#flightless parrot

[mossandfog]

Meet the Kākāpō, an Endangered Flightless Parrot That Smells Good, and Looks Like a Muppet

Leave it to Australia and New Zealand for having the most fabulous, unusual, and rare species anywhere. Today we’re looking (in wonder) at the Kākāpō, a large flightless parrot, which is also called the Owl Parrot. It is large and heavy, has brilliant green feathers, blue feet, and supposedly smells nice as well. What!? The unique characteristics continue, as this is not only the heaviest parrot…

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#endangered animals #flightless parrot #green parrot #Kākāpō #New Zealand #owl parrot #rare animals #unusual animals

[cyanide-sippy-cup]

Not enough people understand the true nature of Jurassic Park methinks. Can it be enjoyed as a dinosaur horror? Absolutely. But I personally think it's much more enjoyable as a biological sci-fi. These aren't dinosaurs, they are biological monsters made in the shape of dinosaurs. They cut corners, they used frog DNA to fill in what they didn't have. John Hammond brought these experts along to see if their reactions would be "Oh my god that's a dinosaur" and then moved along when it was exactly that. But idk, that's just me.

#if you wanna see accurate dino horror #i absolutely recommend the twitter series by Archesuchus #DMuted has some videos on it and i recommend you watch those if you cant or dont wanna go to 'x' #jurassic park #jurassic world #michael crichton #jurassic park book #dinosaur #i think dino horror is best when it acknowledges them as they are #birds #big flightless birds #except for pteradons #those are flightFUL #flightful? is that? idk #pterosaur #AND MAKE THEM FEATHERY DAMMIT #also #the idea of a dinosaur being able to mimic sounds #like how ravens and parrots do #is AWESOME #prehistoric #scifi #scifi horror #i coin new term: Bi-Fi #bio fiction #its like science fiction but more specific #and probably already coined #dino horror #unfiction #weird birds

[ssruis]

Aside from the noble platypus I also feel like rui would really enjoy these animals:

Mola mola/Sunfish

Anteater

Echidna

Kiwi

Kākāpō

Axolotl

Horseshoe crab

Gibbon

#i have reasoning for all of these beyond ‘they look funny’ trust #mola mola are just. so fucking weird man. they’re so odd. their back fin grows back on itself? they’re so rigid it reduces drag #but they ‘swim’ really slowly? they swim similar to how a bird flies. just sideways. largest bony fish. they bask to get enough warmth #to allow them to dive super deep to forage for food (cold blooded so they’d be fucked without doing that) #anteaters are interesting. did you know they’ve (the giant ones) killed jaguars and humans before #because they walk on the knuckles to keep the huge knives on their feet sharp and their threat response #is basically just ‘swipe blindly (poor vision) at whatever comes close until it stops coming back’ #echidnas are fellow monotremes (only ones besides the platypus) and are just as strange #they also have electrosensors (~2000 compared to the platypus’s 40000) and a similarly low body temp #(second lowest of all mammals after. u guessed it. the platypus) and are actually decent swimmers despite looking Like That #kiwis are weird beasts. #massive eggs compared to their body size. rely more on scent than sight because their eyes are so tiny and under developed. #kākāpō are the heaviest parrot and also the only flightless parrot. they also kinda resemble owls face wise? and they’re green. #evolved with no natural predators and are currently being fucked over by invasive rats #axolotl is self explanatory #although to give a fun fact the wild type is naturally brown. the fun colored ones would be easy prey in the wild. #& they’re capable of going through metamorphosis (like how tadpoles -> frogs) if exposed to the necessary hormones #but they don’t produce it on their own #horseshoe crabs despite having crab in the name are more closely related to spiders/ticks/scorpions than crabs #& gibbons are included because 1 I’m biased towards my favorite animal 2 only species of lesser ape. live in family units. #tbf I think he’d like all apes and probably prefer orangutans/chimps but I’m saving you the extensive lecture on great apes #here at ssruis we strive to be educational. #biology cool. despite me dropping out of the program (treated as premed at my college and I could NOT do chem let alone orgchem/physics) but #i liked biolab/the units abt animals ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ #rui

[somanypolls]

i did my best to include lots of birds. sorry if i missed your favorite or miscategorized it! i am no bird expert

#birds #birdwatching #bird photography #birdblr #polls #tumblr polls #somanypolls #there are a lot of cool birds out there #over 10000!! #and some are not easily categorized lol

[amrtiamat]

gonna start using "gargle my dick and balls" as an appropriate response to everything ever since I read that post. im ruined.

#qposting #im like a parrot #but worse #and bigger #and flightless

[morgan-the-lonely-brick]

Ignoring all the cons of having a pet capable of flight, a great thing is that you can't accidentally hurt it by dropping it

#Thought inniciated by me accidentally pushing Charlie off the table by moving my study book #I would have to have a big flightless pet for it to be safe #I don't trust myself with little flightless pets like hamsters or rats #Because i am so clumsy :((( #I always drop things #But you don't have to hold a parrot #It can just sit on your shoulder #So to me that's safer

[feather-bone]

[ID: an illustration of a mottled green bird standing on a pink background and facing to the right. It has a branch with red berries in its mouth, and green leaves surround it. End.]

Kākāpō - a very endangered flightless parrot endemic to New Zealand. Kākāpō courtship revolves around a polygynous lek system, in which males gather to perform loud, deep booming songs in an attempt to attract a mate. Timelapse under the cut!

#kakapo #parrot #parrots #psittaciformes #avian art

[elliottnotyet]

I made the art challenge Marchirp! Make art based on the prompt of the day, use tag #marchirp, and at me @elliottnotyet. You can do paintings, drawings, sculptures, digital art, poetry, photography, or switch it up throughout the month. Just have fun!

[Image ID: schedule for a bird themed March art challenge, Marchirp. The words are dark blue on a light blue background. There are bird silhouettes around the title. A list of the daily prompts is below the cut. End ID]

1. Chickens, turkeys, quail

2. Falconiformes

3. Ducks/geese

4. Corvids

5. Penguins

6. Flightless birds

7. Hawks

8. Pidgeons/doves

9. Shorebirds

10. Owls

11. Wetlands birds

12. Brood parasites

13. Eagles

14. Hummingbirds

15. Vultures

16. Free day

17. Extinct birds

18. Feathers

19. Pelecaniformes

20. Bird from you region

21. Nest

22. Migration

23. Dancers

24. Desert birds

25. City birds

26. Rainforest birds

27. Bird hybrid

28. Songbirds

29. Parrots

30. Finches

31. Your favorite

#Marchirp #march #march art challenge #bird art challenge #bird art #birds #bird #image id #artist described #art #paintings #drawings #sculpture #digital art #poetry #photography #multimedia #marchirp2024

[eveningalchemist-art]

"You're being shagged by a rare parrot!"

In Treasure Island, parrot Captain Flint is described as green, so now I can't unsee her as a kakapo - my most favourite very large and flightless parrot from half way around the world 💚 She gets to annoy Black Sails' Silver (older version) because he never did get a parrot by the time the show ended.

#my art #black sails #treasure island #john silver #parrot captain flint #kakapo #i know a female parrot isn't likely to be doing the shagging but i couldn't resist using this reference #besides she's captain flint she does what she wants #although i started this for the lols it gave me an opportunity to draw older silver with a little more silver in his beard #and i made his clothing colour palette more like flint's and made his scowl a little more flinty too because wheeeheeheeheeheeehehheheeeee

[comfortless]

hi syl! omfg i cannot believe we are mutuals, i love your works so much. but have you heard of the midieval concept called “marriage on the gallows?” basically, a person who was given death penalty can still be saved when someone promises to marry them. all i can think about is könig going to a live hanging/ burning at the stake and using marriage on the gallows to have a wife.

not like she was framed or anything, right(????) but don’t worry, könig promises to make her happy and alive now that he’s her husband. or maybe knight! ghost was the one who was about to be killed but y/n is like “I CAN FIX HIM” and marries him instead.

chanting Torta, Torta, Torta hi!! i am hugging you for this. <3 i have heard of it! but never did i think to apply it to König and now here we are… ^^

content/warnings: forced marriage?, vague religious imagery, injury, threat of public execution, vague smut.

When you sell your soul, really sell it, you’re cutting away from the umbilical cord that tethers you to whatever waits in the darkness of the afterlife. You kneel, you pray, you bathe yourself in sacred water and parrot divine words, but you don’t realize you’ve become obscured in invisibility, a shadow, a husk.

He’s clipped her wings and the only thing left to do is end her flight, let her go tumbling down into a pit of sulfur from the rope lead tied to her neck: to die before a sea of jeering faces, horse shit and fine wine, gilded paintings and the darkened splatter of blood, dried and crisp against a wooden stage.

König knows something about that, because there’s a dense, thorny guilt curling in his chest as he looks up at the little sparrow led up to the rope with her face pushed down by a hand that doesn’t belong there.

She’s done no wrong; smiling sweetly at a man like him shouldn’t have resulted in this. His heart shatters when he hears her begin to cry, her battered face wrenched up to face the crowd by the hangman’s cruel hands.

A little, flightless bird like this could never have done what he did to get her here. Gentle, sweet things knew so little of the very blood that pulses in veins, of what a man’s innards look like spilt out on a thick blade.

But of course they will believe anything— she’s a commoner, no special asset to the village. They needed their farmers, their tailors, and men like him— the blacksmith they all shunned as though he had risen from the fiery pit he worked away at himself. They didn’t need her.

Only he did.

So when he steps through the crowd of vultures to watch as the rope is tightened around her delicate neck, his voice comes in a roar. He propositions the hangman that he will take her as his wife, haul this devil back to his shack at the village’s edge and ensure that she— he will spill no more blood.

She weakly raises her head to eye him, recognizing him immediately as the man who had accused her of murdering that stable boy only two nights prior. Her stare is not judgmental or accusatory: she doesn’t have a clue of the lengths he has went to- would go to- to tether her to him.

A fortnight later, the woman becomes his bride.

She doesn’t know what brought her such a malison, how she came to be the wife of a man who once cast his accusations toward her, but she’s grateful to the man who’s cursed her to suffer him.

There’s no celebration, no flowers or dancing. There’s a kiss she nervously leans into at the chapel, shy, while his heart bursts into flames.

She isn’t blessed with meaningful vows, only a pleading profession whispered into her ear when his kisses reach from her neck to the curve of her jaw.

It’s consummated in that darkened shack, not a candle lit where smoke has painted the walls black with ash and dust; a place where she curls her arms over him sweetly and breathes her thanks against his shoulder, where his fingers commit every curve, dip, and ridge of her to memory. His words are lost in her hair, her shoulder, her chest as he devotes every remnant of himself to her entirely. He isn’t gentle, but he tries when her tight whines and whimpers fill his ears, drowning out even his lamentations.

She tolerates him four times over before he can will himself to pull away from her warmth. The guilt is replaced by a sense of purpose, a certainty that all he’s done has been entirely for her. She tells him that she would never hurt another thing, and he whispers against her skin, “I know.”

His flightless engel does not remain downtrodden.

Each morning she wakes him with giggles, face warmed in memory of the night’s prior rapture. She bakes for him, sweet things that he’s never thought himself worthy of prior while he buries himself against her, yearns to pry apart her ribs and bury himself in her softness for all time.

He kisses at what remains of the scars along her neck when she finds him melding down steel for a new weapon, takes her into his lap just to watch the flames dance in her eyes.

#asks! #könig x reader #sorry this is so short!!

[alphynix]

The evolution of falcons is rather poorly understood. Thanks to genetic evidence we know that they're closely related to seriemas, parrots, and passerines, but their fossil record is patchy and little is known about the early members of their lineage.

But a group knows as masillaraptorids are giving us a rare glimpse at what some early falconiforms were up to. Known from the Eocene of Europe, these long-legged predatory birds seem to have been caracara-like terrestrial hunters specializing in chasing down prey on foot – although their wings and tails indicate they were also still strong fliers.

Danielsraptor phorusrhacoides lived during the early Eocene, about 55 million years ago, in what is now eastern England. Although only known from partial remains, it was probably around 45-60cm long (~1'6"-2'), and it had a large hooked beak with a surprising amount of convergent similarity to those of the flightless South American terror birds.

Its mixture of falcon-like and seriema-like features may indicate that the common ancestor of both of these bird groups was a similar sort of leggy ground-hunting predator.

———

NixIllustration.com | Tumblr | Twitter | Patreon

#science illustration #paleontology #paleoart #palaeoblr #danielsraptor #masillaraptoridae #falconiformes #australaves #bird #dinosaur #art

[ceescedasticity]

Which would be the best/worst idea?

(Leaving out Geese, because I've already done those and I suspect geese have an unfair advantage in polls.) (Also left out the completely flightless options — penguins, ostriches, cassowaries — because of the sky connection, but they do say all birds, so maybe they should be included…)

#a tolkien tag #reckless application of spackle #my polls

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Photo © Jake Osborne

Meet the Kākāpō, an Endangered Flightless Parrot That Smells Good, and Looks Like a Muppet

The Kākāpō, a large flightless parrot, which is also called the Owl Parrot and is found in New Zealand.

Photo: Andrew Digby/New Zealand Department Of Conservation

Photo By Jake Osborne

#kakapo #photographer #jake osborne #bird photography #parrot #nature #new zealand #owl parrot #andrew digby #new zealand department of conservation

[tickfleato]

GRYPHONS!! gryphons in serpentverse are a distant relative to dragons, but are not magical creatures - the event that originally caused them to be weird bird-mammal hexapods was magical in nature, but modern gryphons are largely mundane. they fill a large range of niches and some are even domesticated! a little more description of the varieties pictured here under the cut:

River Fishergriffs are flightless gryphons which are very similar to river otters in size, shape, and niche. They’re generally good-natured, playful creatures, but can be vicious in defense of their young. They are elegant swimmers but a bit clumsy on land. They live in small family groups usually consisting of the parents and a few children - older children tend to stay with the nest and help raise the younger, with some staying with their family their entire lives and not reproducing.

Gryphlets (Cherry Gryphlet and Common Gryphlet depicted) are small, intelligent gryphons that are something like an unholy combination of a squirrel, a monkey, and a parrot. Like parrots, they are excellent at vocal mimicry, and also like parrots they make awful pets (but that doesn’t stop anyone). They are usually omnivores, but diet varies with species (the gryphlet clade is extremely diverse). Most gryphlets are social to some degree, with the biggest flocks numbering in the hundreds.

Snow-Gryphons are medium-sized, cold-adapted hunters, primarily inhabiting the south-pole continent, Ussa. They are elusive, shy animals that are a rare but lucky sight - though it’s best not to get too close. They’re about the size of a bobcat and have very sharp claws, and have been known to go after prey as big as elves! They are solitary and only meet with others of their kind to mate.

Essvai Dragons are, of course, not dragons at all but a breed of domesticated gryphon bred to resemble them. While they look imposing, they are usually docile in temperament, and like nothing more than napping by a warm fireplace or in a patch of sunlight. They were originally status symbols but over time have become somewhat more common pets, though purebred ones are still very expensive (and those from shadier breeders tend to have a myriad of health issues...) 

Monkeyhawks are predatory gryphons that usually inhabit forested environments. They’re agile fliers in a pinch but are adept climbers as well, preferring only short flights to catch prey or escape danger.  They are usually either solitary or a mated pair, though they don’t necessarily mate for life and don’t suffer particularly from “divorce” or death of a mate. They have a reputation for carrying off elven children, but this happens very rarely in reality - they tend to steer well clear of elven settlements. 

#serpentverse #gryphons #gryphon #creature design #monsters #original shit #my art #worldbuilding

[azulehaven-fr]

We need flocks of birds as apparel items. Yes, I know we got the parrots and chickens and those budgies but I want entire flocks of birds just flying all around the dragon png. Like anywhere from 3-8 in total depending on the size of them.

I wants flocks of magpies with half of them perched along the wing or tail while the rest fly in chaotic abandoned.

Swans just sitting ominously around the dragon. Have they trapped it there? Are they gorgeous but deadly bodyguards? Who can tell. Roadrunners just racing in a single file line around the feet!

Your own colony of penguins. Sure it might be like four or five but at least three will have chicks so it can count as more.

And a single ostrich. No explanation given, just a giant flightless bird. Faes can look like they are sitting on them. The png for them just goes off the screen.

#flight rising #fr apparel

[fatehbaz]

Because tuatara are very long lived - between 100 and 200 years by most estimates […] - the founding of Aotearoa/New Zealand as a modern nation and the unfolding of settler-wrought changes to its environment have transpired over the course of the lives of perhaps just two tuatara [...].

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[T]he tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus) [...] [is] the sole surviving representative of an order of reptiles that pre-dates the dinosaurs. [...] [T]he tuatara is of immense global and local significance and its story is pre-eminently one of deep timescales, of life-in-place [...]. Epithets abound for the unique and ancient biodiversity found in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Prized as “Ghosts of Gondwana” (Gibbs 2008), or as denizens of “Moa’s Ark” (Bellamy et al. 1990) or “The Southern Ark” (Andrews 1986), the country’s faunal species invoke fascination and inspire strong language [...]. In rounded terms, it [has been] [...] just 250 years since James Cook made landfall; just 200 years since the founding of the handful of [...] settlements that instigated agricultural transformation of the land [...]. European newcomers [...] were disconcerted by the biota [...]: the country was seen to “lack” terrestrial mammals; many of its birds were flightless and/or songless; its bats crawled through leaf-litter; its penguins inhabited forests; its parrots were mountain-dwellers; its frogs laid eggs that hatched miniature frogs rather than tadpoles [...].

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Despite having met a reassuringly temperate climate [mild, oceanic, comparable to western Europe], too, the newcomers nevertheless sought to make adjustments to that climate, and it was clear to them that profits beckoned. Surveying the towering lowland forests from the deck of HMS Endeavour in 1769, and perceiving scope for expansion of the fenland drainage schemes being undertaken at that time in England and across swathes of Europe, Joseph Banks [botanist on Cook's voyage] reported on “swamps which might doubtless Easily be drained” [...]. Almost a century later, in New Zealand or Zealandia, the Britain of the South, [...] Hursthouse offered a fuller explication of this ethos: The cultivation of a new country materially improves its climate. Damp and dripping forests, exhaling pestilent vapours from rank and rotten vegetation, fall before the axe [...]. Fen and march and swamp, the bittern’s dank domain, fertile only in miasma, are drained; and the plough converts them into wholesome plains of fruit, and grain, and grass. [...]

[The British administrators] duly set about felling the ancient forests of Aotearoa/New Zealand, draining the country’s swamps [...]. They also began importing and acclimatising a vast array of exotic (predominantly northern-world) species [sheep, cattle, rodents, weasels, cats, crops, English pasture grasses, etc.] [...]. [T]hey constructed the seemingly ordinary agronomic patchwork of Aotearoa/New Zealand's productive, workaday landscapes [...]. This is effected through and/or accompanied by drastic deforestation, alteration of the water table and the flow of waterways, displacement and decline of endemic species, re-organisation of predation chains and pollination sequences and so on [...]. Aotearoa/New Zealand was founded in and through climate crisis [...]. Climate crisis is not a disastrous event waiting to happen in the future in this part of the world; rather, it has been with us for two centuries already [...].

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[T]he crest formed by the twinned themes of absence and exceptionalism [...] has shaped this creature's niche in the western imagination. As one of the very oldest species on earth, tuatara have come to be recognised [in Euro-American scientific schemas] [...] as an evolutionary and biodiversity treasure [...]. In 1867, [...] Gunther [...] pronounced that it was not a lizard at all [...] [and] placed the tuatara [...] in a new order, Rhynchocephalia, [...] igniting a frenzy of scientific interest worldwide. Specifically, the tuatara was seen to afford opportunities for "astonished witnessing" [...], for "the excitement of having the chance to see, to study, to observe a true saurian of Mesozoic times in the flesh, still living, but only on this tiny speck of the earth [...], while all its ancestors [...] died about one hundred and thirty-five million years ago" [...]. Tuatara have, however, long held special status as a taonga or treasured species in Māori epistemologies, featuring in a range of [...] stories where [...] [they] are described by different climates and archaeologies of knowledge [...] (see Waitangi Tribunal 2011, p. 134). [...]

While unconfirmed sightings in the Wellington district were reported in the nineteenth century, tuatara currently survive only in actively managed - that is, monitored and pest-controlled - areas on scattered offshore islands, as well as in mainland zoo and sanctuary populations. As this confinement suggests, tuatara are functionally “extinct” in almost all of their former wild ranges. [...] [Italicized text in the heading of this post originally situated here in Boswell's article.] [...] In the remaining areas of Aotearoa/New Zealand where this species does now live [...], tuatara may in some cases be the oldest living inhabitants. Yet [...] if the tuatara is a creature of long memory, this memory is at risk of elimination or erasure. [...] [T]uatara expose and complicate the [...] machineries of public memory [...] and attendant environmental ideologies and management paradigms [...].

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All text above by: Anna Boswell. "Climates of Change: A Tuatara's-Eye View". Humanities, 2020, Volume 9, Issue 2, 38. Published 1 May 2020. This article belongs to the Special Issue Environmental Humanities Approaches to Climate Change. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Text within brackets added by me for clarity. The first paragraph/heading in this post, with text in italics, are also the words of Boswell from this same article. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

#i posted commentary about this article in 2020 right after it was first published but i did a sloppy job presenting and discussing it #some might be familiar with boswells 2015 article on longfin eels or her article the stoat free state on weasels in aotearoa #basically she writes on british imperial environmental imaginaries #how settlement tries to reshape a colonys landscape in idealized english image of domesticated home replacing native species with introduce #ecology #abolition #imperial #colonial #landscape #paleo #aotearoa #indigenous #multispecies