Excerpt:

While this new study squashes the idea that woodpeckers have a built-in shock-absorbing mechanism, the researchers say it just generates more questions about how the birds avoid brain injury. Biologists and engineers, eager to understand the peculiar ability or mimic it for human benefit, have proposed many ideas: cushioning from the jaw or the bizarre, long and curved tongue bone, and engaged neck muscles have all offered alluring explanations.

Future studies could look into the neck muscles and how they flex prior to impact as a contributing factor. “There may be more to that story,” Shadwick says. But, the most compelling possibility, the authors say, is the woodpeckers’ smaller size: Because birds are smaller, they can withstand more force than humans before incurring brain trauma.

At Laguna Cartagena, near Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico (red bird with black chest and mask, perched on green leaves, lit by sunrise)

cross-posted from: https://aussie.zone/post/1448661

When it comes to native Australian fauna, birds have been among the catastrophic losers since European settlement.

"They happen to be lucky in that they like the habitat we modern Australian humans have created, which is basically what you'd call a park," Ms Loos told ABC Statewide Mornings radio.

Photographer Chris Farrell, co-author of Australia's Birdwatching Megaspots with Peter Rowland, said a greater emphasis on growing native trees in urban environments three or four decades ago had helped some of our most successful native birds.

Noisy miners are territorial birds that can push smaller birds out of an area.

Little corella (Cacatua sanguinea): regarded by some as a menace for crops, corellas and sulphur-crested cockatoos have thrived thanks to modern agriculture which has given them an abundant food source.

Galah (Eolophus roseicapilla): a similar tale to the white cockatoos, with which they often flock.

Birdwatchers. They’re both easy to envy (They know so much!) and laugh at (What nerds!). Yet birdwatching is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to connect with nature.

I love finding brown creepers. I often find them just scanning tree trunks, though there's one singing at one of my birding spots now.

Pennsylvania, USA, March 2022

Any large bird is a threat.

Florida, May 2020

Cliff swallows aren't as ubiquitous in the northeastern US as other swallow species, like barn and tree swallows. However, where there is one, there are probably 100 in the same area!

Pennsylvania, July 2023

Not pictured: 10 other small birds chasing this poor little raptor away from wherever it was trying to exist

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/2196737

Like many of you, birds are very special to me. I connect with them like I don’t any other living creature, save my wife and kids. I photograph them. I’ve covered my body in nothing but bird tattoos.

To see that a THIRD of them have disappeared is like a knife to the heart.

I like birdwatching, but I am not a guru on this topic - only creating this community as a gathering place until the serious folks find it (or start a community elsewhere). I am on the watch for them, and today I found @birds@moresci.sale instead - which looks like a good user-to-follow for anyone here (it is a bot).

male (yellowish beneath) and females (greenish beneath) eating berries of a euphorbia colonizing a dead tree. Photo link from iNaturalist.org

Chlorophonia musica ssp. musica Dominican Republic

American Kestrel

Falco sparverius

Altamira, Dominican Republic

Oct. 2018

birds are the canaries in the coal-mine of life. amirite? My wife takes all our bird pictures and posts them on iNaturalist and eBird, but sometimes I obtain a copy of a nice shot and will post it here. We've been birding since about 1985 - off and on; not that we go to the ends of the Earth just to add a life-lister, but if we're AT the end of the Earth, then we'll look around a little while we're there.