We traded passenger pigeons for THAT?

Watch the 'pretty' birdies land on a tree.

Lippard has also pulled out a viewer comment that you will find hard to believe.

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Are you kidding me? I won't spoil the viewer comment surprise, but damn. That person needs to watch some Hitchcock, stat.

The Red Cedar has taken on the shape of a chicken under the weight of the starlings. That must be significant- if only to Colonel Sanders.

By Joe Martin (not verified) on 02 Aug 2006 #permalink

Methinks it is like a weasel.

It is backed like a weasel.

Very apropos, quork.

What I find most stunning about this video is the fact that the videographer didn't get bird crap on the lens.

Martin

By Martin Christensen (not verified) on 02 Aug 2006 #permalink

What I find most stunning about this video is the fact that the videographer didn't get bird crap on the lens.

That's what those "daylight" filters are for, just in case.

Maybe we can breed some pigeons to look like Passenger Pigeons?

Sure. We could team them up with Driver Ants.

That viewer's comment is what happens when all you know about animals is Hollywood and the Bible. Steven Pinker rants about Hollywood missing all the teachable moments for evolution in movies, even March of the Penguins and Winged Migration -- ranting in Forbes for a different readership than usual. (Free registration required.)

Clearly, it took the birds several tries to get the tree into the shape they were trying for: a T-rex. Once they managed it, they flew away.

By Mnemosyne (not verified) on 02 Aug 2006 #permalink

I'm thinking the comment is just a joke, ala Noel Hurley.

I have to say, that video looks staged to me. It looks like the trees are being pulled down with rope or something, then released to snap them back up.

By redbeardjim (not verified) on 02 Aug 2006 #permalink

It's even worse that we traded Carolina parakeets for that. Ick.

By George Cauldron (not verified) on 02 Aug 2006 #permalink

Erm ... are there not quite a few stuffed Pasenger Pigeons in museums?

How difficult would it be to re-create them, using extracted DNA?

Seriously - not now, maybe, but I would have thought within 10 years?

By G. Tingey (not verified) on 02 Aug 2006 #permalink

It slike the fenomenom called sort sol, or "Black Sun" here in Denmark.

Hundreds of thousands of starlings rest in the marshes in the south of Jutland/North of Germany, and just before sundown they start gruping together until they are just one flock.

Ana amazing sight

http://www.vnn.dk/Klum-vis-one.asp?klumID=16&lan=UK

By Søren Kongstad (not verified) on 03 Aug 2006 #permalink

What I find most stunning about this video is the fact that the videographer didn't get bird crap on the lens.

I'm pretty sure he was in a car, hence the request to turn on the flashers. You can hear a woman and a small child on the audio, too, presumably in the car with him. Dang, that's a springy tree.

Carolina parakeet, passenger pigeon, Eskimo curlew, heath hen, great auk... You want real hurt, look at a birdlist for Hawai'i. And of all the starlings in all the places in the world, we got that one. Yeesh.

Starlings and house sparrows were brought over to the new world in the late 1800's. Some dopey Shakespeare lover thought it would be too cool to have all the birds in the Bard's writings in the New World.
The first batch of house sparrows croaked so he brought over more and we all know what happened then. Coupled with loss of habitat, the house sparrow population nearly caused the extinction of the eastern bluebird. The starlings target woodpeckers and other birds like pruple martins. They are both invasive species just like those nasty chinese fish that decimate native fish populations.

By G in INdiana (not verified) on 06 Aug 2006 #permalink