Re: I listen to ppl talk about their passions. no one cares about mine(birds & forens
Of all of the applied sciences, I would have thought Forensics to be one of the most interesting!
Not exactly the same as your field of expertise, but when looking into the history of this property, I work on unravelling tiny scraps of knowledge(and old structures, posts etc) to piece together the early days.
From this, we have turned a number of ideas about life here in the 1870's,1880's and 1890's, upside down.
Also, I have always been interested in what motivates people to act the way they do. Especially; when people change their attitude towards a particular topic. What motivates that change.
Perhaps forensic psychology[??]?
Piecing together tiny scraps of information, and applying known rules to how they occurred, to build the complete story is (in my opinion) REALLY interesting.
A Birdy AND [Somewhat] forensics story for you:
We have a 40+ band of Apostlebirds [Struthidea cinerea] living here at our homestead. They seem to be in charge of our local security[we weren't consulted on this...], and are quick to respond to any daylight incursions by large goannas, snakes and cats. Many a bitey snake has fallen to the Shovel of Destiny(tm), and many a feral cat has found their lives cut short, after the security detail located them, and 'encouraged' me to get my fat backside along to resolve the situation. I find it ironic that all the screeching goes quiet when I am actually engaged in battle with the snake, and I would swear I hear a little voice placing $5 on the bet that I will be the losing side this time around...
Due to their EXTREMELY gregarious and sometimes bizarre behaviour, they are a surprisingly entertaining bird to have around. Their 'larger than life' attitudes make up for the drab grey plumage. Picture an angry finch, give him a dark grey paint-job, upscale by about 10, and you pretty much have an Apostlebird.
We call them "Harry and the Lads". They love screeching, chortling, scamming food from the chicken feeder, more screeching at things, fighting things, fighting each other, playing with rope, more chortling, and scaring the crap out of each other.
Now, I am sure there are at least 50% of them are female, but it's nigh impossible to tell them apart, and so we just call them all Harry. Given I have seen some of them chat up male Crested pigeons, I'm not exactly sure if they know themselves...
Some 8 years ago, we started having some of the Harry's become listless and over the space of a day or so, would fall out of their tree, and die. We only noticed after finding a couple of the expired Harry's around the garden. This started some alarm bells ringing, as we wondered if the Harry's had gained access to a chemical in one of the many sheds, and were poisoning themselves. A search of all of the sheds known to have any sort of potentially dangerous chemical, found no such trace, but the Harry's continued to lose the occasional clan member.
After we reached 6 dead Harry's, and still no obvious causes to the poisoning, we contacted the local Dept of Primary Industries. They advised us to nab a couple of obviously ill Harry's , and they would euthanize them, and perform an autopsy.
My overseer Dan braved the wrath of the rest of the Harry clan, and placed 2 of the unwell in a box. Much indignant screeching, and Dan also sported a few strafing runs to the scalp by the time he had them boxed up.
NO-ONE MESSES WITH THE HARRY CLAN!!
So, the deed was done, the birds autopsied, and we had a rather bemused phonecall from the DPI vet.
DEFINATELY no poisoning occurring in the Harry clan.
Turns out we were also enjoying a Carab beetle plague at the time.
Carab beetles are bright iridescent green, are about an inch long, and carry enough chemical weapons to make your average terrorist rather jealous..
They are insectivores, and attracted to lights at night, which makes summer evenings rather interesting...The rest of us try to avoid these beetles when they plague, but not the Harry clan. They don't mind the Harry version of a good strong Curry!!
It seems that Harry and the clan were enjoying eating Carab Beetles by the dozen. The hard carapaces were locking together in the Harry stomach, and they were dying of indigestion!
Thankfully, the Carab beetles finished the plague, the Harry clan got busy in their 6 permanent nests around the homestead yard, and we were back to a full complement of the HarryCo security team inside 2 months....
As I type this, I can hear an extended discussion by the Harry clan; something about the world in general, how it seems a tad warm today, How Harry down the end there seems a bit odd and might need a good kicking, and whether it's time to raid the chicken feeder for the 2:15pm snack...
There are bound to be more stories about Harry and the Lads in the future..
I seem to have digressed from the topic somewhat...
I don't find birds and/or forensics to be dull or uninteresting. There seems to be a number of people here whom also feel the same way. I'd expect that if you want to share your stories with the people here, they will be very interested.
Cheers,
Rod.