Bird uses body as dam to stop drainpipe soaking nest

A bird used her body as a dam to stop overflowing drainpipe water from soaking her chicks.

The Mistle Thrush had built her nest on top of a downpipe, blocking the water's passage and causing the gutter to flood.

But desperate to protect her young, she puffed herself up to twice her size and sat in the drainpipe to stop the tide of rain water swamping the nest.
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She was so occupied with her task that her mate was left to feed her and their young.

The images were captured by amateur wildlife photographer Dennis Bright at a house in Fareham, Hampshire.

Mr Bright said he was astounded by the female bird's behaviour.

"The nest was tucked away from the weather in the shade of the roof but it was so close to the downpipe the gutter flooded when it rained.

"It was only a matter of seconds before the pipe flooded, and water cascaded over the sides."

Mr Bright said he was amazed by the bird's ingenuity.

"She had to come up with a solution so she puffed herself up so she was twice the size of her mate and used her body as a cork to stop the water - it was absolutely amazing.

"She was very dedicated, sitting there even when the rain was hammering down. Then every half an hour she would get out, dry herself off and come back.

"The male was doing most of the work - feeding her and the chicks when she was sitting in the pipe. I feel so lucky to have witnessed something so rare and unique."

Hester Phillips, from the RSPB, said she had never seen such a situation.

"We've heard of them nesting in some unusual sites before, namely on the top of traffic light, but we've certainly not come across anything like this before.

"Birds can be amazingly hardy creatures, their endurance is incredible - especially when protecting their young."

The female thrush's body is semi-submerged in the water of the gutter as she holds back the flow, protecting the nest and her chicks Photo: SOLENT

Hungarian stork gets a new beak

Tamas Kothay made an artifical beak for the stork out of synthetic resin

A stork with a damaged beak has been given a new, artificial one thanks to experts at a bird hospital in Hungary.

The stork damaged its beak in an accident and was taken to the Hortobagy Birds' Hospital, 180km (111 miles) east of the capital Budapest.

The bird's lower beak was repaired in an operation and Tamas Kothay, a specialist in dental prostheses, built a new top beak out of synthetic resin.

If the bird makes a full recovery it will be released back into the wild.

Dr Deri Janos, who helped in the one-hour operation to fix the top beak, said the stork had probably broken its beak by flying into a wall.

They believe the bird is about three years old.


Without the operation it would have needed hand-feeding for the rest of its life and would have been unable to return to the wild.

The bird hospital has been in operation since 1991 and has returned about 40% of its patients back to the wild.

(BBC)

Unbelievable bird that does the most strange things ever

Unbelievable bird plays basketball, golf, plays dead and other tricks.

Bald eagle who likes to swim

Conservationist Patty Perry's Bald Eagle Olivia loves to go swimming with her at her pool in California












All pictures by Barry Bland/Barcroft Media

Olivia the eagle has developed into a swimmer with real talon.

Carer Patty Perry found teaching the sick bird to flap about in her pool was a good way to get back her strength.

Olivia was discovered starving, half blind and unable to hunt last year. But she has made a dramatic recovery thanks to Patty.

The 55-year-old has helped dozens of birds with aqua training at her Californian centre and is specially proud of the eagle.

She said: "Olivia loves to swim. We spend 20 minutes in the water three days a week."

Olivia, four, will never be freed into the wild as her sight is too damaged, but at least she's found a human who will go to any lengths to help...

Hens are dead on a free-range farm because hot-air balloons

Hens are dropping dead on a free-range farm because hot-air balloons and low-flying aircraft are causing their eggs to explode inside them, it has been claimed.

Abbi Vincent-Lloyd said she lost 30 hens on days when balloons were flying low over her Herefordshire farm.

She claimed the stress of seeing the enormous balloons overhead caused them to run for cover.

It is as they desperately try to find shelter that they bump into each other or their surroundings, exploding the eggs inside them, she said.

This in turn causes an infection, which is thought to have led to scores of them dying.

Miss Vincent-Lloyd, 32, said post mortems of the animals revealed they had died from peritonitis, developed from the egg being released inside them.

She said: "I had lost about 15 birds when I decided to have the vet do a post mortem on two of them.

"I told the vet about the hot-air balloons and jets flying low over the farm and straight away he said that was the cause.

"As soon as the gas is released to raise the balloon they go absolutely crazy.

"It is absolute chaos, when they go into anything and that causes the egg to explode inside them.

"The fragments of the egg and its contents then infect them and then they die from it - it's a horrible way to go."

Bird Flu Hits Hong Kong

HONG KONG (June 7) - Hong Kong health workers slaughtered 2,700 poultry in a market Saturday after chickens were found to be carrying the dangerous H5N1 bird flu virus, officials said.

The slaughter may be extended to all live poultry in the territory if the virus is detected in any other locations, Secretary for Food and Health York Chow said.

"Since we have detected the virus in the market, we will cull all the chickens in this market," Chow told reporters. "If we find another positive detection in another market, then we will assume that the risk is much higher and we need to cull all the chickens in all the markets."

Hong Kong TV Cable showed health workers wearing protective gear placing live poultry from nine stalls into bags to prepare for the slaughter.

Routine bird flu checks detected the H5N1 virus in five samples of chicken waste. The samples were collected June 3 from three vendors in the market in the Sham Shui Po residential district, Chow said.

Health officials declared the market an infected area and suspended all sales of live poultry there, a government statement said.

Chow said authorities were tracing the origin of the infected chickens.

Chow also ordered a 21-day ban on the supply of live poultry from mainland China and from local farms.

Occasional H5N1 infections in wild birds are common in Hong Kong but the territory has not suffered a major outbreak of the disease since the virus killed six people in 1997.

That prompted the government to slaughter the territory's entire poultry population of about 1.5 million birds.

At least 241 people have died of bird flu worldwide since 2003, according to the World Health Organization.

Most human cases have been linked to contact with infected birds, but health experts worry the virus could mutate into a form that passes easily among humans, sparking a pandemic that might kill millions of people.

Mafia Tactics in Cowbirds

Cowbirds have long been known to lay eggs in the nests of other birds, which then raise the cowbirds’ young as their own.

Sneaky, perhaps, but not Scarface.

Now, however, a University of Florida study finds that cowbirds actually ransack and destroy the nests of warblers that don’t buy into the ruse and raise their young.

Jeff Hoover, an avian ecologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History, is the lead author on the first study to document experimental evidence of this peeper payback — retaliation to encourage acceptance of parasitic eggs.

Findings will be published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences March 5.

“It’s the female cowbirds who are running the mafia racket at our study site,” said Hoover, who has a joint appointment with the Illinois Natural History Survey. “Our study shows many of them returned and ransacked the nest when we removed the parasitic egg.”

So-called “brood parasitic birds” lay eggs in the nests of host birds that raise the parasite’s offspring, usually at the expense of some of their own. The brown-headed cowbird parasitizes more than 100 host species, including many Neotropical migratory birds such as warblers, tanagers and vireos. Prothonotary warblers were used for this study because they almost always accept cowbird eggs, Hoover said.

Hosts that use their beaks to grasp or puncture parasitic eggs and remove them from the nest are called “ejecters.” “Accepter” hosts raise parasitic eggs.

“Retaliatory mafia behavior in cowbirds makes hosts’ acceptance of cowbird eggs a better proposition than ejection,” Hoover said. “The accepting warblers in our study produced more of their own offspring, on average, than those where we ejected cowbird eggs.”