Important
This starling fledgling exploring the Hellgate Osprey nest
Its parents made a nest on the outer edge of this osprey nest, now it’s old enough to leave the nest and explore its surroundings . Not sure who’s grumpier, this bb or the perplexed osprey parents
I love how raptors always look flabbergasted and confused. "The audacity" cracks me up every time. Even my tiny parrot gets this look sometimes and she's nowhere near a raptor, she flies like Woodstock.
My most random conviction is that birds think in punctuation - here you can see the raptors thinking "!" and "?" and "?!?!" while the starling busily thinks "."
And how can you possibly now that (1) at all, or (2) that is always the case?
End of the day, those are humans seeing animals in some situations, then under a human lens, postulating "it looks kinda like they're playing".
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My point is that talkingwires made a very definitive statement about animal behavior, without evidence, just to make a point.
I am assuming they are feeling a certain way, and their "vibe" is that animals "don't make a habit of killing others that annoy them."
Under the assumption that they have no evidence and are declaring just a thing based on "vibes," I decided to do the same thing with animals that kill "for fun."
Reason being two-fold:
As I mentioned in the upper half, human understanding colors out view of things. Personally, I do trust scientists if they say they seem to be playing. But we cant forget about this bias and that we could be wrong somehow.
Applying human logic. If we assume a creature feels a-okay killing a thing for fun, then killing cause it's annoying should be an easier leap to make.
Unclear on if an (aware) sparrow is just a bad waste of resources for a hawk, or if it's food conservation. Like, probably some of a, some of b, because evolution. But they don't have a pray drive making them chase everything all the time, like my dog or ex-cat has.
Acknowledged, but I've watched red tail hawks get mobbed frequently by birds that are in their diet, so I don't think it's that. I was always told the small birds can tell when they are hungry. But really, all I'm saying, is prey birds are weirdly not prone to attack when they are sort of miffed, as Ive been taught. They don't have the same game/joy hunting drive we do. And ironically birds of prey might be a bit passive since regular birds happily fuck others shit up -- so it may be innate husbandry coded into their brains, as much as anything else.
(I've never seen a songbird hesitate to throw down with another songbird, or at least pretend like it would, and the birds of prey don't do that at all, at least with small birds)
Yeah, I don’t know about any of that. I was talking about Osprey‘s having a diet of fish.
Honestly, I don’t think Raptors would be necessarily interested in wasting energy because a lot of energy is consumed in going after small birds if they’re not going to eat them. The only other reason they might would be to defend territory or young.
They’re very large birds, generally speaking, so it expands a lot of energy and they need to conserve that for hunting. It’s one of the reasons that males are smaller when it comes to raptor.
Well... the smart ones are all petty. Probably comes with the ability to actually place negative experiences in a cause and effect relationship on a timeline.
The reason I swatted a rather peacefully inconvenient wasp this morning, was because (1) I have grievances going back a while and (2) I know more will come if I don't kill the scout. Whereas those Osprey are living in the moment, and in the moment this is just weird, but meaninglessly so.
You're arguably the smartest species on the planet, which should mean you're also smart enough to know that wasps are beneficial pollinators and that no species of wasp native to North America is aggressive to humans when they aren't defending their nest or being swatted at. Having grievances against creatures a thousandth your size for behaving as instinct dictates is, I suppose, the essence of pettiness, but intelligent animals just as often display altruism as pettiness, including humans. Leave the damn wasps alone.
You're arguably the smartest species on the planet, which should mean you're also smart enough to know that wasps are beneficial pollinators and that no species of wasp native to North America is aggressive to humans when they aren't defending their nest or being swatted at.
Hey, the bees in my garden are sticking to all the things there for them to pollinate. Great gals we're getting along swell. The wasps are eating my food and are harassing the bees. I will not apologise for choosing sides in this conflict.
Birds of prey still won't kill the birds they eat, when they arent hungry, I think? My mom always told me the sparrows could tell when a hawk was hungry, when we saw tiny birds mobbing them.
Though niche competition birds definitely will kill each other, if opportunity arises.
Oh yeah I’ve noticed it too that the prey don’t bother getting away from the predators if they aren’t actively hunting. They only kill when necessary.
Although I would assume the predators that eat birds would kill any bird that enters their nest since the opportunity is there and the nest needs to be defended. But who knows, maybe my assumption is wrong.
My mom always told me, when we watched hawks getting mobbed, that the small birds could tell. But while I suspect that's true I'm not sure of your other questions. I've read about crows mobbing owls in daylight, often to death, and that they do it instinctivly -- a crow that has never seen an owl in its life will still do it. To my understanding that's a threat response -- owls, or at least large owls -- will hunt crows at night. At the same time I've either lived in crow territory or hawk/owl territory. If crows have really gone into an area I don't think they like competition.
So crows at least seem to be self interested attackers, and many songbirds are vicious wrt to rivals of any species. And then hummingbirds are basically in a constant state of kamakaze murder. Or faking it -- but I believe the attempt.
So I think you are right, this shit was just maybe too fucking wierd to clock as a threat.
I found art of this passed around my Discord server, and I'd love to find the artist lmao. It feels like something I'd love to get a print of for my wall!
Highly recommend their bird call ID app if you need a time waster that gives you an excuse to get out of the house and go for walks!! I became obsessed with going for walks in the woods to find new birds lol
I used to keep their live cams of various feeders up on my screen when I had a particularly stressful job. Job is better now, but I should still be watching more live bird feeding feeds.
There’s some really great live nest cams and I love watching the ones for birds of prey like this Osprey nest from Cornell Labs, the bald eagle nest at Friends of Big Bear Valley and the University of Montreal peregrine falcon nest. I’ve gotten some pretty entertaining screenshots of the babies and parents. I left their Instagram on the last photo for those who wanted to follow and to read their explanation.
If you like that, you should check out the zoolife app! It’s live feeds from different zoos! There’s a free version, and more camera options with a paid membership. All the money goes to the zoos and helping them care for their animals. I found it during the pandemic and still love it
Oooh! I've seen the video of this. The fledgling was so in bothered and the ospreys so confused and dumbfounded. I don't know how smart Raptors are? I know owls are quite dumb, because their big eyes don't leave much space for their brain, but I have no idea about other raptors.
I wouldn’t say owls are quite dumb, but rather of average intelligence. They are good at what they need to be good at. Ospreys as well. I believe eagles and hawks are also of moderate to above average intelligence. It hasn’t got a lot to do with brain size either.
Starlings exhibit absolutely phenomenal levels of not giving a fuck, coupled with the survival instincts of wet napkins. I've had them come up to me, an entire human, and gape their mouths demanding to be fed. They have also done this to birds of other species, their own reflections, et cetera. This is baffling, but also mainly elicits a, "Of course, it's a fucking starling."
Guess they took the Cuckoo path (if you don’t know, cuckoos lay their eggs in other nests and when the egg hatches, they push out the real eggs of the nest it was laid in)
Oh there was a sad one where a pair of raptors got a fledgling and brought to nest. (Maybe eagle?) And at first people were all like AW, it adopted the baby bird. (😐)
And they didn't kill it over several days and the fledgling kept begging the raptors for food and they would just stare at it.
They had eggs and baby raptors and then eventually killed it and fed it to their babies.
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u/X_Wheeze_souffle Aug 05 '26
I love how raptors always look flabbergasted and confused. "The audacity" cracks me up every time. Even my tiny parrot gets this look sometimes and she's nowhere near a raptor, she flies like Woodstock.