Wet springs hamper battle to save capercaillie from fate of the dodo
The dodo became, as we know, extinct. There is no risk of this for the capercaillie. what could happen is that there are no capercaillies in Scotland. As has happened before and then they were reintroduced. Because, you know, there are other populations out there.
But will European capercaillies have the right Scottish attitude?
Quite Julia. If that’s its attitude to a large predator, one can see why it might be going extinct. Do they eat well?
So that’s what FECK OFF YA WEE GOBSHITE sounds like in bird language.
Marvellous! Someone has worked out a correlation between Owen Jones wetting his bed and bird populations.
I thought that the threat to the delightful bird was deer fencing. Maybe bat-choppers too?
BiS,
To be fair that level of pointless agression is fairly typical for a breeding male in a species that doesn’t pair off but effectively gives the alpha male most of the mates. It doesn’t matter if the cocks get killed off in large numbers if a few survive to breed, so the cocks haven’t really evolved to evade threats, but rather to take them head on (allowing the hens to hide).
Always thought the risk to the capercaille population was either bad folk music or the disturbance of their leks (breeding areas) as they have a very limited breeding window. Wikipedia agrees with me about that for what it is worth…
Delightful bird, good luck to it
@dearieme: they don’t tend to fly high enough for bird choppers to be a worry, but deer fencing is a big threat.
Wonderful. L now can’t stop thinking of two deers facing off with swords.
“Someone has worked out a correlation between Owen Jones wetting his bed and bird populations.”
You made me smile, porcelain bovine.
JuliaM
Thank you for that video! x
It’s amazing what a morning on the Buckie will do, even to the wildlife.
But you can easily see him being played by Robert Carlyle in the Hollywood remake.
Didn’t the Dodo go extinct because of humans shooting it? Fuck all to do with climate.
Perhaps it was smoking. Smoking fags killed the Dodo. LET THAT BE A WARNING.
@Rob
“Didn’t the Dodo go extinct because of humans
shootingeating it?”FTFY
Yes. Also, they had no predators so no fear. Then humans arrived.
I like eating pigeon but a whole bird is a mere morsel: you can understand sailors’ enthusiasm for flightless chicken sized dodos. What does a capercaillie taste like?