eBirdseed.com Wild Bird Feeding Blog

February 20, 2007

As the mission statement of this blog notes, these posts are here to help you ”Learn about birdseeds, suets, feeders and techniques for attracting a variety of wild birds to your backyard.” Obviously, our objective hasn’t changed, and you can always ask any sort of related question via the “Comments” link below. But sometimes (when other issues aren’t so pressing), we like to have a little fun…

So we’re introducing an occasional “Weird Bird News, etc.” post. (You folks seemed to have had a lot of fun with the “Give the Latin Name to That Bird!” contest, as well as the tales of Toby and Otis, so from now on, any time a sufficient amount of weird bird news creeps up, we’ll make another installment.)

Let's start today's issue with a previous comment by Gerry about large birds. Reports of large birds are nothing new... Consider the following:

• Google on "large bird" and see what you get. It makes for very interesting reading and viewing. (But beware that there are at least two videos of eagles hunting large game that aren't for the faint of heart.)
• Consider this wild CNN story.
• The Snopes.com Web site has a fantastic photo of an eagle in action. Does the animal have a ten foot wingspan? I doubt it. Does that matter concerning Gerry's story? Not to me - the animal still looks plenty big.

Next on the menu is the story of Stumpy the duck. Pieces like this always give me the willies. We know for a fact that chemicals and radiation can cause strange mutations and disease. (Think of what DDT did to eagles' eggs, thalidomide did to human babies, and what Chernobyl did to the thyroid-cancer rate in the Ukraine.) And the examples just go on and on. We need to keep an eye on this.

And finally from the "Weird Newsroom", the "injured/wounded" fox is back.


This may be the same animal that we first saw back in the "Mysteries of Cape Cod"

I say "may" be the same creature because close ups of the above picture show some scarring on the front legs. On the other hand, the fur color is different. If it is indeed the same fellow, it's getting better. But if it's a different fox with the same condition, we've got a real problem out there. Any input on this issue would be more than welcome.

See you by the feeders,

"Not quite wired right" CapeCodAlan