Dumb Stupid Birds

Ruff | Three Males, One Frozen Gene | Dumb Stupid Birds #49

The ruff comes in three permanent kinds of male: one fights, one freeloads, and one disguises itself as a female to slip past both. Which one a ruff becomes is fixed before hatching, locked in a chunk of chromosome that flipped backwards around four million years ago. Inherit two copies and the embryo dies. It has balanced fighters, freeloaders and impostors at fixed odds since before our own kind existed.

Standard-winged Nightjar | Two Feathers, Three Birds | Dumb Stupid Birds #48

During breeding season, male standard-winged nightjars grow a single feather on each wing into a two-foot bare shaft with a flag on the end. In flight, the flags trail behind so precisely that one bird looks like three birds flying in formation. After about six weeks, the feathers shed, break off, or get bitten off by the bird itself. Then it goes back to looking like a dead leaf for ten months.

Egyptian Vulture | Threw Rocks Before You Did | Dumb Stupid Birds #47

The Egyptian vulture is two feet tall, weighs about four pounds, and breaks open ostrich eggs by picking up rocks and throwing them. It also eats the dung of cows, sheep, and goats to absorb carotenoids that turn its face bright yellow, because a yellower face is more attractive to other Egyptian vultures. Endangered. Invented percussive tool use without supervision. The ancient Egyptians called it the Pharaoh's chicken and painted it onto tomb walls.

Common Murre | Throws Its Kids Off Cliffs | Dumb Stupid Birds #46

The common murre lays a single pear-shaped egg directly on bare rock, packs twenty birds per square meter, and at three weeks old encourages its flightless chick to step off a six-hundred-foot cliff. Survival rate above ninety percent. Then both go to sea for two months, alone, in the dark, until the chick can finally fly. They have been doing this for several million years.

Burrowing Owl | The Owl That Farms Beetles | Dumb Stupid Birds #45

The burrowing owl is nine inches tall, lives underground, hunts in broad daylight, and uses cow dung to bait dung beetles into a hole. When threatened, the chicks impersonate a western diamondback rattlesnake well enough to fool real ground squirrels. Fifteen million years of evolution went into a nine-inch farmer with a borrowed basement and a fake snake voice.