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12 birds that are so bizarre-looking it's hard to believe they're actually real

Mother Nature's weirdos bring unending delight to oddity-lovers everywhere.

Photo credit: Canva

Some birds make you look twice.

Many of us see birds every day and don't give them much thought, but as 1 out of 3 Americans consider themselves "birdwatchers," it's clear our feathered friends pique a lot of people's interest. Maybe it's our ongoing fascination with the mechanics of flying. Maybe it's the diversity of bird song ranging from lovely melody to annoying alarm clock. Maybe it's beautiful colors and patterns of their feathers.

Or maybe it's that among the beautiful and majestic birds in the world there are also some oddballs, just absolutely bizarre-looking bird species who seem more like cartoon characters than actual animals. Ever see a bird you just can't look away from because it's so strange? You're about to.

Here are 12 bird species that seem too weird to exist but actually do.

King Vulture

king vultureKing vultures are colorful, that's for sure.Photo credit: Canva

On the one hand, the King Vulture sports some beautiful bright colors. On the other hand, well…yeah. There's a lot going on here and so many places for the eye to go, but I can't stop looking at what appears to be a raw chicken bursting from its chest all Alien-like. Yeesh.

Bearded Reedling

"Why is your face in the middle of your body sir?" Scroll through and see the way the Bearded Reedling holds himself in the splits between two reeds. He's like a little mustachioed Jack Black—round but surprisingly flexible. Or for the "So I Married and Axe Murderer" fans, "Like Sputnik—spherical but quite pointy at parts."

Shoebill Stork

shoebill storkThe Shoebill Stork's stare is disconcerting.Photo credit: Canva

This is not the stork I imagine bringing babies. This is the stork that imagine eats babies and then haunts my dreams. Why do its eyes look so human-like and yet also animatronic? I can't decide if this bird looks extra real or extra fake. My brain can't take it in.

King of Saxony Bird of Paradise

King of Saxony Birds of ParadiseImagine having to haul these long head wires around all the time.markaharper1/Wikimedia Commons (left), Photo credit: Canva (right)

Male King of Saxony Birds of Paradise have two unusual features: One is their two extremely long plumes—modified feathers referred to as "head wires"—that extend from their brow and get swung around to woo the ladies. The other is the strange sound that they make in their home habitat in New Guinea, which sounds almost electronic.

Magnificent Frigatebird

magnificent frigatebirdBest name ever.Photo credit: Canva

"Ah, you Magnificent Frigatebird, you." The name just invites admiration and respect, doesn't it? Better than Water Balloon Breasted Freak of Nature Bird, which seems more fitting.

Rhinoceros Hornbill

rhinoceros hornbillRhinoceros Hornbills look like they have an extra beak like a spare tire.Photo credit: Canva

"Excuse me, you seem to have a beak…on your beak." What is the point of this? Does it bother them? Do the other birds make fun of them? It just seems so arbitrary, like there were a bunch of beaks leftover that Mother Nature didn't want to go to waste so she just plopped them on their heads.

Secretary Bird

secretary birdSecretary Birds are oddly leggy.Photo credit: Canva

The headdress is one thing. Bold. Attractive. But zoom out to the full picture and the term "all legs" comes to mind. Why "secretary" though? Funnily enough, it's because they look like male secretaries of old who wore gray tailcoats and short black pants and always had pencils tucked behind their ears. You can see how the resemblance resulted in the name.

Tufted Puffin

tufted puffinsTufted Puffins almost look human with their hair swooshes.Photo credit: Canva

Draco Malfoy? Donald Trump? The Tufted Puffin resembles different people depending on who you ask, but there's definitely a human element to those bleach blond tufts all swooped back.

Marabou Stork

marabou storkMarabou Storks are not the most attractive birds.Photo credit: Canva

Hard not to stare at the air sac of the Marabou Stork, isn't it? I don't even know what to say other than "Wow." Just all around, "Wow."

Western Parotia

western parotiaThe Western Parotia doing its fancy mating dance.JJ Harrison/Wikimedia Commons

If you've ever watched "Our Planet" with David Attenborough, you probably recognize this guy. The Western Parotia is a gorgeous fellow, especially when he makes himself a skirt during his whirly twirly mating dance.

Greater Sage Grouse

greater sage grouseThe Greater Sage Grouse puffing up his sacs.Bureau of Land Management (Public Domain)

Is it an urchin or a bird? Hard to tell. And what the heck are those things popping out of its chest? Are they eggs? They look like eggs.

You can see what's happening in the video below, but be sure to have the sound on because it's an audio-visual display the Greater Sage Grouse is known for. (Yes, it's a mating thing.)

- YouTubeyoutu.be

And last but definitely not least, we have the giggle-worthy Blue Footed Booby.

Blue Footed Booby

blue footed boobyYes, their feet really are that blue.Photo credit: Canva

What makes our booby friends' feet that beautiful color? The blue comes from the nutrients of fresh fish they eat, according to the World Wildlife Fund. The brighter the blue, the healthier they are. Still hard to believe that's really what their feet naturally look like, though. So wild.

Seriously, who needs AI generated images when Mother Nature gives us such delightfully strange oddities in the real world?

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Science

Cemetery captures a bluebird couple's beautiful family life with camera-equipped birdhouse

The 2-minute video of their 48-day nesting cycle has been viewed 33 million times.

Photo credit: Canva (representative photos)

Bluebirds tend to mate for life.

A cemetery is usually a place we associate with the end of life, not the beginning of it, but a Pennsylvania cemetery has flipped that script entirely with a sweet 2-minute video.

The Historic Easton Cemetery in the small town of Easton, Pennsylvania, has built a huge fan base with its viral footage of two bluebirds building a nest and raising a family over the course a month and a half. The cemetery shared that it had installed a birdhouse equipped with a solar-powered camera in the spring, and soon a bluebird couple showed up to check it out.

Clearly deciding that the house had good bones, the couple began building a nest, bringing in twigs and arranging them in a circular pattern, with the female creating a round spot to lay her eggs. On Day 13, she laid her first egg, then another, then another and another. On Day 30, the eggs began to hatch, and for the next couple of weeks we see the mom and dad take turns bringing the babies food.

It's so simple, yet completely engaging to see the nesting cycle in its entirety—48 days edited down to just a few minutes. Watch:

The reel cut off due to time, so the cemetery posted the Part 2 video showing the fledglings leaving the nest as well:

The birdhouse was the brainchild of Mike Pearsall, whose grandmother loved bluebirds and had birdhouses. She's buried in Historic Easton Cemetery and he built the camera-enabled birdhouse in her honor. He told WFMZ that he assumed sparrows would primarily use it, so he was thrilled when the bluebird pair showed up and claimed the house first.

People can't get enough of the bluebirds and their little family

Bluebirds tend to mate for life, which makes seeing this pair setting up house and caring for their babies extra special. The first day, it's almost as if they were genuinely house hunting—you could almost hear the, "What do you think, hon? Should we get it?" And then to see them working together to build their nest and feed their young was truly heartwarming.

People found the videos delightfully riveting.

"Thank you for sharing. This is heart happiness right here! 🩵💙"

"I didn't realize how fast the eggs hatch! Neat :) Beautiful birds."

"How sweet they work together 💙💙"

"Thank you for your beautiful reel… made me smile. I feed my cardinals and jays everyday. Never thought to do anything like this."

"It’s just amazing how animals/birds instinctively know how to care for their babies."

"I never knew they laid 1 egg each consecutive day like that… idk why but I thought it would be an all at once scenario??"

"I love that new life is being born in a cemetery."

Birds are surprisingly fascinating to watch

There's a reason birdwatching is a thing. Humans have always found birds intriguing (they can FLY, for the love), but when the birdwatching bug gets you it can take you by surprise.

The world saw a big birdwatching boom during the COVID-19 pandemic, when social distancing gave us the time and the desire for such outdoor activity. People who always wondered how "watching birds" could possibly be considered a hobby found out why people who do it love it so much. In fact, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 35% of Americans age 16 and older now identify as birdwatchers.

@wbupalospark

#springmigration2023 #wbupalospark #birdnerd


But you don't even have to be an avid birder to appreciate seeing the natural cycle of a bird family. Bird's nests are usually built where it's hard for humans to see them, and even if we can, none of us have the time to sit and watch for a month and a half to see how the nest gets built, the eggs get hatched and the babies get taken care of.

Stationary cameras like the one in the top of the birdhouse allow us to observe bird behavior without disturbing their habitat. Similar cameras are sometimes set up near hawk or eagle nests to help facilitate wildlife research and conservation as well as to educate the public. The more connection we have with nature, the more we understand the importance of protecting the environment and the more responsibility we tend to take to care for the Earth. Connection with nature might look like hiking through the woods, getting to know the squirrels in your backyard or witnessing the nesting cycle of bluebirds at a cemetery in Pennsylvania, but it all leads to the same place—an appreciation of the beauty and wonder of the natural world and an urge to see it thrive.

You can follow Historic Easton Cemetery on Instagram.

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Nature

Someone invented the 'Pokémon Go' of bird feeders. It sold out in minutes.

A bird feeder that takes pictures of each hungry critter that stops by has taken the tech world by storm.

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash
brown bird on brown wooden bird house

A little more than five years ago, the world freaked out overnight with the release of “Pokémon Go,” the augmented reality app game where people can find and collect pocket monsters in the real world. It seemed like everywhere people went they’d see folks staring at their phones trying to chase down a Charmander.

The Pokémon Go app’s popularity soon fizzled out but the idea lives on in Bird Buddy, a new app-enabled bird feeder.

Bird Buddy is all the rage at this year’s CES, formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show, because it takes fantastic pictures of real wildlife and it’s a fun, educational game to play as well.

CES runs through January 8 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Bird Buddy is a feeder you put outside your home that has an app-enabled camera attached, like a Ring doorbell. The motion detector inside the app turns on when birds fly up to get a snack from the feeder and then it takes photos and videos.

The app notifies you when you have a new arrival at the feeder. But should you miss one, the app will send a postcard with a photo of your new visitor. The basic model can be charged via a USB-C cable, but you can also upgrade it to run on solar power so you don’t have to charge it as often.

The app is enabled with AI technology that the company says can detect up to 1,000 types of birds. The technology was developed by Bird Buddy after it collected around 3 million photos. Two million of these were processed by an ornithologist who led a team of interns to train its bird identification AI.

“We try to kind of gamify the collection so it’s a really fun game that you can play — almost like a real-life Pokémon Go with real animals and wildlife in your backyard,” Kyle Buzzard, the company’s co-founder and chief hardware officer, said according to Associated Press.

The cool thing is that, unlike Pokémon Go where you collect digital creatures in real-world settings, Bird Buddy is a game where you collect and learn about real wildlife.

The company started off as a Kickstarter project in 2020 and has since sold out its entire inventory of 100,000 feeders. The basic feeder kit starts at $199.

At this year's CES, Bird Buddy debuted its new hummingbird feeder, which can take photos and videos of more than 350 hummingbird species with wing speeds of up to 60 mph. The feeder is expected to go on sale in late 2023.

Bird Buddy is a fun way to get people into bird watching who might never have otherwise. As its technology develops, it may become a great tool for conservationists to track different species because it's constantly tracking bird movement.

“We get timestamps, and we know the species and we know — generally — the location based on the town that you put in,” Buzzard said according to TechCrunch. “We’re building the largest database of bird visits.”


This article originally appeared on 1.5.23

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Pets

He rescued a baby parrot with birth defects. His reaction to its first steps is priceless.

This is what pure joy looks like.

Photo by Mariano Mollo on Unsplash
white and yellow bird and white and yellow bird

Saving the life of one small animal among the billions upon billions of living things on Earth may not seem significant in the big picture, but when that one small animal's life is in your hands, it means the world.

Yassin Elmahgoub is a medical student from Egypt who shared the journey of a tiny baby parrot he rescued. The parrot, who he named Mumble, was born with birth defects and wasn't able to stand or walk. With the help of a parrot behavior consultant, Elmahgoub hand-fed Mumble, nursed him to good health and helped him develop mobility.

In a TikTok video that's been viewed more than 8 million times, Elmahgoub shared Mumble's journey from his earliest days until he was finally able to walk on his own.

"I bottle fed him and started his treatment," Elmahgoub wrote. "It took days and hours of support and physiotherapy but our team could do it."

Do it they did. But even better than seeing Mumble take his first steps is seeing Elmahgoub's reaction to it. Watch:

@yassinelmahgoub

This is the best thing that happened to me in a while. All it takes is one person to save a life. @Sara Haytham couldn’t do it without u #fyp #hope #rescue #bird #positivity #medicine #medicalstudent #arabs #egypt #cairo #viral

The persistence and gentle patience of nursing Mumble paid off, and Elmahgoub's celebration is joy personified. People are absolutely loving it.

"I love animals..but the pure joy on that guy's face is simply beautiful," wrote one commenter.

"This is one of the best and heartwarming things I’ve seen in a while, thank you so much for this," wrote another.

"Oh I was not prepared for those tears!" wrote another "What joy this sweet bird has brought him, SO sweet!"

Elmahgoub has shared updates on Mumble's progress since sharing the viral video. Check out this follow-up video culminating with Mumble at Day 60 in all of his beautiful blue glory.

@yassinelmahgoub

Growth takes time. For those asking about how mumble is doing now here you go. #fyp #foryou #positive #positivity #rescue #bird #rescuebird #medicine #medicalstudent #medical #arabs #egypt #cairo #viral

Mumble has not only learned to stand and walk, but he has learned to fly as well. Just amazing.

@yassinelmahgoub

And it was all yellow #fyp #foryou #postive #postivity #postiveenergy #rescue #rescuebird #medicine #medicalstudent #medical #arabs #egypt #cairo #viral

Congrats to Mumble and kudos to Yassin Elmahgoub for caring so much and sharing this happy journey to mobility with us. Imagine what a beautiful world we could create if we all took such good care of living things, including one another.

You can follow Elmahgoub and Mumble's ongoing story on TikTok and Instagram.


This article originally appeared on 6.23.22

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