I guess we can end the week with a little Snowcap. At @tapirvalley.bsky.social this morning.

I think this male is finishing up his transitional plumage into adulthood, as the full males don't have the white throat.

#birds #hummingbirds #costarica #nature

Bluebirds huddling for warmth..

Perfectly kept dinosaur embryo from 66 million years ago found, in China :

In 2021, scientists have announced the discovery of an exquisitely preserved dinosaur embryo from at least 66 million years ago that was preparing to hatch from its egg just like a chicken...

The fossil was discovered in Ganzhou, southern China and belonged to a toothless theropod dinosaur, or oviraptorosaur, which the researchers dubbed “Baby Yingliang.”

"It is one of the best dinosaur embryos ever found in history," University of Birmingham researcher Fion Waisum Ma, who co-authored a paper in the journal iScience.

Ma and colleagues found Baby Yingliang’s head lay below its body, with the feet on either side and back curled – a posture that was previously unseen in dinosaurs, but similar to modern birds.

In birds, the behaviour is controlled by the central nervous system and called “tucking”. Chicks preparing to hatch tuck their head under their right wing in order to stabilise the head while they crack the shell with their beak. Embryos that fail to tuck have a higher chance of dying after a hatching that is unsucessful. “This indicates that such behaviour in modern birds first evolved and originated among their dinosaur ancestors,” said Ma.

An alternative to tucking might have been something closer to what is seen in modern crocodiles, which instead assume a sitting posture with the head bending upon the chest up to hatching.

Oviraptorosaurs, which means “egg thief lizards”, were feathered dinosaurs that lived in what is now Asia and North America during the Late Cretaceous period. They had variable beak shapes and diets and ranged in size from modern turkeys at the lower end to massive Gigantoraptors, that were 8m long. Baby Yingliang measures about 27cm long from head to tail and lies inside a 17cm long egg at the Yingliang Stone Nature History Museum.

Researchers believe the creature is between 72 and 66 million years old, and was probably preserved by a sudden mudslide that buried the egg, protecting it from scavengers for aeons. It would have grown 2-3m long if it had lived to be an adult, and would have likely fed on plants. The specimen was one of several egg fossils that were forgotten in storage for decades.

The research team suspected they might contain unborn dinosaurs, and scraped off part of Baby Yingliang’s eggshell to uncover the embryo hidden within.

“This dinosaur embryo inside its egg is one of the most beautiful fossils I have ever seen,” said Professor Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh, part of the research team, in a statement.

KIWI
Let's start off from Australia. While other birds lay many eggs, kiwi lays just one egg at a time. But the one egg is equivalent to 20% of her total body weight and almost half of her size. That's like an adult human carrying a 6 year old baby in their belly.

When the egg is stressfully laid, they still invest 70-80 days to incubate the egg. That's about time 2 the time ostriches spend incubating. Incredible!

Want to see one of the world’s most incredible natural wonders? Described as “the most alien-looking place on earth,” the island of Socotra is part of an archipelago in the Indian Ocean.

It’s so isolated that one-third of its plant life is found nowhere else on the planet, resulting in some especially bizarre flora.

Most notable are its dragon’s blood trees, which look like flying saucers sitting atop trunks. The adenium socotranum trees look like elephants’ legs with pink flowers perched on them.

There are also birds like the Socotra grosbeak, Socotra sunbird and the Socotra starling that are found nowhere else.

The island is actually inhabited by about 40,000 residents, and while there are two roads, there is no public transport. Visitors can fly in as the island has its own airport, and vehicles can be rented if required.

A new ‘ANGRY BIRDS’ movie is in the works.

Jason Sudeikis and Josh Gad will return to voice Red and Chuck

A Colombian woman named Marina Chapman was raised by Capuchin monkeys for 5 years after being kidnapped and then abandoned in the jungle as a child. She learned how to scale trees, and how to catch birds and rabbits with her bare hands. She lived like a monkey until she was discovered by hunters.

Robert Stroud was a sociopath and murderer who killed without compunction. He was so vicious he was sent to solitary confinement in Alcatraz prison where he was still able to kill a guard in the 1940s.

While in solitary Stroud captured small birds and studied them. He bred them and cared for them and began to write scientific monographs about them. He became a world-wide expert on avian life and behavior. He advanced avian science by decades and his work is still cited today

On November 17, 2012, José Salvador Alvarenga, a Salvadoran fisherman, embarked on a two-day fishing expedition into the Pacific Ocean from a small fishing village in Mexico.

Accompanying José was Ezequiel Córdoba, a 22-year-old day worker who was pretty inexperienced.

During their journey, the two men encountered a powerful storm that left them incapacitated. Their boat's engine failed, and lacking paddles and sufficient food supplies, they faced a dire situation.

For a staggering 14 months, their boat aimlessly drifted across the Pacific Ocean. Tragically, Ezekiel succumbed to starvation after just four months into the journey.

José, determined to survive, resorted to consuming anything he could catch using the only tool he possessed was a knife.

His desperate diet included raw fish, turtles, small sharks, and sea birds.

In his struggle to stay hydrated, José resorted to extreme measures. He resorted to drinking turtle blood and even his own urine to sustain himself.

It wasn’t until January 30, 2014, that José was discovered naked on Marshall Island, clutching only a knife in his hand.

Throughout his harrowing ordeal, he had drifted for an astounding 438 days, covering a distance of over 10,000 kilometers.

To put this into perspective, the Earth's diameter measures 12,742 kilometers.

Dispute’, a quite imprssive real picture captured by Polish photographer Jacek Stankiewicz, featuring two birds embroiled in what appears to be an animated argument.