West Ham Online

"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."

"Birds have no control over their excretions, which is why it is not advisable to have them in your house. What do you do about all the shit, Ratched?"

"Update re Bullet the fledgling robin. We've had an interesting couple of weeks. Twice I've seen him land on my homemade squirrel baffles I placed on the horizontal line my seed and suet feeders hang from. They're made out of plastic bottles and act like a 'rolling log' to dump squirrels onto the ground. With predictable results, he couldn't get a footing either time, and he comically hopped on, started to roll, hovered up, hopped back on, etc. He has been eating the hedgehog's biscuits and really seems to enjoy them. He has started coming into the sitting room occasionally to have his mealworms on my desk. All good so far. Except for some reason I don't know (I was in the kitchen washing dishes) he flew through to the hall and upstairs. I only knew because I heard panicked-sounding cheeping coming from upstairs. He was spooked and I thought it best to open windows and let him find his own way out. Except he ignored the windows and eventually came back downstairs and flew out the way he came in. Within a couple of hours he was hopping about on my back garden step again and staring at me in my sitting room. Can birds have ADHD?"

What a lovely bird. Those nests look very neat.

We have a colony of Baya weaver birds that nest in the trees next our house in Thailand which is out in the sticks about 3 km from the village of Sena in the province of Ayutthaya and about 2 hours from the the border with Myanmar https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-a-male-baya-weaver-ploceus-philippinus-on-his-nest-in-a-weaverbird-137164024.html

"Top work there Nurse Pleased to say that I now have a robin back in the garden too. Having had a a pair and then their fledgey, they all suddenly vanished It's just not the same without a robin out there"

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That is very cool indeed.

"Update re 'Bullet', my pugilistic, but slightly dim juvenile robin: today for the first time, he started coming into my sitting room to scoff his mealworms. Like a BOSS."

"Uncanny Zeb, similar vocabulary as a fair few on here."

Ruby the parrot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HPv3iRTq7M

Lost Parrot turns up at Waterloo tube making underground line announcement “bing-bong” noises and tells everyone to “keep left”.’ https://metro.co.uk/2021/08/18/parrot-found-at-waterloo-station-wont-stop-making-tube-announcements-15113502/

"Owls can see urine trails left by mice (in the ultraviolet). You'd think that mice would have evolved continence under this pressure. But, instead, they piss as they go. Evolution is slow."

"zeb - woodies You are not wrong there on their landing abilities Much amusement to be had here as the dopey, yet likable buggers clatter through the foliage Conversely, once airborne they are a superb sight I have a soft spot for my resident examples"

"Neither Owls nor Pigeons are particularly bright. Owls' skulls are full of their eyes so there is not much room left for brain so, as birds go, it is all about the hunting instinct rather than intelligence. Wood Pigeons are misnamed in that they seem spectacularly incompentent at landing and staying on trees without huge amounts of wing thrashing. It has done them well enough I guess."

"Also, that clip is conclusive proof that not all birds are as clever as corvids or parrots. If a crow watched that clip, it would probably think ""I can take the adult owl when it is completely confused at finiding me there, and then feast on him and the owlets"". Fortunately for owls, crow youtube lags behind human youtube. (Anthropomorphic, moi?)"

"Nurse I have a notable absentee - my mate the robin For years, even before and during ad hoc feeding, I've always had a friendly robin In recent times of established feed stations I've always had territorial disputes with the doughty buggers Earlier this year they were here, first the male, then his lady, then a youngster, intrusion was resisted violently and they were always the first in at sunrise and the last out at dusk, responding to my call I kid you not Now, not a sighting in weeks - robin free I now have flocks of various, it's a Hitchcockian scene out there and I'm sighting new species regularly But no robin - what's happened?"

"Darwin was a ""victim"" of anthropomorphism - he remarked how similar great ape emotions were to human ones. Not sure that anthropomorphism is a mistake in itself, just needs to be backed up by evidence. Admittedly, humans are a lot closer to great apes than they are to barn owls and pigeons."

"Toms Watching that, it's really hard not to view it through an anthropomorphic lens. It's like you can read all their thoughts and 'emotions'."

"That is unbelievable Nurse, lucky it got out alive."

"https://youtu.be/ruaGD3UiXoE This is extraordinary. A pair of pigeons decides to squat in the nest of a pair of barn owls with 7 nestlings in situ. The female pigeon even lays an egg. It all ends as you would predict, but goodness me, it's very strange. I wonder how often this sort of thing happens. Also, baby barn owls...Arf!"

I've worked out how to grow the Himalayan blue poppies. Every time West Ham win I'll be scattering two of the seeds in random parts of the garden. Eat your heart out Monty Don and Petra (or whatever the BBC dogs called now)

"Talking of reintroduction, anyone know whether this breeding pair of storks returned this year? https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/white-storks-nesting-britain-after-six-centuries"

"Seen it a few times Exeter, looks strange and makes me laugh."

My mother had a wooden thingy next to her front door with a pair of tits on it with her house number.