Owls are associated with intelligence, which isn’t surprising, because these birds have incredible smarts and even distinct personalities, as ecologist Carl Safina learned firsthand. After he and his wife Patricia rescued a baby screech owl that couldn’t be returned to the wild, they learned a lot about what owls are really like, as it grew up and raised its own baby owls....
Originally posted on salon.com
At first glance, pigeons may not appear to be the brightest of birds. With their bobbing heads, clumsy gaits and dull-sounding “coo” noises, pigeons are often mistaken for being downright stupid pests. Yet a recent study in the journal Nature Communications suggests that pigeons may be more sophisticated than humans often assume....
Originally posted on salon.com
Sixty years ago in March 1963, Alfred Hitchcock’s classic horror movie “The Birds” introduced viewers to a small seaside town in California that is suddenly and inexplicably attacked by ferocious feathered fiends. Ostensibly based on a 1952 short story by Daphne du Maurier, “The Birds” features seagulls, crows and a range of other bird species as they ruthlessly slash at terrified humans with razor-sharp beaks and talons....
Originally posted on salon.com
Anyone who has sit near a window may have experienced the startling moment when a bird smacks into it. Like the famous scene when a pelican’s crash startles a dentist into an inadvertent tooth-pull in “Finding Nemo,” it can seem cartoonishly silly when a gracefully soaring red-tailed hawk or empty-eyed dumpy pigeon abruptly stops and plops into a pane of glass....
Originally posted on salon.com