I have landed (and nommed)

October 24, 2011 • 11:00 am

Via Grrlscientists’s site at the Guardian comes this short video of a finch (species unknown by me) landing on a bird feeder.  It’s in slow motion, and shows what aerodynamic skills are required for just a simple landing.

And here’s a video, taken by the same person, of a killer whale great white shark catching what looks to be a penguin:

The video was taken by vurtrunner, whose YouTube channel is here. Check out the videos of a bullet fired through gelatin and a bullet penetrating four balloons.

The videographer’s own site, which is in German, is here, and last August I posted what I think is his/her best video, that of a Eurasian eagle owl, talons fully extended, also coming in for a landing.

37 thoughts on “I have landed (and nommed)”

    1. I think you’re right since it lacks the white eye patches of an orca. But I didn’t think great whites were black on the dorsal side–more grayish, I thought.

        1. In that video you posted the narrator states (paraphrasing): The great white shark is at the top of the food chain and is an important part thereof and yet we slaughter almost 100 million of them a year. Can that be true?! Good gravy!

          1. Okay…google is my friend. One site said that in 2006, approximately 73 million sharks were killed. So I misunderstood the narrator, but even then 73 million sharks killed a year is horrific.

          3. Especially considering how many of those deaths are the result of accidentally catching them with drift nets or hunting them because people still believe in the “Jaws” style man-eating monster shark.

            Or for shark fin soup.

        1. I’ve seen the great white footage in more than one documentary. The guy tows fake seals behind a boat to get the footage.

          You can see the line in this clip:

      4. That’s also very much not an orca’s mouth. The dividing line between black and white is the orca’s jawline. More rounded snout, too.

        1. Likewise, the fins are distinctly the triangular fins of a great white, not the more rounded fins (which are wider in the middle than at the base) of an orca.

          Also, at about 14 seconds the nostrils become visible and at 16 seconds the tail comes out of the water.

  3. Great filming and website.
    BTW the bird is a (Eurasian) Greenfinch.
    A common but declining bird due to a virus.

  5. I think the 2nd video was of a great white shark. I remember watching the documentary. They were dragging a rubber seal along on the back of a speed boat and filming how the great whites attack. That’s why the seal has wake lines.

  6. The dénouement (from 2:17) to this 2:35 National Geographic video Killer Whale vs. Sea Lions surprised me. If the narration & visuals are to be believed, why does the killer whale return a sea lion to the beach & release it?
    ** Terrible narration
    ** Clip is edited
    ** I know it’s often SOP in pop nature filming to insert stock sounds & images & reorder events to better tell a story

    1. If you’re looking for an adaptive explanation, I doubt there is one.

      These are big-brained mammals, which means lots of intelligence, and plenty of emotions. For whatever reason, that orca wanted to put the toy back on the shelf.

      1. I don’t trust the edits ~ we’re shown the whale inshore with the sea lion, but not how the two characters arrived there. Over the relevant period we see three clips over 10 seconds & the edits don’t make sense whale + pup in the surf together & then just the pup after the ‘join’ ~ could be a different pup on a different day afterwards. Looks bogus.

        Maybe the behaviour has been observed before & this less-than-slick editing is to illustrate how it’s been seen to happen off camera.

  7. Looks like an American Goldfinch to me. I get tons of them on my feeders – they eat thistle seeds.

  8. OMG SHELLED sunflower seed? You’d have to hock your fillings to afford that stuff!!

    I make my finches and other visitors shell their own. L

    1. No, it’s not sunflower seed, though I feed that also. Nyger seed, (commonly called thistle, though it’s not really), is the seed of the African yellow daisy, Guizotia abyssinica, a tiny black seed that goldfinches love.

    3. My mistake – you’re talking about the picture, I thought you meant my reference to thistle seed.

    1. Yeah, the biting strength of the Komodo dragon is surprisingly weak for a predator of its size, but it’s actually very good at holding onto struggling prey, according to research I did last year for a report on them.

      Of course, between their teeth and a venom so virulent that it only needs a 3% delivery vs maximum venom load (compared to the 20% or higher commonly found in snakes) it wouldn’t really need strong jaws.

      1. Yeah. The actual article says (which is a PLOS article that can be freely downloaded) that they use their body weight and strength to tear flesh rather than their bite strength.

        I don’t really know anything about the toxicity of their venom. But, the “Life” documentary series implied that it was many bites over days that bring buffaloes down. I took that to mean that their venom wasn’t particularly nasty.

      2. Isn’t the venom more of an anticoagulant – the target is weakened by blood loss & open wound infection?

        2. The articles I found said that there were a number of different proteins in Komodo dragon venom that had various effects, but the three main ones were: one that acted as an anticoagulant; one that caused blood vessels to dilate, which lowered blood pressure and caused shock to occur more rapidly; and one that caused muscle cramping, which presumably inhibits the ability of prey animals to struggle.

          Brian Fry, who’s credited with discovering Komodo dragon venom, contends that prey animals on average die too quickly for it to be secondary infection, though I have absolutely no way to verify the accuracy of that statement.

  11. This seems like a good place to post my totally unscientific observation.

    I once had two bird feeders: a hummingbird feeder without a perch and a regular seed feeder with a perch. I observed large greedy sparrows at the seed feeder chasing away a smaller sparrow who attempted to feed there. To my amazement, the smaller sparrow went to the (unoccupied) hummingbird feeder and attempted to hover and feed there like a hummer! He was not successful, but like they say of the dancing horse: it is not how well he dances, but the fact that he dances at all! He hovered quite well for a sparrow! It made me think that small individuals closed out from a food source would seek another source more suited to their talents (small size not good for fighting over existing food source, but allows hovering and access to another non-competitive food source)and thus we get divergent species and evolution.

    That’s my arm-chair analysis of evolution!

  12. As an aerospace engineer and a private pilot, I’d just like to say that there’s no such thing as ‘just’ or ‘simple’ landings. As the saying goes, flying is the second greatest thrill known to man. Landing is the first.

    I could watch that video over and over again. The bastard wing sticking out is very noticeable. I’d love to see some type of visualization of the airflow over the wing during that landing.

      1. Well I never heard of either a bastard wing or an alula but now I know, I googled it. I feel better for that.

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