Bird calls

[james_davis_nicoll]

Pet parrots, such as cockatoos, that are let loose in the wild are teaching native birds to talk.

Comments

[murasaki-1966.livejournal.com]

That's Australians for you: spreading fowl language everywhere.

[comrade-cat.livejournal.com]

+1.

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

Brb, have to teach about 100 swear words to a flock of soon to be released birds.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

some lyrebirds in southern Australia still reproduce the sounds of axes and old shutter-box cameras their ancestors once learnt.

That is so cool.

[lostwanderfound.livejournal.com]

At the other end of the tech spectrum, we regularly see stories about misbehaving garage doors and the like that are eventually blamed on lyrebirds mimicking what they hear from ultrasonic remotes.

(bushwalking in lyrebird country is lots of fun; when they feel threatened, they tend to run through their entire repertoire in the hope of finding one that will scare off the intruder. All you need to do is stay quiet at the right moment and you'll hear the full spectrum of birdsong found in whatever valley you're in at the time)

[comrade-cat.livejournal.com]

Both these things are cool.

The world is so full of awesome. I wish humans didn't do stupid things. (I mean, I'm sure other intelligentish animals do stupid things too, it's just technology and overpopulation tend to magnify our stupid.)

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

I used to have a mockingbird nest outside my bedroom window. Every morning at dawn she (I assume) would recite every bird call from the neighborhood. Twice. Always exactly twice and always the same order.