Written By: Sarah Girton
It’s our final week in the blog series! I hope you’ve enjoyed the previous posts, and hopefully picked up a couple of new fun facts. After all the serious, science-y talk, I figured I’d end with something a little more lighthearted and fun! This post won’t be terribly informative; basically I just wanted to highlight a bunch of silly birds.
Pretty much everyone can agree on the funny and amusing nature of birds. They dance to human music, get into all sorts of shenanigans (I’m looking at you, Keas…)…and let’s not forget of all those wacky mating rituals!
Ever heard of the Potoo (pictured above)? A tropical relative of nightjars and frogmouths, the potoo isn’t especially amusing in its behavior, but their facial expressions are so clownish! Being a nocturnal bird, it makes sense that the potoo would have such gigantic eyes, but it’s pretty hard to take them seriously with a face like that!
Have you come across the YouTube channel Mr. Max T.V. ? Max is YouTube famous because of his antics, some of the most amusing of which involve him finding out he has to go to the vet (usually it’s just to get his toenails done!).
Oh, Max, your hijinks never get old!
Keas are another funny bird (to me, anyway). In fact, in their native New Zealand, they can actually be quite a nuisance — They have been known to damage cars and other human property. Despite this love/hate relationship with humans, they are actually a protected species, as their numbers were steadily dropping for decades. Now, there are a host of legal protections, non-profit organizations, and overall bird-loving humans who are working hard to bring this little prankster back from the brink. Even though they can be seen by some as aggravating, I find them charming…but then again I tend to be a little biased with all birds in general 🙂 Below is my favorite video of Kea shenanigans…
And of course, no blog post of funny birds is complete without throwing in a mention of either birds of paradise or Bowerbirds. I briefly talked about both of these (very animated) bird families in the series intro, but I wanted to talk specifically about the Flame Bowerbird today. This is a fellow who is indescribably beautiful, and his complex mating ritual is fascinating…but one can’t help but chuckle a bit at his performance…
On that note, we have come to the end of our blog series. I hope you have enjoyed reading these posts as much as I have enjoyed writing them!
I really like this blog series and the bird humor. Thank you!