telophase | (no subject)

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birds

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I've been playing bird videos on our spare TV (which lives on a wheeled cart for easy transport) almost nonstop every time I'm in my office because they keep the cats transfixed and away from my keyboard and monitor. The best YouTube channel for this I've found is Paul Dinning's channel, a videographer who lives in Cornwall and specializes in videos of small birds feeding and bathing, aimed at cats.

And the rilly rilly important part about this is that I have discovered that European robins are

just

so

darn

adorable

y'all!

OK you Europeans may be wondering why I'm going on about your robins. Take a look at American robins which are NOT THE SAME BIRD to see WHY your robins are JUST SO DARLING in comparison.

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Holy cow, that's what European robins look like?! They are so darling!

I mean, I think American robins are pretty cool too. But aww! So round! Such birb!

I KNOW! SO fluffy! So tiny! So adorable!

Yeah, parts of The Secret Garden make a lot more sense to a U.S. reader when you realize that the only thing the two species have in common is the general color scheme. I like wild birbs in general, but American Robins are sort of clunky and dumb.

The closest equivalent we seem to have around here, in the way the bird is perceived by local humans, is likely the chickadee.

Bluebirds have some of that around here, although they're not as common as others.

They are adorable as hell, and also fully believe that they are velociraptors. Male robins in particular are highly territorial and have no fear of ANYTHING. I've seen one dive bomb our cat.

Happily, they're also smart enough to have realised humans are a food source and we are thus graciously tolerated. Our local robin follows my husband around when he's gardening, waiting to swoop in and claim any unearthed worms.

That doesn't surprise me at all--hummingbirds, for one, are vicious little bastards.

The summer I did an internship at a Wyoming museum on the Oregon Trail that had a rebuilt fort with a garden, I often saw one of our robins who'd worked out that when the museum secretary came down to weed and water the garden, he could hop around after her and pull worms out of the wet ground. So there's certainly some behavioral similarities there!

We've got several robins in our area--there were three in our neighbor's yard the other day.

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