes running towards an opponent, whereas in a pair formation sequence both gulls move parallel to each other
The Gull behind is doing the Mew Call
The Mew call is accompanied by a characteristic Arch-posture in which the head is held down and the wings are held slightly away from the body.
It is usually performed while walking but can be performed while standing, flying, or swimming as well.
The Mew call is used in both aggressive and non-aggressive situations:
Aggressive
1) In defense of food or territory, aimed at an opponent
2 )To attract a mate for support in territory defense
Non-aggressive
1) To attract a partner (also for courtship)
2) To call chicks that have wandered too far from the nest
3) To gather chicks for feeding or after they have been hiding after a disturbance
4) As a nest-relief invitation
5) As a call performed upon landing.
Many thanks for your visit, comments, invites and faves...it is always appreciated...
Peaceful Sunday
Barn Owl - Tyto Alba
Norfolk
Like most owls, the barn owl is nocturnal, relying on its acute sense of hearing when hunting in complete darkness. It often becomes active shortly before dusk and can sometimes be seen during the day when relocating from one roosting site to another. In Britain, on various Pacific Islands and perhaps elsewhere, it sometimes hunts by day. This practice may depend on whether the owl is mobbed by other birds if it emerges in daylight. However, in Britain, some birds continue to hunt by day even when mobbed by such birds as magpies, rooks and black-headed gulls, such diurnal activity possibly occurring when the previous night has been wet making hunting difficult. By contrast, in southern Europe and the tropics, the birds seem to be almost exclusively nocturnal, with the few birds that hunt by day being severely mobbed.
Barn owls are not particularly territorial but have a home range inside which they forage. For males in Scotland this has a radius of about 1 km (0.6 mi) from the nest site and an average size of about 300 hectares. Female home ranges largely coincide with that of their mates. Outside the breeding season, males and females usually roost separately, each one having about three favoured sites in which to conceal themselves by day, and which are also visited for short periods during the night. Roosting sites include holes in trees, fissures in cliffs, disused buildings, chimneys and haysheds and are often small in comparison to nesting sites. As the breeding season approaches, the birds move back to the vicinity of the chosen nest to roost.
Once a pair-bond has been formed, the male will make short flights at dusk around the nesting and roosting sites and then longer circuits to establish a home range. When he is later joined by the female, there is much chasing, turning and twisting in flight, and frequent screeches, the male's being high-pitched and tremulous and the female's lower and harsher. At later stages of courtship, the male emerges at dusk, climbs high into the sky and then swoops back to the vicinity of the female at speed. He then sets off to forage. The female meanwhile sits in an eminent position and preens, returning to the nest a minute or two before the male arrives with food for her. Such feeding behaviour of the female by the male is common, helps build the pair-bond and increases the female's fitness before egg-laying commences.
Barn owls are cavity nesters. They choose holes in trees, fissures in cliff faces, the large nests of other birds such as the hamerkop (Scopus umbretta) and, particularly in Europe and North America, old buildings such as farm sheds and church towers. Buildings are preferred to trees in wetter climates in the British Isles and provide better protection for fledglings from inclement weather. Trees tend to be in open habitats rather than in the middle of woodland and nest holes tend to be higher in North America than in Europe because of possible predation.
This bird has suffered declines through the 20th century and is thought to have been adversely affected by organochlorine pesticides such as DDT in the 1950s and '60s.
Nocturnal birds like the barn owl are poorly monitored by the Breeding Bird Survey and, subject to this caveat, numbers may have increased between 1995-2008.
Barn owls are a Schedule 1 and 9 species.
Population:
UK breeding:
4,000 pairs
Europe:
110-220,000 pairs
Dove and Red-headed Finch.
Many thanks to everyone who chooses to leave a comment or add this image to their favorites, it is much appreciated.
©Elsie van der Walt, all rights reserved. Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission. If you are interested in using one of my images, please send me an E-mail (elsie.vdwalt@gmail.com).
We have an amazing spring, and I think that even a year ago when I was walking 500 kilometers through the Netherlands, I didn't enjoy spring as much as I do this year.
Especially all the bird life that is around me, I am enjoying it everyday, with first all the mating behaviour, then the nestling and later the first hatchlings, while we are now seeing the young growing up very fast.
This shot is on the edge of what my camera can do, but I am quite happy with the result.
Birds of prey are fascinating and majestic animals. They can generally be defined as birds that feed on animals that they catch alive. Representatives of these two orders can be found almost everywhere in the world. Although these groups are distantly related, the behavioural and anatomical characteristics they share appear to be mainly the result of parallel evolution.
From the "senses" series: Vision
If someone sees something, they react. Cause-effect. According to Pavlov, reflexes could be conditioned. If you don't see, you don't react. But if vision is deprived from you and you know and watch that you don't see because someone doesn't want you to see, you react. Cause-effect.
RKO_9069.
Copyright: Robert Kok. All rights reserved! Watermark protected.
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This little sparrow was really taken with the seed head. It was a joy to watch it work its way round it.
A pair of Northern Gannets at their nest.
The male on the left had just returned and the female started to shake her head from side to side as if saying "Where have you been for all this time?"
The male then started to dart forward excitedly towards the female, beak agape,but never got too close.!
A few days later the female laid her first egg in the nest.
The head shaking is behaviour I have seen before but I have never managed to capture it on camera!.
Taken at RSPB Bempton.
juvenile marsh harrier (up) squawking at it's mum (down) for the moorhen chick in her claws. I don't know what I was doing with my shutter speed so excuse the quality lol but it shows some good behaviour. I'll be posting the mid air swap from the rear in about a week
Although they are not the only birds to engage in similar behaviour, gannets are famous for "billing" or “mutual fencing.” While it can happen any time both birds from a mated pair are at their nest site, it is quite routine when one bird returns to the nest after foraging for food or nesting material. The two gannets will face each other, often touching and calling. They then shake their heads side to side with their bills clacking together. They often bow, rub necks, and preen each other’s neck before taking up the more mundane activities of nesting in colonies, such as bickering and fighting with neighbors.
I post this photo for the Happy Caturday theme "Behaviour". Generally Sethi's behaviour is that of most outdoor cats, he loves to roam the neighbourhood, to hunt and to fight. When he is at home he is a different cat, quite peaceful and cuddly and he can look incredibly innocent. What always makes me smile is the way he sticks the tip of his tongue out when he is focused on something interesting, this is so typical Sethi.
Happy Caturday !
Courtship behaviour of the great crested grebe.
great crested grebe
Haubentaucher
[Podiceps cristatus]
With the Barred Owl resting at the top of this old pine tree and branches everywhere I wasn't going to take any photos... until...we noticed the squirrel curiously sneaking up behind the owl. :)
Thank you for viewing
Spyder turning his head upside down as I sweet talk him into taking his photo, behaving ever so bashful!
Posted for the Happy Caturday theme: "Behaviour"
Species: Lanius meridionalis.
Location: Canary Islands, Spain.
Southern grey shrike and Great Grey Shrike (Lanius excubitor) are now recognised as different species. Not only do they differ in some plumage details, but also in size, voice, behaviour and favoured habitat.
Many thanks to people who view or comment on my photos.
The Indian pangolin, thick-tailed pangolin, or scaly anteater (Manis crassicaudata) is a pangolin found on the Indian subcontinent. It is not common anywhere in its range. Like other pangolins, it has large, overlapping scales on its body which act as armour. It can also curl itself into a ball as self-defence against predators such as the tiger. The colour of its scales varies depending on the colour of the earth in its surroundings.
It is an insectivore, feeding on ants and termites, digging them out of mounds and logs using its long claws, which are as long as its fore limbs. It is nocturnal and rests in deep burrows during the day.
The Indian pangolin is threatened by hunting for its meat and for various body parts used in traditional medicine.
The Indian pangolin is a solitary, shy, slow-moving, nocturnal mammal. It is about 84–122 centimetres (33–48 in) long from head to tail, the tail usually being 33–47 cm long, and weighs 10–16 kg. Females are generally smaller than the males and have one pair of mammae. The pangolin possesses a cone-shaped head with small, dark eyes, and a long muzzle with a nose pad similar in color, or darker than, its pinkish-brown skin. It has powerful limbs, tipped with sharp, clawed digits. It is an almost exclusive insectivore and principally subsists on ants and termites, which it catches with a specially adapted long, sticky tongue.The pangolin has no teeth, but has strong stomach muscles to aid in digestion. The most noticeable characteristic of the pangolin is its massive, scaled armour, which covers its upper face and its whole body with the exception of the belly and the inside of the legs. These protective scales are rigid and made of keratin. It has 160–200 scales in total, about 40–46% of which are located on the tail. Scales can be 6.5–7 cm long, 8.5 cm wide, and weigh 7–10 grams. The skin and scales make up about one-fourth to one-third of the total body mass of this species.
The Indian pangolin has been recorded from various forest types, including Sri Lankan rainforest and plains to middle hill levels. The animal can be found in grasslands and secondary forests, and is well adapted to desert regions as it is believed to have a tolerance to dry areas, but prefers more barren, hilly regions. This pangolin species may also sometimes reach high elevations, and has been sighted in Sri Lanka at 1100 meters and in the Nilgiri mountains in India at 2300 meters. It prefers soft and semi-sandy soil conditions suitable for digging burrows.
Pangolin burrows fall into one of two categories: feeding and living burrows. Feeding burrows are smaller than living burrows (though their sizes vary depending on the abundance of prey) and are created more frequently during the spring, when there is a greater availability of prey. Living burrows are wider, deeper, and more circular, and are occupied for a longer time than feeding burrows, as they are mainly used to sleep and rest during the day. After a few months, the pangolin abandons the burrow and digs a new one close to a food source. However, it is not uncommon for the pangolin to shift back to an old burrow.
Unlike its African counterpart, the Indian pangolin does not climb trees, but it does value the presence of trees, herbs, and shrubs in its habitat because it is easier to dig burrows around them. Features that promote an abundance of ants and termites (grasses, bare grounds, bases of trees, shrubs, roots, leaf litter, fallen logs and elephant feces) are often present in pangolin habitats.
Few details are known about the breeding behaviour of the Indian pangolin. During the animal's mating period, females and males may share the same burrow and show some diurnal activities. Males have testes in a fold of the skin located in their groin areas. The female's embryo develops in one of the uterine horns. The gestation period lasts 65–70 days; the placenta is diffuse and not deciduate. Usually, a single young is born, but twins have been reported in this species. The young weigh 235–400 g at birth and measure roughly 30 cm. The newborn animals have open eyes, and soft scales with protruding hairs between them. The mother pangolin carries her young on her tail. When the mother and young are disturbed, the young pangolin is held against its mother's belly and protected by the mother's tail.
The Orange Ladybird (Halyzia sedecimguttata) on a maze-like porous surface of the Lumpy Bracket (Trametes gibbose) growing on live beech tree (Fagus sylvatica). Orange ladybirds feed on mildew on trees, so it might be the reason it visited this fungus. Beechwood. Lansdown, Bath, BANES, England, U.K.
One of the first local bird species to engage in mating behaviours is the Downy Woodpecker, though the Hairy and Pileated Woodpeckers are also pretty active at the same time. Chasing, calling, and scrapping (between competing males or females) is a behavioural backdrop in the woods around Ottawa.
I am not often lucky with opportunities for photography with Woodpeckers during this time. They move quickly, and often are chased higher up. It was fun to come across this male, busily digging into the bark, early one morning. He noticed me, but returned to his business pretty quickly. A few minutes later a female flew in and off they went.
His business was at the junction of the trunk and the branch coming off to the left. He was about six feet off the ground, and I was able to stay behind a tree nearby to leave him in peace while I secured an image.
#macromondays
#Cotton
Liebe Freunde, ich wünsche Euch ein glückliches, erfolgreiches, heiteres und vor allem ein gesundes Neues Jahr. Hoffen wir, dass das Jahr uns wieder ein Stück Normalität zurück gibt.
Von Herzen möchte ich den Menschen danken die im Gesundheitswesen, in den Seniorenheimen, Schulen, Kindertagesstätten, der Feuerwehr, der Polize für uns arbeiten.
Mein Dank auch an die Wissenschaftler die sie so schnell einen wirksamen Impfstoff entwickeln konnten. Meine Familie und ich sind inzwischen alle geboostert und Grippe geimpft. Falls ein vierter Picks nötig ist dann nehme ich ihn gerne in Anspruch.
Nun zu dem heutigen Thema, ich wußte zum Beispiel nicht das unsere Eurobanknoten aus einer speziellen Baumwolle, d.h. ,sie bestehen aus einem Sicherheitspapier basierend auf Baumwolle. Dank Wikipedia kann ich mich immer informieren. Als Dank gibt es jährlich eine Spende.
So ist Flickr nicht nur ein Hobby, sondern auch eine Lernplattform.
Dankeschön, dass Ihr vorbei geschaut habt, Danke für Eure Treue und die vielen schönen und liebenswerten Kommentare/Sterne. Ihr seid eine Bereicherung in meinem Leben.
Mein Wunsch, seid weiterhin achtsam und dass die Menschen die dringend medizienische Hilfe brauchen, sie auch erhalten und nicht wegen der Coronabelegung dringende OP`s Organspendeoperationen abgesagt und verschoben werden müssen sondern auch endlich wieder rechtzeitig und schnell durchgeführt werden können.
Sie sind die eigentlichen Opfer dieser Pandemie aber niemand spricht dieses Thema offen an. Meine persönliche Freiheit endet da wo ich durch mein Verhalten andere Menschen in Gefahr bringe.
© Alle Rechte vorbehalten.
Dear friends, I wish you a happy, successful, cheerful and above all a healthy New Year. Let us hope that the year will give us back a bit of normality.
From the bottom of my heart, I would like to thank the people who work for us in the health sector, in the homes for the elderly, schools, day-care centres, the fire brigade, the police.
My thanks also to the scientists who were able to develop an effective vaccine so quickly. My family and I are now all boosted and flu vaccinated. If in fourth picks is needed then I will gladly take it up.
Now to today's topic, I didn't know for example that our Euro banknotes are made of a special cotton, i.e. they are made of a security paper based on cotton. Thanks to Wikipedia I can always inform myself. As a thank you there is an annual donation.
So Flickr is not only a hobby, but also a learning platform.
Thank you for stopping by, thank you for your loyalty and the many nice and lovely comments/stars. You are an enrichment in my life.
My wish is that you continue to be attentive and that the people who urgently need medical help also receive it and that urgent organ donation operations do not have to be cancelled and postponed because of the corona layering, but can finally be carried out again quickly and in good time.
They are the real victims of this pandemic but no one addresses this issue openly. My personal freedom ends where I put other people in danger through my behaviour.
© All rights reserved.
Chers amis, je vous souhaite une nouvelle année heureuse, prospère, sereine et surtout en bonne santé. Espérons que cette année nous permettra de retrouver un peu de normalité.
Je voudrais remercier de tout cœur les personnes qui travaillent pour nous dans le secteur de la santé, dans les maisons de retraite, les écoles, les crèches, les pompiers, la police.
Mes remerciements vont également aux scientifiques qui ont pu développer si rapidement un vaccin efficace. Ma famille et moi sommes tous boostés et vaccinés contre la grippe. Si un quatrième pic est nécessaire, j'en profiterai volontiers.
Pour en venir au sujet d'aujourd'hui, je ne savais par exemple pas que nos billets de banque en euros étaient faits d'un coton spécial, c'est-à-dire qu'ils étaient composés d'un papier de sécurité à base de coton. Grâce à Wikipedia, je peux toujours m'informer. En remerciement, je fais un don chaque année.
Ainsi, Flickr n'est pas seulement un hobby, mais aussi une plate-forme d'apprentissage.
Merci d'être passés, merci de votre fidélité et de tous les beaux et adorables commentaires/étoiles. Vous êtes un enrichissement dans ma vie.
Mon souhait est que vous restiez attentifs et que les personnes qui ont besoin d'une aide médicale urgente la reçoivent et que les opérations urgentes de don d'organes ne soient pas annulées et reportées à cause de la pose de la coronaire, mais qu'elles puissent enfin être réalisées à temps et rapidement.
Ils sont les véritables victimes de cette pandémie, mais personne n'aborde ouvertement ce sujet. Ma liberté personnelle s'arrête là où je mets d'autres personnes en danger par mon comportement.
©Tous droits réservés.
One side of Timmy is the adventurer: today a wall was newly concreted at the construction site at the creek behind the house. Two hours later Timmy checked the quality of the work. Fortunately, the concrete was already solid enough so that he did not leave paw prints :-)))
Happy Caturday 2.10.2021 "Signature behaviour"
see all photos: meine.stimme.de/heilbronn/kultur-freizeit/das-maeuerchen-...
Strange behaviour a male Blue Tailed Damselfly trailing his tail in the mud,
View LARGE
Many Thanks for all your views, faves and very kind comments.
I made a quick trip to the nature reserve after work and met this beautiful and friendly girl. After moving to a very photogenic spot on the grass she spent several minutes turning, preening and generally showing off all her best sides for the camera! It was hard to pick a shot in the end :)
Stag frantically digging up mud at the edge of a lake to cover its antlers before dressing them in vegetation. Not sure if this is to impress the ladies or threaten other males in the rut.
For the last few late fall migration seasons, a flock of American à Wigeon have stayed on Mud Lake for a week or two, even longer if the food and weather hold. The flocks have been a great way to observe transitional behaviour - males coming into breeding plumage, courtship battles starting - and the array of plumage, as first year birds mix with adults of both sexes.
The birds move around the Lake looking for the vegetation they depend on. Their short bills are effective at ripping weeds from below the surface, and their faces are often buried in the water. Although they are not at skittish as Hooded Mergansers, for example, they are often out in the larger bays, farther from people. And they don’t seem to get alone particularly well with the resident Mallards.
But as luck would have it, on one of the few birding trips I was able to make in the last couple of weeks, several of the Wigeons decided to visit the small bay I was observing them from. I was pleased with the location I had staked out: sitting in damp shoreline, but with the Lake lit up with the reflected colours of fall foliage, the light working out. I was pretty excited at their approach.
And then they came closer, and closer, and pretty soon I was pulling back from the edge of the water to get at least a decent frame. This image of a male, with the sun lighting up both the duck and the leaves reflecting in the water, is an uncropped record.
On a side note: given that I use a lens that allows me to reduce the focal length, giving me the ability to expand the frame, I could have tried to get more Wigeon in the image. But in the moment, as I was tracking the approaching bird (it was moving toward and then along the shoreline), I am found myself trying to maximize the opportunity I had. On a stationary target I would be more inclined to explore focal lengths, but here I was locked on the eye, and working to get the field marks of the bird into the frame.
Not sure what,s going on here.At first i thought the ants were moving their larvae to another location,but the first larvae is clearly a plant hopper nymph! So moving plant hopper larvae for security,or food?
Thanks for your comments and faves,they are truly appreciated.
Plant and they will come!
This is just a record shot (I'd have liked to have gotten more of the wing in focus), as she wasn't for staying still, of the first common blue butterfly to visit my garden last year, after I planted bird's foot trefoil for my 'resident' leafcutter bees, and to attract common blue butterflies.
I was thrilled to watch her lay lots of eggs, which you can see her doing in this photo, all over the bird's foot trefoil ... and what amazing little structures the eggs are too---that's tomorrow's upload!
Great Crested Grebe - Podiceps Cristatus
The great crested grebe has an elaborate mating display. Like all grebes, it nests on the water's edge, since its legs are set relatively far back and it is thus unable to walk very well. Usually two eggs are laid, and the fluffy, striped young grebes are often carried on the adult's back. In a clutch of two or more hatchlings, male and female grebes will each identify their 'favourites', which they alone will care for and teach
Unusually, young grebes are capable of swimming and diving almost at hatching. The adults teach these skills to their young by carrying them on their back and diving, leaving the chicks to float on the surface; they then re-emerge a few feet away so that the chicks may swim back onto them.
The great crested grebe feeds mainly on fish, but also small crustaceans, insects small frogs and newts.
This species was hunted almost to extinction in the United Kingdom in the 19th century for its head plumes, which were used to decorate hats and ladies' undergarments. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds was set up to help protect this species, which is again a common sight.
The great crested grebe and its behaviour was the subject of one of the landmark publications in avian ethology: Julian Huxley's 1914 paper on The Courtship‐habits of the Great Crested Grebe (Podiceps cristatus).
Population:
UK breeding:
4,600 pairs
UK wintering:
19,000 individuals