Our fine fried feathers

[BudgieJane]

Originally Posted by xilman

Ah, eagles.

Philadelphia or Crystal Palace?

[xilman]

Originally Posted by BudgieJane

Philadelphia or Crystal Palace?

Wrong answer.

It is a deliberately oblique reference to a joke based on a play on words. Interestingly enough, another and somewhat different reference to the same joke appeared in Terry Pratchett's Raising Steam

[Dr Sardonicus]

NYC woman gets ill swan to clinic via foot, car and subway

NEW YORK (AP) — Ariel Cordova-Rojas went to New York's Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge last week to celebrate her 30th birthday.

She ended up rescuing a swan with lead poisoning, taking it to a wildlife clinic by foot, car and subway with the help of both friends and strangers.

Cordova-Rojas is trained in identifying and rescuing wildlife, the New York Times reported, having worked at the Wild Bird Fund clinic in Manhattan for five years.

She got to the Queens wildlife refuge on Nov. 5 and spotted a swan alone in the grass on the side of the water.

She approached it and saw it was unable to walk or fly. She wrapped the 17-pound bird, which she says is named Bae, in her jacket and carried it a mile to the refuge entrance, the newspaper reported.

Calls to various animal rescue services and the ranger stations yielded no immediate assistance. Then a couple with a car agreed to drive the swan and Cordova-Rojas to a nearby subway station. (The couple persuaded yet another friend with a car to help get Cardova-Rojas, her bike and the swan to a subway station.) An employee of Wild Bird Fund met them at the Nostrand station in Brooklyn and helped them get to the organization's clinic on the Upper West Side. Photos show the swan nestled in an orange jacket on a seat in a train car.
<snip>

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

NYC woman gets ill swan to clinic via foot, car and subway

Anti-swan laws? Shot them or shatter their eggs? C'mon man, give green cards to some Romanian gypsies!

(there are stories about them migrating to the west after the communist wall fell down in the nineties, a lot of people who had nothing to tie them to "home", they were wandering/drifting/roaming from one place to the other before too, and once they could go "out", they were the first to look for "liberty", but they understood the liberty in a wrong way, seeing that nobody constrain them to do this or that, they imagine they can do everything, and ended up in Germany, or England, laying their tents in public parks and having nothing to eat, robing the nearby houses and shops and catching and eating the swans on the lakes in the middle of the public parks . When the westerners caught them and send them home packed, they became "lasso experts", hooking the satellite antennas from the houses on the way, and bringing them back to their eastern countries for sale).

[storm5510]

Photo taken at Dale Hollow Lake.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by storm5510

Photo taken at Dale Hollow Lake.

Nice shot!

In August 2015, the man who is now living in the White House met a bird that looked a lot like that one, named Uncle Sam.

(look it up yourself)

Uncle Sam may have been trying to tell us something...

[kladner]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Nice shot!

In August 2015, the man who is now living in the White House met a bird that looked a lot like that one, named Uncle Sam.

(look it up yourself)

Uncle Sam may have been trying to tell us something...

I remember that encounter with great fondness. Sam tried to get a chunk of the idiot on whose desk they had parked him.

[Dr Sardonicus]

In rare feat, Evanston teen expected to break birding record: 'Say a rare bird shows up. You have to drop everything and get in the car.'

For some teens, getting a license means offering rides to friends, taking trips to the mall, freedom. For one Evanston senior, it was mostly about the birds.

Isoo O'Brien, 17, is expected to break the Cook County record for individual bird species spotted in a year, clocking 282 species by the end of October. With a little more than a month left before 2021, O'Brien is still working to check off a few final species in the hopes that his record holds for years to come. Topping the record was a big deal for O'Brien, and for other birders, who banded together to offer tips so O'Brien could drive — or sometimes sprint — to a yet unseen bird.

O'Brien hoped to hit 270, maybe 275 species this year.

"But in the back of my mind all I really wanted to do was to break the record," which was 281, he said. "The record was so high that I just was like, I don't want to set that expectation for myself and be disappointed it doesn't happen. But it ended up happening."
<snip>
While balancing Zoom classes, family time and a social life during the pandemic, O'Brien also contended with the lakefront shutdown, a challenge some birders thought would pose a threat to breaking any record.

But O'Brien has a unique focus, said Matthew Cvetas, former president of Illinois Young Birders. Cvetas came to accept that the young birders were likely to be chattier than some of his adult counterparts, who were generally more mindful not to spook the birds. O'Brien, however, was quiet and watchful.
<snip>
O'Brien's level of dedication is emblematic of a strong group of young birders coming up, Cvetas said.

"Not only are they interested in the hobby, but they're really good at it," he said. "To the point where they're already leaders in their community. You'll find many of them leading volunteer bird walks, or discussions on social media about complex identification issues."

[Dr Sardonicus]

Trump administration moves ahead on gutting bird protections

The Trump administration moved forward Friday on gutting a longstanding federal protection for the nation's birds, over objections from former federal officials and many scientists that billions more birds will likely perish as a result.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published its take on the proposed rollback in the Federal Register. It's a final step that means the change — greatly limiting federal authority to prosecute industries for practices that kill migratory birds — could be made official within 30 days.

The wildlife service acknowledged in its findings that the rollback would have a "negative" effect on the many bird species covered by the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which range from hawks and eagles to seabirds, storks, songbirds and sparrows.
<snip>
The Trump administration maintains that the Act should apply only to birds killed or harmed intentionally, and is putting that "clarifying" change into regulation. The change would "improve consistency and efficiency in enforcement," the Fish and Wildlife Service said.

The administration has continued to push the migratory bird regulation even after a federal judge in New York in August rejected the administration’s legal rationale.

[storm5510]

Observers at Dale Hollow Lake have discovered the nesting Bald Eagle pair which lost their nest, and tree, to a storm back in the spring, are now building a new nest in an oak tree about 50 yards from the tree that fell. It will probably be several months before a camera is placed at the new location.

[tServo]

Originally Posted by storm5510

Photo taken at Dale Hollow Lake.

Excellent !

If you look quickly at the eagle's head and if you have a twisted imagination, the eagle looks like Gru from "despicable Me" :

https://www.ujackets.com/blog/despic...e-gru-costume/