Bird Drops Bread, LHC Shuts Down
You can’t make stuff like this up. A piece of a baguette dropped by a passing bird caused a shutdown at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.
The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine.
The LHC is scheduled to be reactivated later this month. The bread incident won’t affect those plans. Link -via Boing Boing
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Woman Hires Cherry Picker to Rescue Bird
A 13-year-old macaw flew fifty feet up into a tree and was too scared to fly down. Emma Hooper of Botley, England believes that Cleo flew away because she was distressed at moving to a new home. When the RSPCA refused to come, Hooper called to rent a hydraulic lift, but was told it wouldn’t be available until the next day. Hooper stayed by the tree all night long.
“I felt so helpless. It was awful, the worst feeling in the world.
“I took out a chair and blanket but I was getting strange looks from people driving by.
“They looked very confused when I said my bird was stuck up in the tree.
“I ended up driving my car around the corner and parked next to the tree. It was warmer and I felt safer but I still got no sleep.
The cherry picker arrived at 7:30 AM, and Cleo was finally brought down. She had spent 16 hours on the same branch. Link -via Arbroath
(image credit: SOLENT)
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Madison, Wisconsin's Official Bird: Pink Plastic Flamingo!
The budget wasn’t the only thing that the council members of Madison, Wisconsin, had to consider during its meeting: they also decided to make the plastic lawn flamingo its official bird!
The new mascot was debated for five minutes, and then the Common Council voted 15-4 to make the plastic pink flamingo the official city bird.
The idea was by a 1979 prank on Bascom Hill when the Pail and Shovel Party on campus put out 1,008 of the birds. "It sure lives in Madison lore as a really fun thing," said Wisconsin State Journal writer Doug Moe. Moe proposed the idea in a column, and Alder Marsha Rummel brought it to the council. "Let Madison have a little fun and laugh at itself. We’ve always been pretty good at that. I might suggest in these so-called tough times, a little laughter is not a bad thing," Moe said.
Not everyone embraced the idea of voting on the plastic flamingo. "I respectfully ask for this City Council to devote more time to more serious business at hand," said Alder Thuy Pham-Remmele, of District 20. But Rummel defended bringing the proposal to the council. "We are capable of multitasking in life, and if you don’t have a little fun, it’s not worth living, and I spent like 20 minutes on this since April," Rummel said.
Channel3000 has the story: Link – via L.A. Unleashed
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Why Honeyguide Birds "Talk" To Humans
[YouTube - Link]
The Kenyan honeyguide bird has an unusual and very remarkable behavior: it engages in an interspecies collaboration with humans to locate African bee colonies. In exchange for their guide service, the birds then share the harvest of the recovered honey.
Sir David Attenborough explains in this very interesting BBC clip titled Talking to Strangers.
– via presurfer
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Solar Birdhouse
Even our fine feathered friends are getting into alternative energy! This birdhouse design from Studio Oooms has a solar panel on the roof, and a translucent perch that lights up at night. The idea is that the light will attract bugs that the bird can feast upon. Genius! Link -via J-Walk Blog
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Death Metal Parrot
[YouTube - Link]
Scientists have determined that birds can indeed dance, but can they headbang to death metal? You betcha! Behold, the Death Metal Parrot!
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A Goose Flying Upside Down
Photographer Brian MacFarlane was taking pictures of a gaggle of geese flying during turbulent weather. This goose had a particularly strange style of flyin’ in high winds:
Your eyes do not deceive you – this puzzling bird really is flying upside down but with its neck and head twisted the right way up. [...]
Brian MacFarlane was simply photographing geese buffeted by strong winds at Strumpshaw yesterday, and did not expect to capture a moment of contortionism.
“The wind was making life difficult for the flying birds,” said Mr MacFarlane.
“Some were expert at controlling their flight, while others were being tossed around in mid-air.
“On closer inspection of the image I realised it had flipped upside down but kept its head the right way up. “Quite a feat!”
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Bird Can Dance
Cancer schmancer, scientists at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego have finally solved the age-old question that has eluded science for centuries: can birds dance?
Cats, dogs, and lab monkeys spend lots of time around human music. But no animal had ever been confirmed as moving to a beat—leading to the common belief that animals ain’t got rhythm.
For one of two new studies on animal dancing, Aniruddh Patel at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego and colleagues worked with Snowball the parrot, which seems to love "dancing" to the likes of Queen and Backstreet Boys.
To test whether the sulphur-crested cockatoo was really keeping a beat, the scientists would change the music’s tempo—represented in these videos as "BPM" (beats per minute).
Not one to miss a beat, Snowball quickly picked up the new rhythms, stomping and head-bobbing in time. "We were surprised by the degree Snowball could adjust his tempo," Patel said.
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The Birdcage Dress
Photo: Suzan and Kelly Jones
Conceptual artist Kasey McMahon (whose works CompuBeaver and Text-o-Possum have been featured on Neatorama before) sent us her latest creation: the Birdcage Dress (yes, it’s a fully functional wearable brass bird cage – notice the birdies?)
Link – Thanks Kasey!
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"Extinct" Bird Seen, Eaten
An extremely rare bird was photographed by a TV crew in the Philippines in January, just before it was sold at a poultry market.
Found only on the island of Luzon, Worcester’s buttonquail was known solely through drawings based on dated museum specimens collected several decades ago.
Scientists had suspected the species—listed as “data deficient” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s 2008 Red List—was extinct.
The buttonquail is a reclusive bird, and no one knows how many may remain hidden. Link -via Digg
(image credit: Arnel B. Telesforo)
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Whoa: Evolved Superbird Fishes Like a Human
[YouTube - Link]
One small step for birds, one scary pre-Planet-of-the-Apes warning sign for human beings. Watch the bird snag some bread being tossed to its less-intelligent cousins and then use it to attract some fish to snack on.
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Featherless Cockatoo
Oscar, who is actually a female cockatoo, was given six months to live, but thanks to a diagnosis of a contagious beak-and-feather disease, she was spared… and that was twelve years ago! The near-naked bird with nothing more than a tuft of feathers on her head is enchanting people world-wide as she gives real meaning to beauty comes from within. She can also do a mean Mick Jagger dance too.
Video: YouTube
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