Great idea for a thread!
I recently pulled some footage off my bro's Canon video camera that he left. Lots of shots of birds. Some quite rare. Well, rarish, anyway.
The footage is not great. It's blurry and disjointed in parts. But it would be nice to be able to put it up somewhere. I'm a bit of an amateur bird-spotter myself. Especially after getting my telescope which puts them all in a new light. *
But I always took an interest in our little fine-feathered friends.
I know my pied wagtail from my goldfinch for example.
Interesting side note. I just googled 'goldfinch' to see if I got the spelling correct, and google came back with a whole page of fucking hollywood film bullshit. Is nothing fucking sacred anymore. It's annoying as shit. It's been doing this more and more for common words - pushing fucking jew hollywood cancer to the masses. Sorry...
Anyway, I'll set up a bitchute or something and upload them. It would really mean a lot to me for others to see these little 'vignettes' that my bro recorded. It's a small thing...
Some of the birds are quite unusual, so I would also like to find out what they are. I might even post some of his other videos as well. Nothing earth shattering. Other small things. Like rats scurrying to ground, and rare double rainbows, breaking through the sky, glistening, shining in the grey air that surrounds them.
Nature is beautiful.
If you are quiet and still enough, you can go to a very special place...
* There's a pair of collared doves that sometimes sit on the telegraph wire above my mum's backyard when I just get my telescope out to start observing the night sky. I do this in daylight to center my red dot finder and to make sure my Reflector mirror cools down so it has no abberations when temperature drops.
They are paired birds it would seem, monogamous, not hypergamous. They come and go, but sit sometimes for 15 minutes on that wire. I can almost see the fleas on them with my 15mm 60* Eyepiece. I watch them talking. Blinking.
Then they are gone.
https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-explorer/birds/pigeons-and-doves/collared-dove
My bro would stop his Ducati when he was out riding when he saw a Kestrel hovering. Take some video. Not so exciting to some, but then again, neither is trainspotting... to others...
We had a bird feeder in the garden so we caught some good birds apart from the common tits. Even birds like Robins which are traditionally groundfeeders IIRC. Birds can surprise you.
Once my brother tied a bit of thin silk cotton string to a small piece of bread, and he used this to entice and bring in one of the birds through the doorstep and to his feet. Very few people could do that. But the birds sensed, or rather, in a Buddhist kind of way, did not sense, his presence.
It was funny the way he kept tugging that bit of bread and the 'dumb' birds just coming in closer. They got their bit of bread in the end though, eating at my bro's feet.
Years ago, birds would have no fear and come in and people would hold them in their hands. Then let them go. But before that they would capture them in 'sparrow-pots' and eat them!
https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/when-sparrows-were-a-source-of-food.80240
But as birds learn to avoid cars, they also learn to avoid being eaten.
Another bit of trivia regarding birds.
When people first started putting nuts out for them in bird feeders, they did not know why so many little birds kept dying. But it was because the nuts they fed to them were toxic (no one knew this at the time) and so it poisoned them. They changed the source of the nuts and the birds stopped dying.
It sounds so simple when you spin it like that, but it really was a problem for a little while till they figured it out. And it wasn't an easy problem to solve.
Anyway, I always love to see a good photo of our fine feathered friends.
If anyone wants some general advice with observing, I can maybe point them in the right direction. It's not really my thing (just yet), but there is some common ground with binoculars and bino-viewers and even full blown telescopes. And all the associated eyepieces that go with that. I'm a novice and an amateur, but I might be able to help a bit.
I've seen some absolutely incredible photos be taken by people who used to be in the army say. But instead of wearing a ghillie suit, well okay, they probably still do wear a ghillie suit, but instead of waiting to see people they will kill from 2000 yards, they wait for birds to appear, for 20 seconds, so they can get a 'shot'. And what a 'shot' they get.
These are the professionals in the field. But I also find them the most encouraging and helpful to new 'observers'. Any source of information is 'data' to them. Just provide time and place and other useful information. They don't always respond, but they do give great moral support.
This is a most honourable pursuit.
Human beings only got digital cameras like 20 years ago, which is just an arse scratch of a time relatively in human history. But humans have been watching birds since the dawn of man. Sometimes to hide from them (those big dinosaur things), but mostly to nick their eggs or just capture and eat the birds themselves.
So no true bird-watcher will ever do down another man's humble observations, no matter how blurry. And there is always someone out there with major photographic skills who understands depth of field and knows how to stop a shutter, and might even own a ghillie suit! So all the more reason to be humble.
Birds are not like us. They are probably the most alien creature to our own selves there is. Then again, think of reptiles. Maybe my theory was not so great after all. Some people are like snakes, others are like eagles.
But birds are not mammals. Neither are they reptilian. Ok, maybe technically reptilian...
Best not to think about what fishes are.
https://www.quora.com/Is-a-fish-a-mammal-amphibian-reptile-or-none-of-them
Just rapping.
I'll sort out that footage and upload it when I get a moment.
