This Past Imperfect post about Closing the Pigeon Gap is a fascinating look at how 19th century continental powers made use of networks of carrier pigeons in wartime, and how the British responded to the perceived threat of a Pigeon Gap developing. All good stuff.

And then there's this one passage that reads like a scene from a discarded Blackadder Goes Forth script, recounting a description by Lieutenant Alan Goring of a sticky moment during the Passchendaele offensive of 1917:

[...] I was left with just a handful of men, all that was left out of those three platoons…. We had two pigeons in a basket, but the trouble was that the wretched birds had got soaked when the platoon floundered into the flooded ground. We tried to dry one of them off as best we could, and I wrote a message, attached it to its leg, and sent it off.

To our absolute horror, the bird was so wet that it just flapped into the air and then came straight down again, and started actually walking towards the German line. Well, if that message had got into the Germans' hands, they would have known that we were on our own and we'd have been in real trouble. So we had to try to shoot the pigeon before he got there. A revolver was no good. We had to use rifles, and there we were, all of us, rifles trained over the edge of this muddy breastwork trying to shoot this bird scrambling about in the mud. It hardly presented a target at all.

Susan Orlean:

The rooster problem isn't going to go away anytime soon. [...]

Alaska eagle survives mating dance fall:

An acrobatic display of passion proved too much for a pair of eagles engaged in a mating dance over Alaska's Prince William Sound. [...]

Be sure to follow the link and scroll down to the second photo of a dazed, post-coital and thoroughly confused female eagle. Poor thing.

[Via James Nicoll]

Owls are stealthy.

[Via Collision Detection]

Richard Barnes: Murmur.

I don't think his images of starlings in flight would be half as sinister in colour. Nice work.

[Via Pruned]

What could go wrong?

After years spent hunting for the buried remains of prehistoric animals, a Canadian paleontologist now plans to manipulate chicken embryos to show he can create a dinosaur. Hans Larsson, the Canada Research Chair in Macro Evolution at Montreal's McGill University, said he aims to develop dinosaur traits that disappeared millions of years ago in birds. Larsson believes by flipping certain genetic levers during a chicken embryo's development, he can reproduce the dinosaur anatomy, he told AFP in an interview.

[Via James Nicoll]

Picture of the Day.

[Via jwz]

The gallery of this year's winners of the National Geographic Traveler's Photo Contest contains some gems.

As the gallery is done in Flash I can't link directly to my favourite: the second photograph, "Great Egret with Nesting Material" by Daniel Cedras.

[Via 3quarksdaily]

The Perroquet project:

Born out of a lifelong fascination with science photography and nature documentaries, Parroquet showcases a body of work by fashion photographer Sølve Sundsbø, comprising eight film shorts and a selection of photographs. Keen to produce imagery that didn't fall into the traditional genres of photography, this project's central focus is the parroquet, a type of small, slender, long-tailed parrot. This particular subject matter couldn't be more removed from Sundsbø's lavish editorial spreads and striking campaign imagery, although his reasons for choosing this particular species do, in a way, relate to fashion. Possessing almost sartorial qualities, it was the bird's trademark vibrant plumage that piqued the photographer's interest. Sundsbø looks to this as fashion on an evolutionary scale: compared to the fast-paced, demanding nature of the fashion calendar and the many 'looks' each season produces, this creature's stunning 'outfit' has taken centuries to develop. [...]

I wasn't all that taken with the films, but the still images are startlingly colourful and quite beautiful.

[Via The Long Now Blog]