The Cellar Image of the Day

Woodpecker in flight, an afternoon delight...
This isn't the best picture of a Woodpecker in flight, but probably the most unique because the Woodpecker is wearing fur.

Maybe not wearing fur exactly, more like carrying fur... with a weasel in it.
A guy named Martin Le-May took the picture and a Jason Ward put it on twitter.

That's incredible. I love it so much that cameras are so ubiquitous now that stuff like this is actually getting captured.

And I understand that the part of the brain devoted to vision is huge for birds and the other parts are pretty small. Maybe that's why Woody doesn't just fly upside down for a few moments. Bird brain didn't think of it.

Ah ha, here we have proof Mr Woodpecker and Mr Weasel, were not bros on an adventure.
Mr Weasel is undeniably an agent and minion of the evil Putin.

I'm glad to hear Mr Woodpecker escaped, but I worry Mr Weasel will end up in a Siberian Gulag for his failure.

What Jim said.

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Weasels-on-a-woodpecker!! is my new exclamatory phrase of choice.

Yes, and another way of saying that is...

The enemy of my friend is my .... dinner.

That weasel's brain, unfortunately for it, was smaller than the bird's. Or maybe the weasel brain is composed of too many 'Attack! Bite! Kill!' neurons and too few 'Is this really a good idea?' neurons.

Who knew weasels were so bold? I mean, sure, they are weasels, and will steal eggs and stuff, but it take a lot of self confidence to go after something bigger than you.

I love this thread.

I suspect the Weasel/Seagull was staged. I would appear the Seagull was unable to take off and what was the Weasel doing swimming in the lake or ocean? I know they can swim but they're not generally a water animal. At the end the Weasel looked like it was heading for the boat.

Wiki says;

These woodpeckers are brave.
The whole video is good, but the action gets going at 0:30

So you think the crow has moved up from riding vultures in Spain (2009) to Eagles in Rome (2015).

Me thinks that's a streeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetch.

Thanks for that Bruce.

Could have sworn the raptor in Post #16 was an Eagle.

Well spotted, sir.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ian Frazier

Lately, I’ve been working for the crows, and so far it’s the best job I ever had. I fell into it by a combination of preparedness and luck. I’d been casting around a bit, looking for a new direction in my career, and one afternoon when I was out on my walk I happened to see some crows fly by. One of them landed on a telephone wire just above my head. I looked at him for a moment, and then on impulse I made a skchhh noise with my teeth and lips. He seemed to like that; I saw his tail make a quick upward bobbing motion at the sound. Encouraged, I made the noise again, and again his tail bobbed. He looked at me closely with one eye, then turned his beak and looked at me with the other, meanwhile readjusting his feet on the wire. After a few minutes, he cawed and flew off to join his companions. I had a good feeling I couldn’t put into words. Basically, I thought the meeting had gone well, and as it turned out, I was right. When I got home there was a message from the crows saying I had the job.

That first interview proved indicative of the crows’ business style. They are very informal and relaxed, unlike their public persona, and mostly they leave me alone. I’m given a general direction of what they want done, but the specifics of how to do it are up to me. For example, the crows have long been unhappy about public misperceptions of them: that they raid other birds’ nests, drive songbirds away, eat garbage and dead things, can’t sing, etc.—all of which is completely untrue once you know them. My first task was to take these misperceptions and turn them into a more positive image. I decided the crows needed a slogan that emphasized their strengths as a species. The slogan I came up with was Crows: We Want to Be Your Only Bird.™ I told this to the crows, they loved it, and we’ve been using it ever since.

Crows speak a dialect of English rather like that of the remote hill people of the Alleghenies. If you’re not accustomed to it, it can be hard to understand. In their formal speech they are as measured and clear as a radio announcer from the Midwest—though, as I say, they are seldom formal with me. (For everyday needs, of course, they caw.) Their unit of money is the empty soda bottle, which trades at a rate of about 20 to the dollar. In the recent years of economic boom, the crows have quietly amassed great power. With investment capital based on their nationwide control of everything that gets run over on the roads, they have bought a number of major companies. Pepsi-Cola is now owned by the crows, as well as Knight Ridder newspapers and the company that makes Tombstone frozen pizzas. The New York Metropolitan Opera is now wholly crow-owned.

In order to stay competitive, the crows recently merged with the ravens. This was done not only for reasons of growth but also to better serve those millions who live and work near crows. In the future, both crows and ravens will be known by the group name of Crows, so if you see a bird and wonder which it is, you don’t have to waste any time: Officially and legally, it’s a crow. The net result of this, of course, is that now there are a lot more crows—which is exactly what the crows want. Studies they’ve sponsored show that there could be anywhere from 10 to a thousand times more crows than there already are, with no strain on carrying capacity. A healthy increase in crow numbers would make basic services like cawing loudly outside your bedroom window at six in the morning available to all. In this area, as in many others, the crows are thinking very long term.

Crows are not only intelligent but highly trainable and communicative. Studies have shown that they can recognize individual human faces (including with disguises applied) and teach their offspring which of us bald pink monkeys to avoid. My own personal studies support this

.

I have some fun little twitches thanks to mild OCD related to severe anxiety, and one such peeve is loud, unmelodic, erratic noises; I lack the brain circuitry to "just ignore it". I'm sure y'all can imagine what trying to sleep was like as a kid when my mom always managed to land us in a neighborhood where at least one dog would bark ALL <unladylike word here> NIGHT. Fast-forward to about five years back when a 2-story-high streetlight was installed directly across the street from my computer room window.

The local crows would, of course, fight over who got to perch on it because the 20-ish even taller ones are a whole half a block away at the high school. It took almost no time whatsoever for me to get super-sick of 'KAAAAAW KAAAAAAW KAAAAAAW' for hours on end. I knew a secret, however--crows really loathe being stared at intently. It took two years of piling down my front steps with camera in hand every time they landed on said streetlight, but for the last two or three years there have been no more than 3 attempts to land on that light per spring and fall and none in winter and high summer. Now all I have to do is let them see the range-finding light on the front of my camera blink on and they're gone.

The ravens we have around here are quite a different bird altogether and very rarely even fly close by, much less land unless it's midwinter and they're really hungry.

I've read that ever since Audubon did his original drawings of the bald eagle,
we have interpreted the eagle's expression in a humanistic way.

That "expression" seems especially appropriate in this pic, given the situation (if it's not photoshopped)

Good point, to me they always look like a pissed off spinster schoolmarm, no matter what they're doing. Of course that's my impression of their mood, and has no bearing on reality. When they're used in an ad, a cartoon, or as a symbol, they're portrayed as wise, strong, proud, angry, all with the same inscrutable face. Never as happy, or even neutral.

Snake, I used to feed the crows in the park when I was in rehab.
After two months it got so there were none as I sat down, but when I got the nuts from my bag there were already three or four. It helped that I was always sat in the same place at the same time of course, but without being sentimental (at all) they did know me. As a source of food I mean, but that'll do when you're feeling isolated.

The pigeons in my local park don't have the same recognition - they behave more like football hooligans. But I'd like to think there is some recognition, as I've never seen anyone else able to hand feed them, let alone having them alight on their shoulders or lap. My schedule is more varied there, as is my location, but I always hold still, move slowly and feed the same food. Birds recognise patterns.

I thought the goose was especially trusting of me, but I've seen her come out of the water for cheap bread before. The little tart.

Crows recognize faces, they just couldn't figure out why your watch was fast.

But seriously folks, Crows are more cautious than the pigeon hooligans.

Move along folks, nothing to see here...just a goose-on-a-moose...

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