Feminist birds

[NoBinturongsHereMate]

Or feminist bird watchers, anyway.

Ornithologists and behavioural scientists focus on male birds - which often have brighter plumage and are easier to identify. They've assumed female birds do nothing interesting, and don't even sing.

This group is proving them wrong.

https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/p0lwvvbf?

Thanks, I'll be sure to listen.

Even the female birds get overlooked in favour of the males! It's a nice story though.

Sounds great, thank you!

Will listen, and assume the programme makers didn't write the bbc blurb which waffles on about birding needing to be 'more inclusive of species of all genders'.... all genders of BIRD?!!

There was an excellent article written by a birder who only put a bird on his list when he had seen an adult male.

One day on holiday he saw a rare female bird and would never get to see the male of the species, therefore it was not eligible to go on his list.

Then he realised he was being sexist.

I can't find it - I was originally pointed in its direction by the wonderful vole lady who used to be on Twitter.

I mean, good on him for noticing at all, but this story does point up that a lot of perfectly nice men don't see sexism until it negatively affects them (or a woman or girl close to them) personally. Tbf, a lot of women don't, either, it just tends to dawn on us sooner cos, well...

Haven't they realised that too whit to woo is a call and response between a male and a female owl? Or that among raptors, many females are bigger than the males? That male penguins incubate the eggs, whilst the females go hunting?

Etc etc etc.

Yeah that BBC blurb

expanding science to be more inclusive of species of all genders

I need some cucumber slices.

Ladies and Sinner, the lily trotter

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacanidae

Not the only one, I think phalaropes too, but first I thought of.

Male ostriches are lone parents, too.

I've not come across the lily trotter before, it's magnificent!

Oh dear. That sounds like the idiocy which featured recently by someone confused between species and sex, was it India Willoughby? 😂

It’s interesting, though, as the reason male birds have bright plumage and often put on elaborate mating displays is to attract females. The brighter the plumage, the better the chance they have of mating. It is around the female of the species that behaviours are centred.

Only some birds (oops, that has an unfortunately familiar sound). There are plenty of birds around where the two sexes are very similar, and I wonder if they're likely to be species where the females and males both take care of the chicks, as opposed to the two of them mating and the male having no further role. So you see families of Canada geese, for instance, and all the adults look pretty much alike. And even though they're pests, pigeons all look the same and the parents work together. There are some birds you can look at and really approve of! On the other hand, mallard ducks do some pretty distressing stuff. So it does seem to vary a lot.

Well, I did find this one.

It's very interesting that in birds, males are the homogenetic sex (Zz) while females are heterogenetic (zw) the opposite way around (xx and xy). Birds are so very distant to us genetically.

It leads to some unique situations that couldn't happen in mammals such as the Cuckoos ability to mimic particular bird eggs. There are 'robin' Cuckoos and 'black bird' cuckoos who mimic those eggs, but all while being part of the same species.

Dawkins spoke about it at the beginning of one of his talks, I'll see if I can find it.

Dinosaurs innit

Pigeons are lovely and gentle creatures. They're not pests!

A woman down the road has two rescued feral pigeons. 3 years ago, my daughter told me about the lady with pigeons in a pram, which wear nappies.

Of course, I assumed she was making it up!

Then we saw her with them, their colours are amazing. Indoors, they follow her round and get on the couch with her. She turns the shower on and calls them, they come up and get under the spray!

I'm afraid being lovely and gentle creatures doesn't stop them from being pests!

😍

Darwin said that pigeons are the 'greatest treat' that can be offered to a person.

darwin200.christs.cam.ac.uk/pigeons

I'm very glad that didn’t turn out to be in any culinary sense!

Well, on the subject of birds, we're about to head to Seahouses, for a Farne Island tour. I hope there are plenty of puffins!

I think most of them will have gone out to sea by now, breeding season is more may/june/early July isn’t it? Hopefully there will be some interesting wildlife but august tends to be the quiet month.

it occurs to me that apart from feminist considerations, some reading this thread may not have yet come across this fairly new board on MN - a home for the birds, beasts and plant lovers.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/wildlife-nature-conservation