By the end of the day tomorrow one of these 4 birds will hold the #WorldCupOfBirds aloft.
πΉπ³ The Cream-colored Courser.
π°π· The Oriental Magpie.
π¦πΊ The Laughing Kookaburra.
π§πͺ The Common Kestrel.
Which one will it be?
Let's find out.
πΉπ³
In flight, the Cream-coloured Courser has jet-black upper primaries and underwings.
This is the last thing that the Andean Condor and the Golden Eagle saw in this tournament, as two of the world's most impressive raptors saw defeat at the hands of this diminutive wader.
π°π·
I would not have picked the Oriental Magpie as a semi-finalist, but then again I am not one of the smartest birds on the planet.
I'm starting to get the feeling this bird knows *exactly* how the game works.
If you're in the colored area of this map, look up into the sky this evening.
If you see a little bird with slender wings & a little stubby tail, flap-flapping up in the sky, It's probably a chimney swift.
A very commonπ¦... and one of the most remarkable animals on the planet.
As you can see from the map, chimney swifts concentrate in urban areas in the summer, where they nest in... you guessed it, chimneys.
In the evening they're out foraging for food. They catch insects on the wing and bring them back to their young in their chimney nests.
The most remarkable thing about chimney swifts is that they are truly aerial birds. They can't perch; they can only cling onto vertical surfaces when nesting or roosting.
They do everything else in the air. Eating, drinking, sleeping, mating - all on the wing.
The door to this place is apparently been propped wide open for despicable conspiracy theorists, so I'm going to take my leave.
On my way out, here's the best thing that ever happened to me on this site (π§΅):
In the early summer of 2015 I went up into the Angolan Highlands with @drsteveboyes and the @NatGeo team.
It was a tough trip. We followed a 6-tonne armored truck to get to to our launch point, because the landscape was (and is) riddled with active minefields.
Eventually we found a gorgeous pristine lake, steaming in the afternoon sun. It was the headwaters of the Cuito river.
The plan was to follow the river down to its confluence with the Cubango river and then continue down to the Okavango Delta.
When I was about 22 I worked as a naturalist at the Vancouver Aquarium (@vanaqua). As well as talking to people about the exhibits, putting on puppet shows, narrating beluga whale sessions, etc., I was on the dive team...
Which meant that 1 or 2 times a day I'd be in the water w/ the sharks or the belugas, or most relevant to #WorldOctopusDay, the PNW (Pacific Northwest) tank.
One day on my way into the water, the aquarist who took care of the tank told me that he'd seen some parasites on the π
(This was a male Giant Pacific Octopus, Enteroctupus dofleini, a species that can grow bigger than 200lbs, with an armspan of > 20 feet. I'm going by memory right now, but I'd guess this particular octopus was about 30lbs, and about 12 feet arm-to-arm)