Hello folks who wonder if the next Medal of Valor will be given to the brave people fighting wars in Twitter feeds and Youtube comment sections,

There are many people you will come across that will try to sell "birding" as a hobby to you these days, in a way birding is the new Fidget spinner. They will claim many benefits of birding like you being able to connect with nature and make new friends.
Birds, they will claim, have beautiful plumage encompassing the entire spectrum of colors and no matter what time of the day you look at them they will always look gorgeous.
Little do they tell you about birds having bad hair days.
I recently came across this Snowy Egret suffering from a bad hair day just before it got its act together and posted its next pic on Instagram. This is the footage that it does not want you to see.


Have you ever noticed those freaks who try to look at animal poop on a hike or as they would smugly use the term "scat"(using air quotes). But you will rarely find any of these geeks looking at any bird scats and going all crazy over what bird might have taken a dump several hours ago. Why is that?
You see, unlike mammals which might poop and pee at different times, birds are always in a rush and will mix their poop and pee thus not displaying any distinct shape.
This is partly because mammals have a bladder to store pee while birds cannot afford to do the same since there is a limit on the amount of liquids you can carry when you fly.


As part of breaking down food for digestion, one of the byproducts is ammonia. Ammonia is toxic if kept in the body for long, so the body tries to expel it as fast as it can just like the staff who kicks out the person without a mask at the supermarket. Now, ammonia requires a decent amount of water to expel from the body, in mammals this ammonia is converted to urea which is what pee is made of. But as we saw above birds can't afford to store that much water, hence they can't use a lot of water to expel, so instead of converting it to urea they convert it to uric acid instead which uses substantially less amount of water. This uric acid is what contributes to the white liquid when a bird poops.
Below is a Pied-billed Grebe taking a dump in the community pool it shares with other waterfowl.


If you think about it, a lot of days for the Western Fence lizards are pretty boring. They spend some time sunbathing, some time foraging for insects and some time to grab a power nap.
But if they take their power nap with both eyes closed, they will be vulnerable to predators like birds.
To get around that limitation, they indulge in a behavior called the asynchronous eye closure, which means that they keep one eye open while closing the other one thus conserving some energy.
They will alternate between both eyes to keep a watch on both sides for suspicious movements.
Below is one displaying that behavior.


Karan Gathani

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