Glass-Covered Building Kills Over 1,000 Birds in Just One Day

Chicago’s McCormick Place, the largest convention center in North America, was recently responsible for the deaths of at least 1,000 small birds that crashed into its thick glass walls.

According to the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors (CBCM), a volunteer conservation project dedicated to the protection of migratory birds, on October 5, the carcasses of at least 1,000 small birds, including  Tennessee warblers, hermit thrush, and American woodcocks were found around McCormick Place. They all died after colliding with the iconic building’s transparent glass walls, which birds simply cannot detect. The CBCM said that this was the highest number of crash-caused bird deaths that the group recorded from the grounds of one building in a single day. Unfortunately, the number of deaths may actually be much higher, because many birds continue to fly after suffering serious injuries only to die hours later.

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The World’s Oldest Living Chicken Is Over 21 Years Old

Peanut, a chicken from a no-kill farm in Michigan, is the current Guinness Record holder for the ‘world’s oldest chicken’, at 21 years, 156 days, and counting.

Chickens have an average life expectancy of five to eight years, so Peanut is somewhat of a Methuselah of the aviary world. On January 28, 2023, she was officially crowned the world’s oldest chicken by Guinness World Records, at the ripe age of 20 years and 272 days. She has since turned 21 and is chasing the title of oldest chicken in recorded history. But the craziest thing about Peanut is that she almost never existed. 21 years ago, her owner was getting ready to throw a batch of rotten-looking eggs a hen had abandoned into an alligator pond when she heard a faint chirp from one of them.

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Scientist Wears Giant Bird Head for a Year to Befriend Real Birds, Fails

A Japanese scientist studying the languages of birds wore a giant bird mask on his head for an entire year in order to trick a nest of great tits to allow him to approach them.

Toshitaka Suzuki, an associate professor at the University of Tokyo, recently shared a bizarre photo of a man wearing a giant bird head on Twitter. It turns out that the photo taken somewhere in the forests of Nagano Prefecture shows a fellow scientist who decided to wear the ‘disguise’ for an entire year in order to get close to a nest of great tits without triggering their distress calls. Ornithologists and bird behavior experts had noticed that certain bird species were capable of remembering human faces and that they would stop their usual chirping to put out warning calls whenever they saw these individuals approaching. Having wound up on the tits’ blacklist, the Japanese scientist decided to disguise himself as a giant bird in order to approach the birds and study their chirping.

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Kindhearted Woman Turns Her Apartment into a Hummingbird Hospital

Catia Lattouf de Arída has been using her apartment in Mexico City as a hospital and sanctuary for injured and abandoned hummingbirds for the last 11 years.

As pollinating agents, hummingbirds are a very important part of Mexico’s ecosystem, but because of the ever-expanding urban landscape, they face all sorts of serious threats. That’s where 73-year-old Catia Lattouf de Arída comes in. As a self-taught hummingbird caretaker, she dedicates most of her free time and resources to nursing the tiny birds back to health or at least providing the necessary palliative care to ensure an easy, dignified passing. She has been doing it for over a decade and her home in Mexico City has become known as a hummingbird hospital.

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Researchers Find That Birds Are Using Anti-Bird Spikes to Build and Protect Their Own Nests

A team of Dutch researchers has discovered that magpies and crows are using metal spikes designed to keep them away from certain urban areas to reinforce their own nests and keep intruders at bay.

Scientists have known for a while that magpies and crows are some of the most intelligent birds in the world, but even they were baffled by their amazing ability to adapt to hostile urban environments. It’s not unusual for birds to use human trash and debris as tools and building materials for their nests, button see them use the very things we humans use against them was nothing short of baffling for researchers at the Natural History Museum in Rotterdam and the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, in the Netherlands.

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Mutant Pigeon With Puffed-Out Chest and Long Legs Baffles Internet

Photos and clips of a proud-looking pigeon with its chest puffed out like a cartoon character and impressively long legs have been getting a lot of attention online.

The “chad pigeon” went viral after a UK pigeon breeder shared a clip of their impressive-looking bird on TikTok, where it quickly went viral. Million of people around the world have seen the footage and still can’t believe it’s a real animal. Some are convinced that it is the work of an AI-powered digital tool, while others claim that the video was digitally altered for views. However, the bird in the video is just a really impressive specimen of a rare pigeon breed called “English Pouter”. A simple Google search reveals that there is nothing too special about this particular bird, and that the extremely puffed-out chest and long legs are breed-specific traits.

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Poppy Farmers Struggle to Get Rid of “Opium-Addicted” Swans

A family of poppy farmers in Slovakia has been having trouble getting rid of hundreds of swans that have become addicted to poppy seeds and sometimes even overdose on them.

Poppy farmers near the Slovakian town of Komarno first reported the presence of swans in their fields back in February. It is believed that they were originally attracted by the large puddles of water that formed in the area, but after pecking at the flowers all day, many of them became addicted to the opium-containing seeds and refused to leave. Back in May, Slovakian media reported that around 200 swans had made a poppy field near Komarno their home, causing around €10,000 in damages to the flowers and getting so high on the natural narcotic that many of them couldn’t even fly anymore.

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This Metallic ‘Chicken Orb’ Is Sparking Heated Online Debates

The ‘Chicken Orb” is a sphere made of metallic wire that allows chickens to move around and forage freely while preventing them from jumping onto flower beds and other places they’re not supposed to go into.

The Chicken Orb has been around for at least a couple of years, but it only recently started getting attention after photos and videos of it in action started going viral online. It all started from the misconception that the metallic wire orb was actually a sort of chicken armor designed to provide protection from predators while still allowing the domestic bird the freedom to forage and move around in peace. That got the debate going among chicken owners, many of whom criticized the device as useless, as it only acted as “to-go food packaging” for birds of prey, and did nothing to stop cunning predators like foxes or ferrets.

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This Tiny Adorable Bird Is the World’s Smallest Bird of Prey

The black thighed falconet is no larger than a sparrow, but don’t let its size fool you, as this tiny bird is a ruthless predator capable of killing prey its own size.

Falconets are the smallest birds of prey in the world, with the black thighed falconet (Microhierax fringillarius) and the Bornean falconet (Microphierax latifrons) sharing the title of smallest bird of prey in the world. With bodies only 14 to 16 centimeters long, a wingspan of 27 to 32 cm, and only a few grams in weight, the black thighed falconet certainly doesn’t sound like the most efficient predator, but its cute appearance is even more deceiving. The parakeet-like bird is one of the most adorable you’ll ever see, but don’t let that fool you when it comes to hunting, this thing is a tiny killer.

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This Bird’s Mating Song Sounds Like a Combination of Cow Moos and Chainsaw Noise

The capuchinbird, an exotic bird found in the jungles of South America, is famous for having one of the most bizarre-sounding mating songs in the entire animal kingdom.

Capuchinbirds have a rather peculiar look. They have light brown plumage that becomes bright orange on the belly, and a bald vulture-like head covered in blue skin. The contrast between its rich plumage and its bare head is striking and makes for an unusual appearance, but you’ll forget all about its weird look when you hear its mating song. Calling the sounds coming out of this bird’s beak during mating season a ‘song’ seems like a bit of a stretch, because it sounds nothing like the melodious chirping of a nightingale or a mockingbird.

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Wild Crane Refuses to Leave the Side of Man Who Saved Its Life

An Indian man has become somewhat of a celebrity in his home state of Uttar Pradesh thanks to his unusual best friend, a wild crane that follows him everywhere he goes.

30-year-old Mohammed Arif, a harvester operator from Mandka village, in Uttar Pradesh, was working in a field in February of last year, when he saw an injured sarus crane in dire need of help. It was bleeding from one leg and seemed in a lot of pain, so the young man picked it up and took it home where he started nursing it back to health. It took a while, but the red-necked crane made a full recovery. Only instead of flying away the moment it was set free, the majestic bird stuck by its benefactor, accompanying him everywhere.

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Parrot Owner Gets Jail Time After Bird Injures Passer-By

A Taiwanese man was sentenced to two months in jail and fined 3.04 million New Taiwan dollars ($91,350) after his large parrot allegedly caused a jogger to fall and hurt himself.

The bizarre incident reportedly took place in Tainan, when a man surnamed Huang took his two pet macaws for a flight in a local park where people often go to exercise. One of the large birds allegedly landed on the back of a jogger and started flapping its wings vigorously, frightening the man and causing him to fall. The nasty fall caused the man to dislocate his hip joint and fracture his pelvis, both of which required hospitalization and a long recovery period. He ended up suing the parrot owner for damages.

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Michigan Oils Slick Turns Out to Be Record-Setting Duck Gathering

What looked like a growing oil spill in Michigan’s Mackinac Straits area turned out to be a massive gathering of tens of thousands of ducks and other aquatic birds.

On December 21 of last year, the Mackinac Bridge Authority started receiving calls from concerned divers regarding a possible oil spill in the area. With each passing day, the number of calls regarding the oil spill kept growing, which makes sense, considering that the black mass that had formed on the water appeared to be growing. However, it wasn’t oil, but a record-setting gathering of Redhead ducks. In the beginning, authorities counted around 7,000 of them gathered together under and around Mackinac Bridge. Their number has grown since then, and there are now several tens of thousands of birds making up the “oil spill”.

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The World’s Fastest Animal Reaches Speeds of Over 300 Km Per Hour

Cheetahs are famous for their speed, but they don’t even come close to the world’s faster animal, a falcon that swoops on its unsuspecting prey at speeds of over 300 km per hour.

The peregrine falcon is one of the most efficient predators on Earth, and it owes much of that efficiency to its unrivaled speed. During its characteristic dive, this majestic creature reaches an average speed of 320 km/h, but the highest measured speed of a peregrine falcon is actually 389 km/h (242 mph), which makes it faster than the vast majority of commercially available cars. And it’s obviously much faster than the cheetah’s 64 mph record.

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Bird Flies Over 13,500 Km Without Stopping, Sets New Guinness Record

A five-month-old bar-tailed godwit recently smashed the record for long-distance migration after flying 13,560 kilometers non-stop over a period of 11 days.

Every autumn, millions of migratory birds take to the sky for a long and perilous journey to escape the coming cold, feed and breed for the next few months. Many of them cover impressive distances of over 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles), but this year, one small bird surpassed all expectations regarding long-distance flying, traveling a whopping 13,560 kilometers (8,425 miles) without stopping, and setting a new Guinness record in the process. And it was all because of an unusual detour that could have cost the bird its life, considering that the non-stop journey pushed its flight capacity to the limit.

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