Pah-tweeet

Bower bird

The Whybird.

"Instead of using just showy plumes or a romantic melody to attract a mate, the pigeon-sized bower bird constructs an elaborate structure—a bower—on the forest floor from twigs, leaves, and moss. It then decorates the bower with colorful baubles, from feathers and pebbles to berries and shells. The bowers aren't nests for raising kids; they are bachelor pads designed to attract and seduce one or more mates. When a female arrives to inspect the bower, the male struts and sings. He hopes to convince her to enter the bower, where mating takes place. The female then flies off to build a nest close by, and the male is left to try to convince another female to join in a romantic tryst."

"For many males, the effort will be mostly futile. A younger male, for instance, may be able to seduce only a single one of his dozens of visitors—or none at all. Indeed, many males get not even a single glance. In a recent study, 75 percent of female birds visited only one bower before mating. In contrast, older males often have potential mates constantly stopping by for a peek. These more experienced suitors may mate with dozens of different females in a single breeding season."

Heheheh

biiiiiiiiiiiiiiird-man.

Sex sex sex, it's always about sex.

Peacock, of course.

vulture - something paraistic, licking the mucous of other creatures kill.

I'm just some chick.

Nevah-morrrrrre

any bird that likes to snuggle up in its NEST. perhaps those Chinese birds that make their nests out of spit and then the nests get nicked to make soup with, seems to be the story of my life. huh.

I would be a magpie. Magpies are spiv crows.

Owl's roXoR. regurgitating pellets, rotatey heads, eatin' mice, sorted.

THE CROW!

Wind-up bird.

I'd be a cuckoo.

Oh pointy bird! Oh pointy pointy! Annoint my head! Anointy nointy!

the bird that you flip at policemen when they aren't looking.

Giant Moa. 12 feet of pecking, squawking death. Oh, and extinct.

or, the SSSSUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRFIN' BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRD!

Byrd I don't wanna be : David Crosby.

One that sounds like a canary.

I always kind of wanted a crew of grackles to hang with.

1.) "[The kakapo] is a flightless parrot. It's forgotten how to fly. Sadly, it has also forgotten that it's forgotten how to fly. A seriously worried kakapo has been known to run up a tree and jump out of it."

2.) "The kakapo is the world’s largest, fattest, and least able to fly parrot. . . . When faced with a predator the kakapo will sit very still until it gets eaten."

3.) "It turns out that the mating habits of the kakapo are incredibly long and drawn out and fantastically complicated and almost entirely ineffective. Some people tell me that the mating call of the male actually repels the female."

4.) "When the male kakapo intends to mate, he builds what is called a 'track and bowl' system. He meticulously carves a few tracks through the forest leading up to the bowl. . . . He then makes deep, low frequency, booming sounds that can be heard from miles away. At this point the female is expected to come running. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to locate the source of low frequency sounds, which probably explains the paths leading to the bowl. This booming can go on for hours every night for months on end, but it might not make any bit of difference. The female only becomes active once every 2-4 years, when a certain plant is bearing fruit."

5.) "[The male] sits there for night after night for 100 nights a year for eight hours a night and it performs the opening bars of Dark Side of the Moon. If there's a female out there, which there probably isn't, and if she likes the sound of the booming, which she probably doesn't, and if she can find him, which she probably can't, she will then only consent to mate if the podocar tree is in fruit."

6.) "All this work leads to the creation of a single egg, which these days get promptly eaten by a hungry stoat."

I'm trying to find a link to that article I read a few months ago about a zoo that had more male than female penguins. Observers noted that each of the females had a primary (male) mate, but also were sneaking around on those mates to get jiggy with other males in the colony. Yay polyandry!

(The only exception to these carryings-on was a stable multiyear relationship between two male penguins. Make of this what you will.)

(I seem to remember a previous ILE thread on penguin sluttiness and its extrapolation to human behavior, but I couldn't find it.)

"penguin sluttiness" = phrase of the week

I keep clicking on this thread hoping it's mutated into a discussion of "Oops (Oh My)", but I'm slowly beginning to realize that this isn't gonna happen.

I don't want to be bird because then my cats would kill me.

But Charlie Parker is already dead! (Interestingly enough, the joke does not get any funnier if you substitute Larry Bird, although you do get make Kareem/Magic comments.)

I guess I would have to be an eagle! They have great sight, and they are free.

Here, I already named a character Kim the Kakapo, Nitsuh. Are you trying to muscle in on grimstitch's turf?

Well the way Nitsuh describes 'em, I don't know if it's turf I wanna defend. Ned. ;) I mean, who wants to get eaten by predators and never even get to do it beforehand? Well not me Mister!

(Incidentally, grimstitch isn't meant to refer to me - it's the name I gave to this character that appeared one day in the pattern of water marks and cracks in the concrete support of a highway overpass very near where I live - he looks a bit like Jack Skellington with a spinning wheel. He grew a girlfriend recently. How nice for him.)