Autumnwatch presenter Chris Packham has written a blog in which he reckons that, in an average lifetime, you’d only get about 5 chances to see this amazing spectacle.

This video [UK readers only] shows how they managed to take the film:

This video from Natalie Beresford (First Year). Why might this cockatoo dance? Is it like a bored tiger or an emprisoned polar bear, or is there something else going on? Why does it do the bow at the end?

Migration continues to fascinate scientists, dissecting the sensory cues involved, and the innate vs learned components. This open access article in PNAS looks at the ability of birds to migrate across the whole of the North American continent. There seems to be a mixture of learned and innate factors, with adult birds alone having a “map” of the whole continent.

Our very own Jonathan Codd features in this BBC news page, describing his work on the bones involved in dino breathing. The paper this was based on has just been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society (open access).

After last week’s success with the video of the nutty Manakin bird, Per Smiseth sent in this link, which is to the Internet Bird Colection – a site that aims to assemble videos of every bird alive… Some very cool animals here!

Definitely a video that will make you laugh! The male red-capped Manakin (Pipra mentalis), a bird found in Costa Rica and Belize (watch out for it if you go there on the Field Course), does a rather cool moonwalk as part of its courtship ritual. It also produces some rather bizarre clicks with its wings. Two YouTube videos show these behaviours:

Researcher describes her work on the Manakin, including excellent high-speed film of how the wing-clicking, concluding with an odd imitation and a rather obvious M Jackson soundtrack.

Better footage, but the English soundtrack has been irritatingly overdubbed in what my ignorant ear thinks is either Russian or Polish. The bird will make you laugh, though.

Click here and see.

This story appeared on the BBC website and the national press today. What’s wrong with it? My 9-year old daughter spotted it straight away (which is obviously more than the journalists did!). Clue: you’d only have to change one letter to get a more likely explanation.

“Visitors to a Somerset stately home have been warned to keep away from a peacock – after he seriously damaged a luxury car he mistook for a mate. The amorous bird caused £4,000 worth of damage to an employee’s Lexus in the grounds of Sir Benjamin Slade’s country manor, Maunsel House, near Bridgwater. “It started when he fell in love with a Lexus, which was in a very distinct peacock blue,” said Sir Benjamin.”

Seems like a daft question, but the genetic bases of these effects can be quite simple. This article from Science (subscription needed to get past abstract) gives an example from pied flycatchers and shows that the genes are sex-linked. There’s also this summary in the same issue (same rules apply). Thanks to Per Smiseth for this.

This from Emily Burdfield-Steel (2nd Year). Anyone who’s put nuts out for birds knows that squirrels will often come and snarf the lot. In Tucson (Arizona), people feed their humming-birds, but the food gets eaten by bats… Some of them are not particularly bright (scroll to the end).