For WHO's birders

[Nurse Ratched]

"I thought you might like this video.



It's a compilation of different birds singing. Beautiful photography. If you expand the 'title' under the video it gives a list of species and the times they pop up in the video. Most of the species are familiar to us in the UK, but there are some 'exotics' (the cranes - wow, what a noise!) It was filmed in Belarus. The guy has a channel you can subscribe to. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it and maybe it'll take your mind off you-know-what for a few blessed minutes."

[Nurse Ratched]

Sarcasm? I can't tell ?üòï

[Scraper]

I pronounce this Thread of the Decade

[Hammer and Pickle]

"Two massive keys of black crane flew over yesterday on the way to their wintering grounds on the Nile delta (I suppose, though it could be the Danube estuary maybe). Must have been at least 200 individuals. Made a right racket as well."

[Nurse Ratched]

"Belarusian wildlife photographer does it again. Great white heron breeding season (don't do it to yourself, gank). The chicks are comical and utterly voracious. https://youtu.be/9l9xh5NI1OM"

[Crassus]

"The house martins are grouping for their nightly flight here, a sure sign that the summer season is closing as they ready for migration Have a soft spot for the little buggers, reminds me of my youth Meanwhile, it is still feeding frenzies on the feeders, tits galore, sparrows and the usual woodies and robins clearing beneath Thanks to all who ignited my extended interest, I have really enjoyed watching the birds through the seasons and their behaviours"

[zebthecat]

Wonderful video. I have seen a few swifts (they are still around here). Not may swallows at all though.

[lab]

Not seen a swift yet ...

[Mex Martillo]

Impressive Congratulations for Matt Thanks Aalborg

[Crassus]

AH Thank you - lovely to watch

[Bouncing Ludo]

Great video

[Bouncing Ludo]

Great video

[Nurse Ratched]

It's an absolutely beautiful video.

[Aalborg Hammer]

Morning all...thought you'd like to see this little video that our son-in-law-in-waiting during lockdown...filmed in our garden and took a good four weeks to do.. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCScp5lHxRFgnvl-bP5O6jdQ

[gph]

"Dunno, didn't come up in my cataract reading!"

[WHU(Exeter)]

"Gph, is that thing true about moths then? That with their eyes when they're flying towards light in their eyes it's darkness they are flying to?"

[gph]

"When I had my cataracts done, I did a bit of reading about the surgery and its background. In the old days, after a cataract operation, people saw colours they'd never seen before*, as initially they didn't replace the lenses, and you had to use glasses, and then, later, when they did give you prosthetic lenses, initially these were transparent to uv. Nowdays, the lenses filter out uv. *I went up, I went down, I saw colours never seen before All spinning roun' (Pink Fairies, albeit singing about drugs rather than cataract operations)"

[Mex Martillo]

"How come you know that gph, bit obscure innit?"

[gph]

"""Red is the dull end for bees, violet the bright end."" is slightly wrong. I should have said: ""Red is at one of the dull ends for bees, violet is in the bright stretch."" The sensation I get when I see blue might not even be the same as the sensation you get when you see blue, so I can't speculate what sensation bees get when they see it."

[Hammer and Pickle]

"Purple is a sneaky colour mixing the red and blue ends of the whole spectrum. I suppose bees see as bright blue what you see as purple, right gph?"

[gph]

"No, you want to think of the classical colours of the rainbow: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. Red is the dull end for bees, violet the bright end."

[WHU(Exeter)]

"But if they're going primarily (or in our garden almost exclusively) for the purple flowers, wouldn't that mean that they were going for duller flowers on their colour spectrum? Wondered whether it was the pollen specific to those flowers, but the purple ones are wide ranging"

[gph]

"Bees, like humans, are trichromatic, which means their colour vision is based on three different kinds of colour sensitive cells. In humans, these cells have peak sensitivity around red, green and blue. In bees, the peak sensitivity is around green, blue and ultraviolet. Brillliant red things look very dull to bees (assuming they don't have uv pigments to compensate). Incidently, humans are blind in uv primarily because the lenses in our eyes are opaque to it - the cells in our retinas can detect it (but not at peak sensitivity). There is an evolutionary trade-off between being able to see uv, and protecting the retina from uv. The advantages of being able to see it are unaffected by longevity, the disadvantages are not - our eyes had to last around 40 years prior to modern medicine. Shorter-lived vertebrates, especially birds, can see uv."

[lab]

WHU(Exeter ) 10:16 . In all fairness badger beers are quite good.

[WHU(Exeter)]

"Why do bees almost solely pick purple flowers/plants? Loads of different plants and flowers in our back garden, but the bees only ever seem to head for the purples, hundreds of them all over the lavender especially."

[J.Riddle]

"Crassus, I saw this at the cinema when released, watch this and tell me otters are not cute little balls of fur :-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjnSAATCOoc"