Drug-Smuggling Pigeon Nabbed

Colombian police say they have captured a carrier pigeon that was being used to smuggle drugs into a prison.

The bird was trying to fly into a jail in the north-eastern city of Bucaramanga with marijuana and cocaine paste strapped to its back, but did not make it.

Police believe the 45g (1.6oz) drug package was too heavy for it.

Police, who believe the bird was trained by inmates, say they've caught other pigeons attempting to carry phone cards into the jail.

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Jim Carrey to star with penguins

Think penguin movies peaked about five years ago when March of the Penguins and Happy Feet were playing?

Hollywood believes audiences will come waddling back on Aug. 12, when 20th Century Fox releases the big-screen adaptation of the 1930s children's book Mr. Popper's Penguins, starring Jim Carrey, Angela Lansbury and a half-dozen real-life, flightless water fowl.

Audiences will be watching the real penguins for roughly half the movie. In some scenes, CGI animals were used.

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Into the Lion's Den

At a zoo in western Germany, a baby African Penguin decided to go on a little stroll through a lion's den. As reported by Der Spiegel, the tiny bird escaped its habitat and started waddling through the lion enclosure. Fortunately, the lions were asleep. Zookeepers guided the penguin to safety using a trail of herrings. The zoo doesn't usually name its penguins, but apparently bonded with this one, since they started calling it Leona.

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Photo: Allwetterzoo Münster

Amazing Feather Paintings

Feathers can be colorful and spectacular in their own right, but how much more stunning might they be when used as canvases for artists, eager to demonstrate their talent for the unusual?

Alaskan-born and -bred artist Julie Thompson is an astounding exponent of this incredible art form. Julie, a self-taught wildlife artist for nearly 20 years, strives to make every feather painting as unique as the feathers themselves are, and believes that every feather has a kind of personality relating to the painting it bears.

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via Presurfer

Just incase you were wondering - US$11,542,683

Sotheby's: Audubon sells for record £7.3m

LONDON 7 DECEMBER 2010 --- This evening, one of the most magnificent printed books ever produced, John James Audubon’s Birds of America, sold at Sotheby’s London for £7,321,250/ US$11,542,683, establishing a new world record for any printed book ever sold at auction. A fiery enthusiasm among four collectors bidding on the phones and in the room drove the price rapidly beyond pre-sale expectations (£4-6 million/ US$6.3-9.5 million). The book was bought by London dealer Michael Tollemache, who was bidding in the room and who described the work after the sale as “priceless”.

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How much?

LONDON -- Sotheby's is auctioning a rare copy of John James Audubon's "Birds of America," billed as the world's most expensive book - a treasure that could sell for 6 million pounds ($9.5 million).

One of only 100 or so remaining copies of "Birds of America," the tome will be on the block Tuesday in London alongside a first edition of Shakespeare's plays expected to fetch at least 1 million pounds ($1.6 million).

The books come from the estate of the 2nd Baron Hesketh, an aristocratic book collector who died in 1955. Another complete copy of "Birds of America" was sold by Christie's for $8.8 million in 2000, a record for a printed book at auction.

The collection of 435 hand-colored prints is made from engravings of Audubon's illustrations.

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Penguin Gets Prosthetic Beak

Five month-old Tungo was found on a beach in Rio de Janeiro with a shattered bill that had been damaged by a boat propeller.

Discovering that he was unable to eat, vets at Rio de Janeiro zoo built him a brand-new acrylic beak, shaped from a broken piece of the original.

This is the first operation of its type on a penguin in Latin America.

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via Neatorama

Video: Rescued Baby Hummingbird

Awwwwwww . . .

Smile, it's Friday!

Source: Life
Photo: Fox Photos/Getty Images
May 01, 1937

Three cheeps

They're kestrel chicks

Picture: EPA

DIY Bird Mobile

Tutus and Turtles says this bird mobile would really brighten up a corner of a child's room. Read more about the how-to here and here, and get the bird pattern here.

(via [bb-blog])

2,500-year-old bird's nest found

A 2,500-year-old bird's nest has been discovered on a cliff in Greenland.

The nesting site is still continually used by gyrfalcons, the world's largest species of falcon, and is the oldest raptor nest ever recorded.

Three other nests, each over 1,000 years old, have also been found, one of which contains feathers from a bird that lived more than 600 years ago.

Like many falcons, gyrfalcons do not build nests out of sticks and twigs, but typically lay eggs in bowl-shaped depressions they scrape into existing ledges or old nests made by other birds such as ravens.

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Today's awwww

Two baby Masked Lovebirds, a 3-day old, left, and a 3-week old, right.

AP photo

Gay German Zoo Pair Raising Baby

Two male Humboldt penguins cautiously guard the entrance to their cave in the "Zoo am Meer" zoological park in Bremerhaven, northern Germany, where they are fostering a six weeks old penguin chick.

After a penguin egg had been abandoned by its biological parents, it was placed in the male penguins' nest, who then adopted and hatched it.

Bremerhaven zoo veterinarian Schoene said the male birds, named Z and Vielpunkt, are one of three same-sex pairs among the zoo's 20 Humboldt penguins that have attempted to mate.

AP Photo/Focke Strangmann

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Cute or not? Polish Frizzle chickens

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Smile, it's Friday!

Apple Bird Feeder

This delightful apple bird feeder will be the place to hang out for all your neighborhood's cool birds. Eco-friendly design made from Bamboo.

$25.00 at Satinbox

A wedding dress for the birds

If you want to stand out on your wedding day, this dress made up of 2009 peacock feathers could be just the ticket.

The $1.5million creation was made at a wedding dress factory and took eight workers 40 days to sew together.

An average male peacock sheds around 200 feathers during his annual moult – meaning the makers would have had to have harvested the feathers from more than ten birds over the course of a year.

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Deer or condors - you pick

Chinese conservationists are in a fix over endangered condors eating large numbers of a protected species of deer in a reserve in the north of the country.

More than 100 young spotted deer have been eaten by the condors so far this spring at the Luanhe River National Nature Reserve in Hebei province, near Beijing,becoming an "unanticipated" part of the food chain.

Nationally, the condor is considered far more endangered than the deer.

"The raptors are growing in number and threatening to catch larger animals, like elk, in the reserve," it quoted wildlife official Zhou Changhong as saying.

The reserve only has 600 or so deer and just 10 elk, the report added.

"An adult condor has a wingspan of more than two metres, and not even wardens can frighten it," Zhou said.

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Pigeons fly cell phones into Brazilian prison

Inmates have devised an innovative way to smuggle in cell phones into a prison farm in Brazil: carrier pigeons. Guards at the Danilio Pinheiro prison near the southeastern city of Sorocaba noticed a pigeon resting on an electric wire with a small cloth bag tied to one of its legs last week. "The guards nabbed the bird after luring it down with some food and discovered components of a small cell phone inside the bag," police investigator Celso Soramiglio said Tuesday.

One day later, another pigeon was spotted dragging a similar bag inside the prison's exercise yard. Inside the bag was the cell phone's charger, Soramiglio said.

The birds were apparently bred and raised inside the prison, smuggled out, outfitted with the cell phone parts and then released to fly back.

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