Waterford Estate’s Post

Animals of flight have different perspectives and views than those relegated to life on the ground 🌱. For example, birds 🦅 have a view from on high, but when necessary, with equal ease, they can come down to earth 🌍 and enjoy their existence at a different level. On the other hand, snakes 🐍 and creatures without the option of loft, are limited to land-based experiences 🏞️. Wherever possible, choose the option of the animals of flight ✈️. - AdeCo #WisdomWednesday #ProfessionalManagementConcepts #PMC

Discover the captivating world of sea otters in my latest educational vlog, “All About Sea Otters: Fascinating Facts and Amazing Behaviors.” Join me as we explore the unique characteristics and behaviors of these adorable marine mammals. Learn about their habitat, diet, social structures, and the critical role they play in maintaining marine ecosystems. With in-depth insights into their use of tools, grooming habits, and conservation status, this video is perfect for wildlife enthusiasts, students, and anyone curious about sea otters. Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more wildlife education and conservation content! #SeaOtters #MarineLife #WildlifeEducation #Conservation #NatureLovers #SeaOtterFacts #AnimalBehavior

This remarkable shot of a flock as it swelled into an enormous bird-like murmuration What is a murmuration of starlings? Murmurations are huge groups of starlings that twist, turn, swoop and swirl across the sky in beautiful shape-shifting clouds. Just before dusk, small groups of starlings from the same area come together above a communal roosting site. The group grows ever larger, moving in unison in an aerial dance that casts gorgeous shapes against the waning daylight. Why do starling murmurations form? Starlings are known as ‘partial migrants’: birds that migrate in some places but not in others. Our own starlings tend to stay put while those from colder countries in eastern Europe head to our shores, swelling our numbers during autumn and winter to form seriously impressive flocks. Scientists believe that murmurations offer safety in numbers; protection from predators like peregrine falcons that are attracted by the sheer number of birds. After all, it can’t be easy to single out just one starling from a whirling group of hundreds or even thousands! Experts still aren’t completely sure how each starling knows which way to turn without bumping into the others.

An utterly fascinating read. It's decidedly *not* the intended takeaway of this article but I, personally, would prefer it if the orcas were, in fact, exacting revenge. ...but that's probably just my poorly-evolved, land-based mammal brain talking. --- "I ask Whitehead, who is a professor of biology at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, why #orcas might have evolved to not hold grudges against other animals. He explains that while land #mammals can be territorial, territory isn’t really a thing in the #sea. With few fixed #resources in the #ocean, there’s less to go to war about. “It’s fluid. It’s flexible. Animals are moving around, here and there,” he says. And perhaps — now Whitehead is musing — we can learn something from that. “Some of us think that aggression and #war are inevitable,” he tells me. But if sophisticated forms of ocean intelligence can teach complex land-bound brains a lesson, he says, it is that more-equal ways of dividing up resources across territories could make war and aggression less likely. What looks like revenge against humans, Whitehead says, is a behavior that may be a kind of #culture, a way this community of orcas now strengthens its group identity. Orca obsessions can quickly turn into collective fads. Take their eating habits. Most wild #animals are not fussy gourmands. But the orcas that live in the seas around Antarctica eat tiny penguins, and when they kill them, they discard everything other than the breast muscles. Orcas that eat other whales usually enjoy only the lips and the tongue and leave the rest to wash up or rot. Each community of killer whales speaks in its own dialect, and off the coast of Australia, in a place called Shark Bay, orcas adorn their noses with ornamental sponges. In the 1980s, the salmon-eating orcas of the northeastern Pacific fashioned hats from the carcasses of their prey. They wore them all summer. Outside of humans, the complexity and stability of these cultural forms is unparalleled. #Boat ramming is just the latest of these practices. But when we, another eminent cultural animal, seek to understand what killer whales are up to, we can’t help but see them through the pinhole of our own cultural practices and group dynamics. We look beneath the surface with ape eyes, and we see territoriality and retaliation where we should see cultural behaviors that have little to do with land-based #violence — which results in orcas with apelike vendettas going viral..." https://lnkd.in/g6nzEcxi

What do orcas eat? Are orcas dolphins? How fast do they swim? If you’ve asked any of these questions or just want to learn more about killer whales, read our blog and learn some killer facts about orcas! #OrcaActionMonth https://dfnd.us/45cBtOE

So challenging is the identification of many North American flycatchers that one of the most complex genera - the Empidonax flycatchers - is often referred to as the Empidonax complex, playing on the meanings of both structure and difficulty in the word "complex." And while the Myiarchus flycatchers are somewhat less challenging, their extraordinary vagrancy ranges add a different type of difficulty to their identification. However with the publication of Prof. Cin-ty Lee's new brace of field guides from Princeton University Press to these perplexing birds, birdwatchers and naturalists now have a particularly effective set of reference materials both for study as well as for use in the field. #books #ornithology #birds #birdwatching #birding https://lnkd.in/gsJPqzag

This week we have an exciting topic to discuss. We will be exploring the fascinating world of the Big 5 - a term used to refer to the five largest animals found in Africa, which include the lion, leopard, elephant, rhinoceros, and Cape buffalo. We are elated that you have chosen to join us on this journey, and we promise to make it an informative and thrilling experience. Together, we will delve deeper into the intricacies of the Big 5 and learn more about their habitats, behavior, and unique features. So, buckle up and get ready for an adventure into the wild! Are you ready to learn? Comment with a yes! #learnaboutthebig5

Mission complete

The Grind (or Grindadráp) is a traditional hunt targeting pilot whales 🐬 that takes place in the Faroe Islands 🇫🇴. It is a centuries-old practice where locals drive pods of pilot whales into shallow waters with boats 🚤. The pilot whales are then killed for their meat and blubber. Originating out of necessity when Norse people settled in the Faroe Islands during the Viking era. But The Grind continues today, and is highly controversial - with around 600-800 pilot whales killed per year. Pilot whales, although called whales, are actually oceanic dolphins. In more recent times, due to modern boats which are able to keep up with pods, other dolphins such as white-sided dolphin and occasionally bottlenose dolphins have also been targeted by the hunt. The largest mass killing of white-sided dolphin in the Faroe Islands was in 2021, when a total of 1,428 individuals were killed. It was the largest single cetacean hunt in recorded history 📝. This year, over 150 white-sided dolphins were killed in Skalafjord - according to Sea Shepherd. Share this post to raise awareness, and tune in as we share more information about the issues with The Grind & how you can help. ➡️ Follow The Marine Diaries for more ocean stories 🎥 Beautiful video of pilot whales by Andriana Fragola. #FaroeIslands #TheGrind #StopTheGrind #Dolphins #PilotWhales #WhiteSidedDolphins #BottlenoseDolphins #Faroese #Ocean #OceanScience #OceanConservation #SciComm #OceanStories #Storytelling

Amazing insights on shark behavior from an activity tag on a shark that was subsequently hit by a boat. Great example of new biodiversity monitoring methods that are transforming how we sense the natural world. I write about the need for monitoring & the potential of new methods in the Irish times Soundscapes of the natural world can tell us so much https://lnkd.in/ejxVZCt7 New tech is just part of the solution for a national biodiversity monitoring programme - loads of monitoring goes on as part of Environmental Impact Assessments & subsequent planning conditions but it goes nowhere. The data are not accessible & not used to trigger action.