article thumbnail

Some Ingenuity Can Go a Long Way

10,000 Birds

Among birds the Egyptian Vulture uses rocks to crack Ostrich eggs, the New Caledonian Crow and Woodpecker Finch (one of several Darwin Finches of the Galapagos Islands), uses sticks to extract grubs from inside a branch. According to these researchers, only the exceptionally intelligent herons acquire the skill of bait fishing.

Fish 163
article thumbnail

Mrs Pankhurst’s Purple Feather–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

As a librarian and women’s studies scholar, I greatly appreciate the research. The purple feather of the title is an ostrich plume (now housed in the Museum of London), a symbol of Emmeline’s crusade and personal style (if you saw the 2015 film Suffragette , Meryl Streep, playing Pankhurst, is wearing a hat full purple feathers).

Industry 119
article thumbnail

The Feather Thief: A Book Review

10,000 Birds

He roots the theft in the history of collecting bird skins, in the brief life history of Edwin Rist, in the secretive world of classic fly tying, and in his own efforts to follow up on a police investigation that got the man but not all of the loot. The skins were invaluable tools for ornithological, ecological, environmental research.