Jer Thorp Profile picture
Nov 20, 2022 7 tweets 4 min read Read on X
If you notice a strange quiet from the🐦 in your neighbourhood today, it's because they are all watching the #WorldCupOfBirds finals!

This might seem strange to you, but it is a very popular tournament across the rest of the animal kingdom. Image
If you want to know how we got here to the finals today, here are three threads for you:







They are packed with information about all 32 competing World Cup nations' national birds! Image
Right now, though, the vuvuzelas are droning, and the stadium is veritably hopping with excitement. So let's kick this thing off.

(You have 6 hours to place your vote!)

#WorldCupOfBirds
With 15 minutes left to play, the Common Kestrel is ahead by 2 votes.

2 votes!

#WorldCupOfBirds
5 minutes. The Kestrel holds onto the lead by the slimmest of margins.

This has been a long tournament for both birds. Does the Magpie have anything left in the tank?

#WorldCupOfBirds ImageImage
The Common Kestrel from Belgium is your 2022 #WorldCupOfBirds champion!

Congratulations to this tiny, ruthlessly efficient killing machine! Image

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More from @blprnt

Jun 6
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 common🐦... and one of the most remarkable animals on the planet. Heat map of Chimney Swift abundance in mid-june from CornellLab. Map shows presence across the western half of N. America, with concentration around urban areas.
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. Chimney swift in flight.
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. Chimney swift catching an insect mid-air
Read 12 tweets
Dec 10, 2023
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 (🧵):
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.
Map of the Okavango river system showing the Cubango and Cuito rivers coming together to for the Okavango
Cell phone shot of the Cuito river source lake
Read 15 tweets
Mar 30, 2023
We're in a short calm before a very large storm with LLMs and scams, via email text and voice.

If you have elderly friends and relatives it's a good time to talk to them about how to build up defenses.
If you're a person who's written a lot online or even if you have an active social feed it'll become very simple to write messages in your 'voice'.

If you've given a lecture or been on a podcast it'll be possible for anyone to train a model to speak in your actual voice.
This all gets worse if someone gets access to your email archive as they can now trail a model on your contacts and your interactions with them.

Gone are the days where 'getting hacked' meant your contacts getting poorly spelt spam messages.

Now they'll get messages from 'you'.
Read 5 tweets
Jan 3, 2023
Here's my 🐙 in one clean thread:

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 🐙
(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) Image of a large octopus wi...
Read 19 tweets
Nov 21, 2022
The dude who took down the Colorado shooter owns a brewery.

His wife is the brewmaster.

They have merch: atrevidabeerco.com/product-page/d…
Read 5 tweets
Nov 19, 2022
By the end of the day tomorrow one of these 4 birds will hold the #WorldCupOfBirds aloft.

🇹🇳 The Cream-colored Courser.
🇰🇷 The Oriental Magpie.
🇦🇺 The Laughing Kookaburra.
🇧🇪 The Common Kestrel.

Which one will it be?

Let's find out. Image
🇹🇳

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. Image
🇰🇷

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. Image
Read 7 tweets

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