It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s The Angry Birds Airbus!

By Nayla Khan
From http://walyou.com/

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The Angry Birds you have been playing with might be flightless, but this whole new fleet of Angry Birds has wings and can go flying as well. There’s even a pig that can fly. Well, that is going a bit too far, but if you get to see the pictures and video you will have to believe your eyes.

Or can you really trust your eyes on this? The answer would be both yes and no. Yes because you can actually see a fleet of Angry Birds theme painted aircrafts and no because these are not really birds (nor actual airliners … yet). Either way, it is fun to watch some of these favorite birds in a whole new form.

Posted on Jomni’s blog are a couple of Airbus pictures that have been given a whole new skin by Jomni himself. If you have been an Angry Bird fan you will not take a second to recognize the birds featured here. You have the Red bird, Yellow bird, Blue bird, and the Red Big Brother. Together they are out on a mission to destroy a ‘nasty egg stealing’ green colored pig. For a change the pig too is out flying in the blue skies. It is worth mentioning here that all the birds have been painted on Airbus aircrafts while the pig is a Boeing “since it’s Airbus’ rival.”

The stage is set and the characters are already out to perform their parts. What remains to be seen is how the plot unfolds. As the video reveals the pig takes off first, presumably with the eggs, and is soon followed by all the Angry Birds. After a long chase they finally close in on the villain but sadly enough the red, blue and yellow birds miss the pig. Now it is the job for Big Brother and he does not disappoint. He manages to hit the tail section of the pig after which he loses control and goes nose diving and finally crashes. The birds might not have been able to recover the eggs but they did teach the pig a lesson.

The entire plot and setting does appear pretty exciting on screen and thankfully has no reality attached to it. The video is simulator generated and gives quite a realistic appeal but is far from being real. Some things are only good as long as they are not real and this definitely is one of them.

If you are a fan of Angry Birds, don’t forget to take a look at Angry Birds Cake, Angry Birds Android App and Angry Birds Cyborgs.

Peacok's Feather Amazing photo-shoot

From: http://i.imgur.com/

Bird's-eye view: Seagull 'steals' video camera and shoots footage of its soaring flight above French Riviera

ByDaily Mail Reporter

From

The term bird's-eye view has never been more appropriate.

A video has emerged of a seagull supposedly 'stealing' a video camera and carrying it off through the skies.

With the camera recording at the moment of lift off, the feathered directer accidentally records a video of its flight over Cannes in the south of France, home of arguably the world's most famous film festival.

Steven Seagull: This feathered film star stole a video camera and inadvertently shot a video of its flight over Cannes in the South of France

Shot from above: The seagull recorded its flight to the top of Cannes Castle, capturing images of the roads and streets below

The video begins with an unseen cameraman creeping through the garden of a large house at night, and then placing the camera on the ground.

An inquisitive seagull walks up to the camera and seemingly lifts it up with its beak, before flying off.

The cameraman can be heard making his protests with a rather feeble 'Hey. HEY!' but is not glimpsed as the gull files up above the streets and houses, with cars visible on the roads below.

After a short flight - punctuated by some rather amusing honks and squawks from the seagull - our star comes in to land on top of a building.

The gull pokes around at the camera with it's beak, turning it over a few times, before it settles on a view of another building with a fellow seagull visible - perhaps the leading lady in seagull circles.

The pair have a brief squawking session before the camera fades to black.

I'm ready for my close up: The seagull casts a beady eye over its shiny electronic booty, while in the background is a tower on which he soon finds a friends

'Seagull stole my video camera in Cannes France. I found it on the castle wall, where I had to climb,' wrote opica1983, the YouTube user who posted the video online.

The question of quite how opica1983 knew where there camera had come to rest is unanswered.

One also has to wonder what the original cameraman was doing prowling around in the garden of a large house at night in the first place.

The video is entitled 'Seagull stole GoPro', which refers to the brand of camera.

GoPro make small cameras that are often used by sports people, sometimes mounted on helmets or even attached to surfboards to capture video from unusual angles.

The company has previously marketed its cameras with viral videos, including a snowboarding and surfing short that has so far been watched more than 3million times on YouTube.

In fact, GoPro has made something of a name for itself in that area and has previously been praised for its viral video advertising by the likes of Mashable, the internet and social media news website.

Perhaps after seeing the success it has enjoyed in viral videos the company has decided to spread its wings into viral video advertising.

Or perhaps there actually is a seagull out there with a desire to be in the movies...

Could crows have caught Osama bin Laden?

From: http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/blogs/could-crows-have-caught-osama-bin-laden

These smart birds may have been used in the hunt for the world's most famous terrorist.

Photo: LucinaM/Flickr

A full week after Osama bin Laden was killed, it might be time to give some credit to crows and ravens. Yes, you read that right. Crows and ravens.

For a few years, the University of Washington has been training and studying crows and ravens to test their ability to recognize human faces. As it turns out, the birds are really good at it. A few experiments by professor John Marzluff and some folks on campus wearing caveman masks revealed that the birds could not only recognize the individual “cavemen,” but would also swarm them on the University of Washington campus.

This drew the attention of the military, which contacted Marzluff and then gave him some funding to find out if the birds could be used to track down bin Laden. “[Crows and ravens] have a long -term memory, very acute discrimination abilities, and if a group of crows knew bin Laden as an enemy, they would certainly indicate his presence when they next saw him,” said Marzluff in a recent interview.

As it turns out, crows are smart on several levels. Researchers in New Zealand discovered that the birds can use tools to get food, and that the birds can teach their children to use tools through “home schooling.”

We will never know if birds had anything to do with bin Laden’s death. Those details, like the pictures of bin Laden and the identity of the Navy Seals who killed him, are unlikely to become public. So next time you see a black bird, consider that it might be more heroic than you think. And if you have a guilty conscience, you might want to hide your face. After all, you wouldn’t want the bird to tip off the authorities.

Also on MNN: Titanium fangs? The technology behind the dog that helped capture bin Laden

Rescued Baby Hummingbird

Uploaded by kandwarf

This is a baby hummingbird I rescued after it was attacked. The song is "Better Together" by Jack Johnson.

Amazing Angry Birds Pumpkin

posted by: Heesa Phadie
from: http://www.icanhasinternets.com/

This is one of the coolest pumpkins I’ve seen. I like how he even added the slingshot so that it would glow on the back wall. Combine two of my favorite things and you’ve got yourself this. Who doesn’t love carving pumpkins…and who doesn’t love launching those angry birds into all kinds of structures. The only problem I see with this is that it’s just an invitation for some punk kids to turn this into a real life version of the game and make it a smashing pumpkin.

Amazing Bird Photos You'll Swear Are Fake

I've been following a particularly interesting photographer on Flickr now for awhile, and the images he posts seem just unreal. But they're not!

Chickadee In Flight

They're incredible images of birds in flight, captured with a special camera set-up. While the photos look like paintings, they are indeed photos. You'll be amazed to see some of the movements of birds Gerry Sibell has been able to immobilize -- from hummingbirds battling wasps to goldfinches having mid-air standoffs.

Photo: Gerry Sibell

Click here for the Full Gallery: http://www.treehugger.com/

Albino and Half-Albino Peacocks Are Simply Stunning (Photos)

by Jerry James Stone

from: http://www.treehugger.com/

Photo by Yvonne Ayoub

Within the plumage of a peacock lies a complex architecture that's continuously changing color. Or so it seems. Though the colors of a peacock are revered, it is just as stunning--if not more so--without them. Often referred to as an albino peacock, it is nothing of the sort. It's technically a white peacock which is a genetic variant of the Indian Blue Peafowl.

Photo by nikki.loraine ( view larger photo)

The colors in the feathers of a bird are determined two factors: pigment and structure. For example, the green in some parrots is a result of yellow pigments over blue-reflecting feathers. In the case of a white peacock, its unusual lack-of-color is due to a missing pigment. This missing pigment is dark and absorbs incident light, making diffracted and interference light visible (i.e. common peacocks). The effect is similar to that of oil on water.

Photo by *amy&kimball

Pigment colorization in birds comes from three different groups: melanins, carotenoids, and porphyrines. Melanins occur as tiny specs of color in both the skin and feathers, and ranges from the darkest black to pale yellows. Carotenoids are plant-based and are acquired only by eating plants or by eating something that ate a plant. They produce bright yellows and brilliant oranges. The last pigment group, Porphyrins, produces a range of colors including pink, browns, reds, and greens.

But feather structure is as important to color as pigment. Each feather consists of thousands of flat branches, each with minuscule bowl-shaped indentations. At the bottom of each indentation is a lamellae (thin plate-like layers), that acts like a prism, splitting light. It's the same principle for butterflies and humming birds.

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Photo by Timothy Riley ( view larger photo)

Photo by Dileep Govindaraju

Photo by JLMphoto ( view larger photo)

Photo by Rocky413 ( view larger photo)

Most intelligent bird in the world! How did he make that?

So you think your pet is Badass! Kyrgyzstan and Manas Air Base

Late last month, the Parliament of Kyrgyzstan voted - by an overwhelming margin - to terminate their lease to the United States of Manas Air Base, and required the Americans to vacate the base within six months. The vote followed closely on the heels of an earlier announcement that Russia would be providing over $2 billion in financial aid to Kyrgyzstan. Manas is a crucial air base for operations in and around Afghanistan, and U.S. officials remain hopeful that there may still be room for negotiation. The majority of Kyrgyzstan's population appears to have little concern about the closure, instead focusing on their own struggles to get by, as migrant work in Russia has recently evaporated, and jobs at home in Kyrgyzstan are hard to come by. News photos from Kyrgyzstan are few and far between - that said, here is a collection of recent scenes from festivals, rural life, and Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan. (25 photos total)

A Kazakh hunter flies his golden eagle during a hunting festival "Solburun" in the village of Bokonbayevo, Kyrgyzstan, some 300km outside Bishkek on October 18, 2008. (VYACHESLAV OSELEDKO/AFP/Getty Images)

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Kazakh hunters wearing national clothes hold golden eagles during a hunting festival "Solburun" on October 18, 2008. (VYACHESLAV OSELEDKO/AFP/Getty Images) #

Click here for the rest of the article: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/03/kyrgyzstan_and_manas_air_base.html

40 wild birds play a Gibson Les Paul guitar

Will Gompertz |

This caught my eye. It's funny and oddly compelling.

The film is of an installation by a contemporary French artist called Celeste Boursier-Mougenot. It's very Marcel Duchamp, the French artist who started the conceptual art ball rolling nearly a hundred years ago.

Duchamp pioneered combining everyday materials, philosophical comment and humour, an idea that seeped into places like the 1960s pop group the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (they wanted to call themselves the Bonzo Dog Dada band, but worried people wouldn't get it) and Monty Python.

But Duchamp's more radical idea was to introduce chance into the creation of art. In 1913-14 he made 3 Standard Stoppages, a work of art that was the result of the random actions of mechanised contraptions. At the time, he was largely dismissed as a crazy Frenchman, but he inspired an entire avant-garde movement in art as well as the music of John Cage and the choreography of Merce Cunningham. Duchamp was not short of self-confidence, but the idea of adding chance to the creative process was rather humble.

"That's so random" is a common refrain nowadays, referring to a supposedly non-logical thought or event. It was also the clarion cry of the Dadaists, the anti-art, anti-rational early-20th-Century art movement that argued that it was rational thought that led to World War I.

Duchamp was much loved by the Dada movement. I wonder what Dadaists would have made of the internet. It's interesting that, as far as I am aware, no contemporary artist has yet harnessed this extraordinary technology to make a significant artwork. Of course, maybe I'm wrong and am missing something great - do you know of any net-based art works that are worth a look?

Maybe you have made one (an artwork made specifically for the medium, as opposed to a film such as the one above, which uses the net only as a means of dissemination)?

If you, like me, can't find any net-based art of note, why do you think that is? Why, when there's been such a boom in contemporary art around the world, has no artist made the medium of the web his or her canvas? And if someone were to use the net as a medium, as opposed to making an image, or a video, or even an interactive Flash animation, what would the resulting art look, or sound, or feel like?

Duchamp and the Dadaists would have had hours of artistic amusement creating spoof websites, unintelligible Wiki entries and general questioning of the status quo.

Perhaps that is what Celeste Boursier-Mougenot should do next after the installation of his 40 Finches work opens at London's Barbican art gallery on 27 February. Like Duchamp, he seems to understand the creative potential of random acts and non-directed participation. He's already proved in this artwork that while Keith Richards and Eric Clapton might be masters of the Gibson Les Paul, even they cannot play it like 40 wild birds - not a chance.

You think Heathrow is bad? A million snow geese stop over at wildlife refuge en route to wintering grounds

By Claire Bates

Like a blizzard filling the sky, these pictures show one of nature's most amazing displays as more than a million snow geese stop for a rest during their annual migration.

The spectacular shots were taken by Mike Hollingshead in Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge near Mound City, Missouri. The geese must travel 2,500miles twice a year.

Every autumn the snow geese head from their main breeding grounds in central Canada to their wintering grounds in the Gulf of Mexico. The noisy birds migrate in unusually large flocks of 100 to 1,000 that are made up of many family groups. Biologists still do not understand how the birds decide when to migrate.

A million snow geese crowded into Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge this autumn on their way to their wintering grounds in Mexico

The birds manage to stay together in family groups numbering from 100 to 1,000 on their journey south from Canada

Male and female geese look very similar although the males are slightly bigger. Although a swirling flock of snow geese looks like falling snow, there are darker birds among the group. These blue geese, long thought to be a separate species, are simply a dark version of the same bird.

More than a million converge on the national park, which acts as an important stopover on the Central Flyway migration route. It is on one of the narrowest points of the migration route.

This year managers estimate 1.2million snow geese rested at the 11.5 square mile refuge. It used to be a private hunting area but now its wildlife is protected.

Some birds however have been recorded to make the entire journey without stopping for a rest - a flight of 70 hours. All the geese are less inclined to stop on their return north as they are eager to breed.

Snow geese breed during the Arctic summer (same as the UK) and migrate during autumn months. They spend winter in Mexico and travel back to Canada in late spring

Routes used by birds are established because there is plenty of food and water along its length and few mountains or large hills to block the flyway.

During the flight south the birds fly between 40 and 50 miles an hour at around 3,000ft. However, some have been recorded as high as 20,000ft on radar.

They fly in an unusual undulating fashion often known as a 'wavie'. The birds fly at different heights and rise and descend slightly on the journey. They also form imperfect Vs and while there is usually a leader at the head, this position changes among the flock.

Enlarge

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Flight of fancy: Snow Geese spend the winter in Mexico before flying north to their breeding grounds in Canada during the summer

Snow geese arrive at their cold nesting grounds before the snow has melted and breed over the arctic summer. As the young grow the adult geese go through an annual moult and are rendered flightless for about a month.

They then make the long journey back to Mexico with their young between August and October and stay with them for their first winter. They have strong family bonds and usually mate for life.

A hundred years ago the snow goose was in decline and hunting them was stopped in the United States in 1916. Hunting was allowed again in 1975, but the population has still trebled in the last 30 years and continues to grow at more than five per cent a year.

They have increased to the point that both their tundra breeding areas and the saltmarsh wintering grounds are becoming severely degraded, and this is affecting other species using the same habitat.

Snow Geese are rare visitors to the British Isles but they can be spotted at times among flocks of Barnacle, Brent and Greenland White-fronted geese.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1213918/Snow-geese-stopover-wildlife-refuge-en-route-wintering-grounds.html?ITO=1490#ixzz0RNgP9wSO

Really Weird Bird Anatomy

by Miss Cellania

The closer you look, the weirder Mother Nature appears. Some birds that look absolutely common on the outside have anatomical features that will surprise you.

Trombone Trachea

The trachea is also known as the windpipe. It’s what we breath through. In most animals, that’s all it’s for. Humans have a larynx in the middle, to make noises we call speech using the moving air already there. Most birds have a simple trachea like ours, but others take in air through an extensive labyrinth. Swans have long necks, but trumpeter swans have tracheas that are three times as long as their size should indicate. It loops and coils through the breastbone in a totally unnecessary fashion, unless you are a trumpeter swan and want to make loud noises to attract the opposite sex. The same is true for cranes, as the whooping crane with its distinctive voice has the longest trachea of all crane species. The trumpet bird (Phonygammus keraudrenii), a species of bird of paradise, has the longest trachea of all, as you can see in this diagram.

These birds have a long way to breathe! The purpose of extra elongated windpipes has to be the sounds these birds make.

Trumpeter swans, Whooping cranes and Trumpet birds are the noisiest members of their respective groups, and exhibit the most complicated and elongate tracheae of their respective groups. I think we can safely infer that extinct birds with long, looping tracheae – like those moa – made loud, striking calls too.

After all, these pipes closely resemble the loops in tubas, french horns, and trumpets.

The Lake Rapist

Most male birds do not have a penis, but some that do seem to make up for the rest. The Argentine lake duck’s penis is shaped like a corkscrew and can extend to 17 inches. Seventeen. Inches. The bird is only about 16 inches tall.

Argentine lake ducks practice forced copulation and the females are often observed trying to get away. Possibly the long penis evolved to make reaching a female easier. Or conversely, the long penis could be the reason the females try to escape.

Woodpecker Tongue

Woodpeckers are strange birds all around. They bang their heads against trees, telephone poles, and sometimes aluminum siding, making noises that would wake the dead. The woodpeckers in my neck of the woods are about the size of a cocker spaniel and could rip your flesh to shreds if you get too close. But those things seem almost normal when you look at a woodpecker’s tongue. It has a bone, an extension of the hyoid bone found in many animals. It is quite long, in order to dip into trees and extract insects. Some woodpeckers have sticky tongues or barbed ends on the tongue to grab more insects. What’s really weird is that in some woodpecker species, the tongue starts in the throat and grows up under the jaw, loops through the bird’s sinuses, out one nostril, wraps around the back of the skull, and grows back inside through the other nostril! In some species, there is a loop of tongue around the eye, which is where the excess is stored when the tongue is not in use. Also, the tongue is forked into two for part of the length, but united into one tongue at both ends.

If it weren’t for the relatively photogenic hyoid bone left behind when the flesh is gone, you wouldn’t believe this bizarre layout, The woodpecker’s tongue is a bone of contention between creationists (who believe this bizarre configuration couldn’t have evolved) and evolutionists (who say it could and did). My brother once told me that woodpeckers use their tongues to hold their brains in place while they hammer on trees. I didn’t believe him. That idea doesn’t seem so far-fetched now.

New Bird Evolves Faster than Any Other

Written by Jake Richardson

A bird recently discovered in the Solomon Islands is a member of the White Eyes (Zosteropidae) family that evolves more rapidly than any other bird.

The newly discovered species has been named Vanikoro White Eye. It was found on the tiny island of Ranongga, and is thought to only live there.

Genetic research has shown what two scientists suspected 80 years ago: that there are different species of White Eyes on separate islands in the Solomons. Sometimes the islands are only 2-3 kilometers apart and yet they have their own species of White Eye. One of the researchers, Rob Moyle from the University of Kansas said this of their initial investigation, “As we started to compile the data, we were shocked…White-eye species from across the family’s range had strikingly similar gene sequences, indicating a recent origin and incredibly rapid diversification.”

Moyle collaborated with Dr. Chris Filardi and Dr. Jared Diamond. Diamond actually had worked with the original scientist (Ernest Mayr) who first noted the difference between the White Eyes when visting the Solomons decades ago. DNA analysis of many White Eyes species by Filardi and his team showed that they can generate about 2-3 new species every million years.

Filardi commented on the research, “There’s something special about these birds. White eyes quickly diverge into new species across water gaps as narrow as a couple of kilometers- gaps that other birds easily bridge to maintain gene flow.” In the Solomons alone there are thirteen species of White Eyes. Because of its rapid capacity for diversification, some call White Eyes the Great Speciator. Over 100 species of the bird are distributed throughout the world.

Animals thought to have a higher rate of speciation are the Cichlid fish in Africa, and the Tuatara, a reptile that lived at the same time as some dinosaurs. Recently a baby Tuatara was found on mainland New Zealand.

(Author’s note:The Jared Diamond referenced here is also the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel).

Image Credits: 1. Close-up: Dr. Chris Filardi, American Musuem of Natural History
2. Tri-species illustration, BirdLife International 3. Vanikoro White Eyes in Tree, Dr. Guy Dutson