Quarantine entry #106 - July 5

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but at least I will be getting a haircut today. Yay! What shall we talk about?

According to the initial plan – about the barn owls, but the problem is that they’re owls – and owls may look different from each other, but the basic design is the same, the family traits are there and in the open.

…This is part of the reason as to why classifying owls upon the greater animal tree of life is tricky – yes, they are birds, but what are their closest relatives? Right now, they are part of the Afroavian clade, whatever that means, but to a layperson? One owl is as good as another, and-

-And they are not entirely wrong either, for while a barn owl may be only distant related to the short-horned, (or the long-horned – North America has both of those species), owl, but beyond that, physically, they are similar.

…Yes, physical similarity isn’t a very reliable means of establishing relationships, but it does work, plus we’re talking about the ecological aspect here and now instead: all owls, from the great snowy owl, (a relative of the eagle-owl and the great horned owl that we’ve discussed earlier), to the tiny elf owl, live the same lifestyle: they are birds of prey that can hunt at night. They can hunt during the day, in fact, the burrowing owl is actually a diurnal bird, but they hunt during the night, when the hawks, eagles and falcons – as well as most other birds – are asleep and cannot compete with them, nor escape from them as readily as they can during the day.

The other birds are aware of that, sort of, as they mob the owls during the day and otherwise harass them. Songbirds are one thing, but if we are talking about the bigger corvids – jays, crows, and ravens – then an owl may be in some serious trouble, as those bird species are both big and social, unlike the owls, who are more of loners instead.

Pause. Again, the punchline here is that birds of prey, including owls, aren’t social, but loners; the Harris’ hawk is the only exception, though it can be pointed out that some of them are known to perch in large groups, for example – the previously-mentioned long-horned owls. They are known to perch in groups of almost a dozen – that is a lot for solitary nocturnal hunters. But…

…But perching alone does not make social bonds – the long-horned owls may tolerate each other, they are actually not very confrontational, by owls’ standards especially, but otherwise, they don’t hunt together, as wolves, or even Harris’ hawks do – each bird usually has its’ own hunting spot and it doesn’t tolerate any rivals there. The size of this hunting spot/territory may vary, but it is there, period. Anything else?

…This brings us back to the issue of owls’ physical similarity to each other, period. A long-horned owl may be much closer related to a short-horned owl than to a barn owl, but in many ways the three birds are built along similar lines – they are all owls, after all. If you add other owls, the family similarity will not be any less noticeable. Why?

Because all owls are predators. They are nighttime predators. They are predators, primarily, not of other birds, but of other vertebrates…or in case of smaller species, such as the screech owl or the saw-whet, of large invertebrates instead. Unlike most of the birds, the owl prey is active at night as well – we are talking mice here, voles, rabbits & hares, etc. – and so the owls need to be extra stealthy to catch them. There usually not too much variety either, aside from the size… saving for the fish owls and the fishing owls. No, these are not synonyms: fish owls usually have tufts of hair on their heads, look rather like eagle owls, and belong to one genus, while the fishing owls belong to another, and have no tufts. All of those owl species, (there are about seven of them, I think), hunt fish, just as the osprey does, and since fish can’t hear sounds that come from air, these owls are as noisy as an osprey is.

This brings us back to co-existence: these owls hunt the same prey as the osprey does, just as the rest of the owls hunt prey items that are similar to those of other carnivorous birds, (such as small falcons). Only… not, because while hawks, kites, and especially falcons are bird specialists, owls hunt prey items from mammals, reptiles, amphibians and so on, which allows them to co-exist with their counterparts during the day…mostly. There are exceptions – for example, the eagle owls and black kites, as we have discussed earlier – but these exceptions only underline the main rule…

Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #105 - July 4

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Yesterday, we had an argument/fight again. I hate those, but, sadly, it seems to me that the main way that anything changes in our family is through conflict, which brings us to arguments slash fights. I hate those, but they are unavoidable and necessary. Pity that COVID-19 made everything worse. What next?

As we are starting to finish our bird of prey talk, let us turn to owls instead. There are two types of owls – the ‘true’ owls and the barn owls. The latter differ from the true owls by coloration, and their ‘facial disk’, (if you ever saw an owl, any owl, on a photo, you would know what we are talking about), is proportionally larger and whiter than that of a ‘true’ owl. In addition, the barn owls and their relatives are generally paler than their cousins are, and finally, they have no ‘horns’.

…The horns, of course, as tufts of feathers that grow on heads of such different owl species as the screech owl, the long-horned owl, and the great horned owl, among others. Sometimes they are barely noticeable, as they are in case of the short-horned owl, or even more so – in case of the snowy owl, but they can be there. Most scientists, (ornithologists and otherwise) agree, that these tufts serve no practical purpose, but are more of a decorative feature on those owls. Maybe it helps them in courting each other?.. The point is that no member of the barn owl family has those tufts, but some ‘true’ owls do. What next?

Owls swallow their smaller prey whole, and spit up what they cannot digest as pellets. Some other birds do that as well, from hawks to the nightjars, (also known as nighthawks, but they are completely separate birds from the birds of prey), but it still isn’t entirely certain as to just who are the owls’ relatives? In addition, the modern classification revision does not make it any better, either.

…Yes, there was a revision of avian taxonomy sometime in the past, (unlike the mammal, which appears to be a more modern development). I missed it, and so I’m not going to dwell upon it; basically, the point is that the owls’ similarity to hawks, falcons, eagles, vultures and so on is only superficial and practically skin-deep – the two groups of birds are able to co-exist, but only because the owls are nocturnal. Yes, they can see during the day, but they are not doing as well during that time, as the other birds’ mob them, and in some case – as in cases of the corvids – those birds themselves can be quite big. Anything else?

Here is a piece of original fiction to round up today’s entry instead. I hope that you will enjoy it:

Once upon a time, when a red fox and a hare were busy with an eagle owl, a different bird, a great grey owl, was sitting on a different tree at a different spot where the forest met the open field, and it too was busy hunting.

Any owl is Meta - they got soft feathers, silent wings that make no noise whatsoever; their talons are twisted and sharp- no one can escape from them, not a mouse, not a squirrel, not a sleeping bird. This particular great grey owl was hunting mice.

...It is still late winter and mice are hidden from sight by a thick layer of snow, but an owl’s hearing is sharp enough to penetrate it, and the great grey owl has specifically long legs to reach through the snow. There! There a mouse is scurrying. The owl spread its’ wings and launched a spectacular aerial attack right through the snow.

The snow exploded. This particular mouse made its’ winter home in a bear’s den, and the owl, unwittingly, scored a perfect hit on the bear’s nose. (It was hard to reach, but those long legs and sharp talons are good for something).

The still mostly asleep bear was not amused. With one shake of its’ massive head it was free, with one snap of its’ huge jaws it snapped the owl up and sank back beneath the snow to wait for the proper end of winter. The end.

PS: Oh, and the mouse was in another corner of the den, sleeping its’ own nap in its’ own home, lined with the bear’s fur because it was small enough to get away with this - but that is another story.

End

This is it for now. See you all soon! Comments? Criticisms?

Quarantine entry #104 - July 3

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. I care for my family, I really do, but sometimes they drive me insane – actually, we all drive each other insane, and on a regular basis. It is not that we want to hurt each other – usually we do not want to, (I am being optimistic here), but more often it happens just despite our best intentions, (again, I am being optimistic here). What next?

Well, last time we talked about one of the most specialized birds of prey – the osprey. This time, we will talk about one of the most generalized of them all instead – the black kite. Why it? Because it is one of the most outspread members of the kite group in the Old World.

What characteristics define a kite, (we are talking birds here, not toys)? They are excellent flyers, but unlike the falcons, their aerial mastery is more like that of the much greater eagles and vultures – they glide and soar on the currents of air instead.

Then how is a kite different from a vulture? Aside from the obvious, of course… actually, let us start with the obvious. Both vultures and kites, (such as the black kite), eat carrion, but the vultures appear to be more adapted to it – i.e. their bald heads and necks, their more powerful physiques and bigger body sizes, and so on. Yes, just as the kites, at least some vultures can catch live prey, but they are bigger, they need a greater daily intake of food, and so they usually don’t waste energy further by killing live prey, they scavenge.

…The kites, on the other hand, are more flexible than the vultures are – usually. In North America, lives a bird called the snail kite, and it too is a kite, but a different one: it is a food specialist. The osprey eats almost only fish. The snail kite – almost only a certain type of snail, so when those snails suffer and their population falls, the same can be said for the snail kite.

To further differentiate itself from the rest of the kites, the snail kite is very much sexually dimorphic, as the males and females of this species have very different plumage colorations. As we have mentioned before, many of the carnivorous birds have bigger females and stronger males – aka the sexual dimorphism – but usually the two sexes are not colored differently as well. There are other birds of prey with this sort of thing, the northern harrier comes to mind, but we have digressed. Let us get back to the kites.

There are several other species of kites in North America, and while they do not look very similarly to the black kite of the Old World, they are master fliers as it is, and as a rule, the kites are some of the more migratory birds of prey. The snail kite is a homebody, which makes it again different from the rest of this group. There are stable populations of black kites in Africa… actually, they might be closely related birds to the typical black kite, but where were we?

Ah yes, the kites. They might be some of the most basic modern birds of prey. They do not have any derived physical that make them unusual, (but there are always exceptions, of course). They do not have any dietary preferences either, (usually) – they can eat both live prey and carrion. They are master fliers and have spread all over the globe, except for the poles and the mountains – they do not do cold so well. They are not particularly powerful or impressive, so they are able to co-exist with other carnivores, avian and otherwise, without too much conflict… though some hawks, and the European eagle-owl do attack the black kite on occasion – this is inter-species conflict, and it’s not unlike what the lions have with the other meat-eating mammals on the African plains. Sadly, here the black kite is the underdog – but that is another story.

For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #103 - July 2

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks… not that AoS is doing that much better. Clark Gregg’s character has died… again. This is the fourth character of his to be killed-off, (or get rid otherwise), after the actual Phil Coulson, the first LMD, and the Sarge – and this is not even a real Coulson, only another LMD version of him. For all we know, there are still a dozen or more of them stuck in the Time Bus’s stockpile, eh? Ergo, why should we care about the second LMD Coulson?

…We do not. For a while now, AoS played cute by using the same actors to act-out different characters (more or less), killing them off regularly. Consequently, audiences no longer care whether or not the actors remain on the show anymore, and by now this probably goes for the cast and crew too – AoS is in the finish line here, and its’ cast are probably jumping ship: they got recast all too often to form permanent bonds, especially real ones, and not publicity stunts. Remember when Jeff Ward (Deke) admitted that he could not stand Iain, (Fitz)? Well, right now, we got plenty of Deke, but little of Fitz on AoS’ S7 – gee, I wonder why. I also wonder just what is Deke’s role on AoS now, now that agent Sousa seems to be more of Daisy’s love interest than of May’s, but since the final AoS season is about halfway done, no one on AoS cares about this anymore either, I bet.

Getting back to real life, let us talk osprey. More precisely, we are talking about the real life bird here, since it is too a bird of prey, but a very unusual one. For one thing, it is almost completely piscivorous – the sea eagles may also eat fish, but they also attack other animals; some, like the white-tailed eagle actually prefers to hunt waterfowl to fish, but the osprey does not. It feeds almost exclusively on various fish, and is the most aquatically adapted modern bird of prey out of them all.

…There are also the so-called fishing owls, but as owls, they are grouped separately from the birds of prey that we’ve discussed earlier, and so we’ll be talking about the owls in general separately too. Right now, though, it must be pointed out that no one knows where to put the osprey within the bird of prey group either. It is called the fish hawk, even nowadays, sometimes, but the truth is that scientists agree that it is no more related to the hawks, eagles and vultures than it is to the falcons; the fact that it is grouped with the former rather than the latter is just whimsy, really, nothing scientific at all. Sigh.

To further deepen the unnecessary conclusion, the osprey is sometimes lumped in discussions alongside the secretarybird. The two avians have little in common – i.e., both are birds of prey without any obvious living relatives and their fossil history is not very good either. That is it. Otherwise, while the osprey is the most aquatic of the diurnal birds of prey, the secretarybird is the most terrestrial – it even looks like an ostrich wannabe, with its long and powerful legs. The two of them have nothing in common with each other or the other raptors, and so they are often discussed side by side. Sometimes human logic is something else, you know?

In addition, some people believe that there are two species of osprey – the common or the western osprey, (the one usually seen in the various videos, TV specials and what else have you), and the so-called eastern osprey, which lives around Australia and Oceania, (the island complex that is closer to Australia than to any place else). Whether that is justified, or is the local osprey one of the subspecies, (and right now, the osprey lives all over the world, save for the poles), so far has not been decided…

Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #102 - July 1

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but happy Canada day everyone, all the same. May those who are better off in life than I am; enjoy it all the same, wherever they may be! What next?

Let us get back to the vultures, but the Old World vultures this time. Since there is quite a few of them, let us use the already-mentioned cinereous vulture as a basic prototype.

Pause. What is cinereous, one may wonder? Apparently, it is a pale ashy color, more grey than black. There is a reason as to why the cinereous vulture is also known as the Eurasian black vulture – it is more black in color than pale grey, so maybe we should use its’ other-other name, the monk vulture, instead.

Why are we using the cinereous vulture as our Old World vulture basic bird? Because of ‘Planet Earth’, which we have also discussed before. In its’ ‘Temperate Woodlands’ episode, sir David had showed footage of a mother and cub Amur leopards frightening those birds away from a kill during a Siberian winter. Both leopards and vultures are usually associated with tropics, not a Siberian winter, so ‘Planet Earth’ showed that both leopards and vultures are made of harder stock than how we assume them to be. That said, the cinereous vulture’s closest relative is the lappet-faced vulture of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, and neither of those places is known for winter snows, so there is that. What next?

Climatic outliers aside, the Old World Vultures do come across as slightly, bigger, tougher, and more varied birds than the New World counterparts are. They include such atypical creatures as the lammergeyer, which prefers to eat bone, the palm nut vulture, which eats palm nuts, and the Egyptian vulture, which uses rocks to smash open ostrich eggs and eat their contents. By contrast, the New World vultures don’t have such deviants, they all are scavengers and carnivores… as are the bulk of the Old World vultures as well; both the cinereous vulture and the lappet-faced vulture are known not just to scavenge, but to kill live prey as well, sometimes fairly big one, such as the wild lambs. Pause.

Let us get back to the taxonomy – whereas the New World vultures’ closest relatives are not fully determined yet, (but they may be storks), the Old World vultures are related to the hawks and eagles that we have discussed earlier… another pause.

Let us get back to the eagles – to the white-tailed eagle, for example. As we have talked about them, whereas falcons invested in speed, and hawks – in endurance and maneuverability, the eagles invested in strength, which cost them speed: their default method of movement is passively gliding via warm currents of air, conserving their strength for when they need to attack. The vultures utilize the same strategy, save that they do not usually attack live prey, but scavenge from kills of other carnivores, which are usually mammals.

Again, this is a mixed bag – for example, there is footage of vulture flocks actually scaring cheetahs away from their kills rather than patiently waiting for them to eat. Everyone dominates the poor cheetahs, it looks like! ….Normally, however, carnivorous mammals such as big cats, wild dogs, and – more rarely – bears will eat their fill, and only then will the various birds, including the vultures of both types, join in. The birds may be a more numerous and varied group of vertebrates at this point in Earth’s history, but the mammals appear to be the more dominant one for now. Pound for pound, mammals are more powerful and massive than the birds are, and so birds have evolved to take advantage of the more successful mammals, which includes the ancestors of the vultures, who had split from their eagle and hawk cousins sometime in the past to become almost exclusive scavengers; some of them – namely, the now extinct teratorns – were some of the biggest birds that’d ever flown… but that is another story.

For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #101 - June 30

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, though many people are still talking about the Thylacosmilus’ and its’ new ‘redesign’ instead. Fair enough, but today we will be talking about eagles instead.

However, the eagles are a very varied bunch, so let us choose for our sample bird… the white-tailed eagle. It is a very impressive bird, and an Eurasian version of the bald eagle of North America; out of all the sea eagles, these two are mostly closely related to each other, but some people, (cough, the Russians, cough), aren’t very fond of this theory and don’t talk about it very much. Next?

While the white-tailed eagle is a sea eagle, it is not as specialized for fish eating as the bald eagle is, and actually prefers to hunt waterfowl instead. For us, however, it is the ‘sea eagle’ moniker that is important for the moment – it is a label that designated a group of about a dozen or so of eagles as, well, aquatic, (or semi-aquatic) specialists. What next?

…While the sea eagles are semi-aquatic specialists, other eagle groups are not. For example, the harpy eagle of South America hunts in jungles, while the golden eagle of Eurasia and North America prefers more open spaces, period. That, and its’ preference for the West Coast over the East, are some of the reasons why as to how come it’s the bald eagle that is the U.S.’ national bird, and not the golden eagle instead.

…Yes, since Thomas Jefferson, people have argued against the bald eagle being the U.S.’ national symbol, but nothing has come out of it, so that is that. What next?

Well, if the falcons are built for speed, (just like the cheetah), and the hawks are more versatile, then the eagles are built for power, (just as the lion is). While a falcon’s whammy can be formidable if this bird picks up speed, an eagle’s version is even more so, and it needs less distance and speed to achieve it. All birds are light-weight as a rule, (there are exceptions, but not among the birds of prey, no), but the eagles are less so, which is why their flying style is more of a passive gliding – they prefer to soar on warm aerial updrafts for hours, (or sit on some inconspicuous perch instead, cough), using their superior eyesight to keep an eye on what is going on down below, while remaining less noticeable for their potential prey. Once they choose a potential candidate, they swoop down and strike.

A falcon smites its’ prey in mid-air, often slicing it apart at least partially. An eagle, rather seizes prey with its’ talons, which can be big and sharp enough to pierce skin and flesh to the bone, inflicting massive damage and killing it. A golden eagle can kill an animal the size of a red fox or a grey wolf, which is why native people of Asia have trained it. A falcon catches other birds; an eagle, (just like a hawk), is more geared to attack mammals instead.

The downside for this is greater physical exhaustion when flying actively, hence why the eagles glide and rest more often than the smaller birds of prey, including hawks and falcons; they also are not beyond scavenging – whereas the falcons usually aren’t found on corpses of dead mammals, the eagles are, and on such occasions they don’t look very regal at all. Of course, neither do lions, but anthropomorphic associations aside, it can also be remembered that while lions have resolved their endurance issues by becoming social, the eagles have not; in fact, the only modern ‘raptors’ that have embraced the social hunting of their Mesozoic forebears are the so-called Harris’ hawks, which are more closely related to the buteos, than to the ‘true’ hawks…

Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #100 - June 29

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but at least Disney/Disney+ will be releasing both ‘Mulan-2020’, and ‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’, into public access by august 2020, so some bright news are ahead after all. What next?

Well, today I wanted to talk about the peregrine falcon, which is the bird when it comes to falconry, but first – DC had released the trailer for ‘Superman: The Man of Tomorrow’ that is coming later this year, (or next year, whichever date will be better), so let’s mention it first.

What is S: TMT? It is DC’s reboot of its animated videos’ franchise, especially of the titular Superman. So far, he looks very much like his initial model, (from the 1990s’ animated series’ onwards), whereas Luis Lane looks less pin-upy as she did before.

…Judging by the trailer, Superman will be dealing with Lobo and the Parasite; there is also a scene of him interacting with Lex Luthor, but it is quite brief, and so there is no certainty as to how specifically the interactions between those two will go. True, it probably will not be good – there is no incarnation in which Clark and Lex ever remained friends, even if they were friends to begin with – but the details are not available yet.

Lex aside, it was also revealed that Superman would be facing off with Lobo and the Parasite. Lobo appears to be largely like his 1990s cartoon version as well, though he seems to have trouble standing up to Superman now – in the 1990s version onwards he actually could, through sheer physical badassery. In this trailer, however, he seems to have a green kryptonite ring…either that or a Green Lantern ring, but the latter version seems to be too far out – Lobo just is not a real Green Corps’ material, you know? …In any case, we see the Martian Manhunter come to help the Man of Steel out, the two aliens bond, and the rest of the trailer is dedicated to the Parasite, who is a Superman villain who had fallen out of fashion since the 1990s, and who got a feral new look, rather reminiscent of the White Martians from the ‘Supergirl’ TV show at their worst. Since unlike Lobo and the Man of Steel himself, the Parasite used to be an ordinary human who acquired his powers by accident, it will be interesting to see if Lex Luthor is behind it, say – but for now, this is it. Now about the peregrine falcon?

…Here is the punchline – while the Man of Steel is faster than a speeding bullet is, the peregrine falcon is the fastest of modern birds, and probably the fastest of modern animals, period. All falcons are built for speed, but the peregrine – especially so; its’ primary trick is to get high above its’ prey and then swoop down upon it; each of its’ feet has a specialized, extra-large talon, so if the peregrine scores a direct hit, a bird the size of a hooded, or an American, crow, can be sliced almost in two.

But that is the peregrine. It is one of the bigger falcons, (the biggest modern falcon is the gyrfalcon, which lives in Arctic and is not as known, especially in the New World, as the peregrine is). Smaller falcons, like the merlin, have their own tricks – in particular, hovering, meaning that they channel their inner helicopter, (rather than airplane), and stay in one spot in midair, trying to zoom-in on their prey, usually something like a mouse or a large insect, (small falcons, remember?). But normally, falcons prefer to eat other birds.

More precisely, while hawks hunt among trees and eat primarily both birds and arboreal mammals such as tree squirrels, and eagles often prefer to hunt various mammals, period, (but we’ll talk about the eagles at a different date), the falcons are bird specialists…unless they’re like the crested caracara, of which we have talked yesterday. The ecology of modern birds is a complex bag, and we will be talking more about it later.

…For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!