I received some really nice cards for my birthday last week. But this has to be my favourite... (oh, after the one from the kids of course)...
I mean, how often do you see Balaeniceps rex on a birthday card? Not often enough in my view (with a nod to those who have a phobia of this daunting bird). The image is by Elizabeth Diggins. Thank you Tina!
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Although we call them 'shoebills' in English, I prefer to call them by the scientific name of their genus, which means 'whalehead.'
Balaeniceps rex: it looks exactly like its name sounds and means. Awesome.
People! By the way, about postcards... I decided to make a special page of my site to gather postcard sets dedicated to biological theme. Here it is:
http://www.sivatherium.narod.ru/postcard/postcard.htm
Of course, texts are in Russian, but you may read Latin names and watch pics at least...
So, if you can share scans of similar postcard sets, I'll willingly post these ones in this page. I hope it will be interesting for people of other countries to see them. Contact me for any questions.
Looks awesome. Happy belated birthday!
Thats so cut, Happy birthday for last week Darren :P
I dident know that retrieverman!
Attenborough's "Life of Birds" has a great scene showing a Balaeniceps catching a lungfish. Feeding technique is essentially a faceplant in the mud. Which leads me to pondering the surface similarity between this and what pelicans do, except of course that water is less messy. Which leads me to pondering what an interesting clade is Pelecanus + Balaeniceps + Scopus.
That is a nice sketch-and a belated Happy Birthday, Darren.
I used to have weird, surreal dreams about water-birds when I was a kid. I'm thinking seeing some footage or a picture of a shoebill may have had a bit to do with it - that and Dr. Seuss.
That's one very cool eumaniraptor.
I'd much prefer a Terrorbird-thday card myself!
It looks a bit like a cross between a Titanavis and a sly Daffy Duck to me.
Happy belated birthday, Darren!