Secretary Bird

I'm starting to get worried about this silicone I ordered it hasn't come in yet. 

Art

goal for the week 5 hrs

make clay

work on the figure with the Anubis mask

Animal

Photo by Bob and Jane

The secretary bird (Sagittarius serpentarius) is a terrestrial raptor from sub-saharan Africa with long stork-like legs. As its scientific name implies it does often eat snakes and other small creatures. It hunts by grasping the small creature and beating it against the ground. It is the national emblem of Sudan and the name secretary bird came from the Europeans who felt that it looked like the bird was wearing a coat and tails with quills behind it's ears.

Video of a secretary bird playing with a toy snake

Video of a secretary bird grabbing food from a zoo keepers hand

Southern white faced Scops Owl

I discovered that I was out of silicone so I ordered some today.

Art

Goal for the week 18.5 hrs

make clay

make the floor tiles for the figure

Animal

Photo by Ennor

The Southern white faced Scops Owl (Ptilopsis granti) comes from southern Africa. They will occasionally drive raptors out of their nests and take them over as their own. When nesting they will work cooperatively as a pair for the first two weeks the chicks are fed only by the male as the female incubates. After the first two weeks they will alternate hunting. They have also been known to fly long distances to find grass fires and then take advantage of the fact that the fire will drive small mammals into the open.

Video showing two of the owl's defensive displays

North American Teratorn

There are a lot of things going on this weeks so it has been a really bad art week.

Art

stuff

Animal

photo of a California Condor (which should have a very similar build) by bsterling that was then heavily modified.

The North American Teratorn (Teratornis merriami) was the largest flying bird man ever saw they went extinct around the end of the last ice age. While with it's 12ft wingspan it was not the largest flying bird that ever was it was still fairly impressive and it was thought that after went extinct stories about it endured as a supernatural creature. There are theories that it was the origin of the thunderbirds. Thunderbirds are large intelligent bird shaped spirits that can control storms and thunder you find in a lot of forms of them in the mythology of a number of Native American tribes. In Wisconsin there is a lake called Devil's lake (Tawacunchukdah) that I'm very fond of that gets tied into the thunderbirds (Wakunja) mythology of the Winnebago. It was supposed to have been a site where the underwater pumas and the thunderbirds had a fight and threw a lot of large rocks and lighting at each other. I got to spend quite a bit of time a kid crawling around on the spent weapons of old gods there. The Cowichan also had a thunderbird (Tzinquaw) that had a fight with a water spirit this one in the form of an Orca. The Sioux had thunderbird had wiped out the Unktehila a dangerous reptilian water monster,  so there seems to be a bit of theme thunderbirds and water spirits not getting along. Not that there were not other giant birds in mythology that were not thunderbirds but may have been influenced by Teratornis. The Miwok had a giant man-eating bird named Yellokin that was eventually killed by eagle and turned into trees by coyote. The Passamaquoddy had a giant bird Wuchowsen that created wind with it's wings.  Cryptozoologists also love these guys, there are occasionally stories about modern giant bird sightings, though many ornithologists point out if there were physical living Teratorns running around the small army (84 million according to a survey in 2000) of American bird watchers probably would have noticed.

Black Thighed Falconet

Stuart and I tried foam fighting yesterday morning. I was not expecting to be quite as sore afterwards (it is as though lots of people were hitting me very hard with foam covered sticks). Incidentally, I'm not very good at foam fighting so it was mostly being beaten with sticks.

art

sanding boxes (still sanding boxes)

Animal

photo by Redzlan

Redzlan also has a very nice Malaysian bird watching blog that I have been reading here

One of the world's smallest birds of prey is the black thighed falconet (Mircrohierax fringillarius) it is only about 6 inches long and lives in Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and Indonesia. They tend to be found in forest from low elevations to up to 1500m. The Mircrohierax falconets have been found to be most related to the African pygmy falcon and very distinct from other falconet genuses. They eat mostly large insects like dragonflies and mantids. On occasion they will also take small birds such as munias and sunbirds which are only slightly smaller then the falconets. It has been observed that they will occasionally hunt cooperatively to capture large insects. They tend to nest in tree hollows in a cooperative pair. Chicks can sometimes be seen in the hollows yawning for long periods of time in an effort strengthen their jaw muscles.

Harris hawk

Yesterday, I went to Mike's D&D game I was thinking it would be about a 3 hour game, but it turned out we were there more like 7 hours. That kind of ate up the day for me yesterday. I should be far more productive today. It looks like I will be doing Capricon in February. I could not really find any other February cons that would work. I suppose that will give me time to get this batch of boxes together and start something new for Cinema gallery.

Art

Goal for the week not going to happen

Today

sand boxes

work on dragon

Animal

photo by Parksy1964

The Harris hawk (Parabuteo unicinctus) is a pack hunting hawk from the southwestern United States and Central America. A harris hawk pack called a cast is generally made of all related family members. Typically, one will act as a flusher and the others will be ready to swoop down on the small animal, they then share the kill. They also have another strange behavior called stacking in which they will actually sit on one another's backs sometimes three high on top of a cactus. Researchers are still not entirely certain why they do this. They are very intelligent for birds of prey and quite trainable so they tend to be one of the more popular birds for falconers. Though if they are kept from a very young age by humans they will on occasion retain juvenile behavior and still scream for food when the human they have imprinted on as a parent is around.

Sculpture depicting the Harris hawk's stacking behavior

A video about a man that uses Harris hawks to scare pigeons and seagulls away from Parliament