Bespoke Valentine's Day Bird .gifs

On this Valentine's Day, our gift to you, loyal readers, is the perfect way to tell your partner(s) or other loved ones that you care, with these handcrafted .gifs. If there's something that communicates the message of the holiday better than a moving image of a bird on the internet, I certainly don't know what it is, and my wife doesn't either! Just kidding, I got her a real gift. But you can choose to just send one of these, if you want to. I mean, there's certainly no law against it. Without further ado, our Valentine's E-Cards. Don't forget to name-drop my website when you send them, in order to kill the mood entirely.

A sly way to tell someone that you're interested in them, maybe as more than a friend. Consider this bird .gif the modern equivalent of putting one of those mini scooby doo valentines in your crush's lunchbox.

Perfect for the stay-at-home dad or mom. It's a full time job! Also applicable to young college dudes who would never change their bedsheets or do the dishes if it wasn't for their partner.

Assure your partner that there may be plenty of fish in the sea, but that you've found the one you're looking for with this bird .gif. Good if you've had a complicated past.

Great for the couple who is looking to take things to the next level. Imagine this image as a segue into saying those three magic words for the first time (the words are "I love birds")

For your girlfriend who is super awesome, and just hasn't found the right guy yet. Sometimes we all need a pep-talk when we're out there in the dating wastelands. Say it with this bird .gif, which perfectly simulates the online dating experience specifically, and really all dating in general. (If you need this for a male friend, send me an e-mail and I'll make one that say's 'dude, don't settle'. We're all about service here at amateurnithologist)

Life of Birds.gif part 5: Life is Cute

Last time we checked out the first half of the .gifs I had made for Life of Birds, episode 3, the one about eating and pooping. Relive that experience here if you dare. And if you're late to the party, Life of Birds is an early example of the great Attenborough narrated BBC nature doc, pre Life and pre Planet Earth. It focuses on birds, and therefor we focus on it.

So what else did the episode have in it? Well it had bird eating in non-disgusting ways. Like take a look at this one. Hummingbird's are always neat for a .gif. Although I'm still pretty sure it's a bug or something, and therefor not eligible for this blog on a technicality.

This might be my favorite eating trick. Looks so satisfying, like tossing a piece of popcorn into your mouth. Toucan's always showing off.

Not sure if this falls into the cute or gross category. I think the bird being the supercute Quetzel pushes it over the line, but what do you think? He is regurgitating the undigested part of his fruit, by the way.

We also have Mr. Attenborough being overwhelmed by parrots. It's a heck of a job if you can get it.

Finally, the episode featured a number of symiotic relationships between birds and other animals. Or as you otherwise might call it Unusual Animal Friends

A good fact I know about the capybara, pictured here, is that it loves to splash and play.

Yeah, like so. I hope these help you win the next .gif contest you are challenged to.

Clean that Giraffe. Finally I leave you with a .gif of a cute baby bird falling asleep.

More Life of Birds .gifs here, if you're into it. Good night blog fans, try to click quietly so you don't wake him up.

Life of Birds.gif part 4: Life is Gross

Welcome back to the series exploring, through the art of .gif, the BBC's cracker-jack bird doc from '98, The Life of Birds. Here's a link to the other parts. Today we're going to look at the series low for me, honestly. This episode purports to be about birds eating.

 

So far, so good. But aside from fruit, a lot of the things birds eat are gross. Look, here's a crow poking a maggot in the face with a stick.

Not so glamorous now, is it. It doesn't help that I try to watch these with Mrs. Amateurnithologist, and that she has a thing about bugs. There are a lot of bugs in this episode. These remain ungif'd

We've also got parrots eating a bunch of clay. Like the crow using a simple tool to catch his food this is interesting. The parrots are doing this, by the way, to line their stomachs and protect them from the otherwise poisonous fruit they're eating. It's just not a great visual image.

But frankly it doesn't have to be a gross food to be kinda gross. Sometimes the episode just gets too close for comfort.

Nope, not into it. Gross weird tongue.

And I'm pretty sure no one needed to see this. The other significant problem with this episode for me is that it included a lot of images of things riddled with little holes. That's just something that bothers me for some reason. Between that and the bugs, well, this episode was nearly unwatchable.

Oh, and also this. Yeah, I understand, it's a natural part of eating and digesting. But this episode really had a lot of closeups of birds pooping. Like, more than I think anyone would expect. There is some really great stuff here, and we'll cover that next time, but I had to wade through a pretty prickly cactus patch for you guys on this one.

As always, check out The Youtubes to watch The Life of Birds online yourself, for free!

The Life of Birds.gif Part 3: The Spookening

Mwa ha ha! Happy Halloween! To me, the amateurnithologist, there's nothing spookier or more appropriate for the season than birds. Why? Well, basically because birds fit every mood or season for me. You could say I'm CRAZY for birds! Now, like the mad (amateur) scientist I am, I will subject you to the most creeptastic spooktacular bird .gifs I could gather from BBC Nature's 1998 bird doc, The Life of Birds.

Boo! This haunted hawk is a perfect example of bird getting into the spirit of the season! What's that? Not enough bird skeleton to scare you? How about this-

Now that's what I'm talking about! What's going on in this moving image? I'd tell you, but isn't it more frightening not to know?

Know what else is scary? Dinosaur birds! Also, drowning. This imagine deviously combines your two greatest fears!

And what is the only thing prehistoric birds fear? Gigantic ancient eagles! No, it's not silly looking at all, it's super scary. Believe me, if you were there you'd be scared.

Enormous flocks of birds have been scary since, at least, The Birds. Imagine if these guys all decided they wanted to peck you to death or something. You must be positively quaking in your boots by now, so I won't go into any further detail. This is a family blog.

You know who's not afraid of giant masses of birds? Sir Attenborough! He's the hero of this grisly tale. Would you make it out alive? Well, that's it for spooky .gifs for this year. I decided to relent and let you off easy, lest all my readers be scared to death and my blog becomes a ghost town. I mean, more than it already is.

In the mood for more .gifs? They may not be spooky, but they are spookily high quality and interesting! Parts 1 and 2 available here! I hope you've enjoyed our scary bird showcase this last month. May all your trick-or-treaters have bird related costumes! See you next fall! Eeh hee hee hee hee!

The Life of Birds.gif part 2: The Second One

Last week Richard Attenborough died. You might know him best as the professor in Jurassic Park or Santa in Miracle on 34th street, but I knew him mostly by his relationship to Sir David Attenborough, his brother. When news of his death reached me through social media, as these things generally do, I thought for a moment that it was actually Sir David who died, and was really distraught. I even posted an embarrassingly incorrect twitter status about it. To make matters worse, this is not the first time I have confused the two men, or actually believed them to be the same person. Anyway, turns out David Attenborough is not dead, and what better time to continue to celebrate his life? Today I bring you a second batch of .gifs from his 1998 nature doc, The Life of Birds. Part 1 here for your perusal.

Today we're going to focus on some of the more impressive feats of flying highlighted in the series. We start with our friend the majestic albatross. How could you not take that guy seriously?

Albatrosses are enormous birds, boasting a wingspan of over 11 feet. Yeah, that's right, the biggest wingspan in the bird world. They have this incredible wingspan because they spend so much time in the air. They travel over a thousand kilometers a day. This is a bird that regularly circles the globe. They really are in a league of their own when it comes to flying.

Taking off and landing though? That get's a little tricky when you're essentially built to always stay in the air. Have a little sympathy for the albatross.

Here's a bird that has no trouble taking off on the fly. The broad tail and smaller wings of this hawk let him hover on an air current indefinitely while watching carefully for prey.

This barn owl shares his extreme maneuverability with the hawk, because like him he needs to dart through forests to hunt down small mammals. He also has to do it at night, and silently. His unusually shaped face acts partially as a radar dish to help him hone in on the locations of little sounds.

Osprey is an old favorite on Amateurnotholigist, what with his rich mythological background. He is another hunting bird, but he favors fish, which he reportedly hypnotizes. Once he gets the fish, however, things become a little bit difficult. In order to cut down on drag, the osprey positions the fish parallel to him for the flight home. But doesn't it actually just look like he's riding  it?

Notorious for being not actually a bird, but actually a bug or maybe a robot or something, the hummingbird is truly a remarkable feat of human or natural (or alien??) engineering. These guys can flap their wings up to 200 times per second to maintain their exact position in the air. Call it the opposite of the albatross, who barely flaps at all, but travels hundreds of miles in a day.

Are you a hummingbird or an albatross type? Take our free quiz to find out! And keep checking back for part 3, which I should be posting around Halloween (cause things are gonna get spooky!)

The Life of Birds.gif: Part 1

The Life of Birds is an 8 episode BBC nature documentary series that ran in 1998. It is one of the predecessors to smash nature docs like Planet Earth and Life and for bird people it's a must watch. In fact, if you're reading this and you haven't watched The Life of Birds I highly recommend you stop reading and do it now. It appears to be on youtube, but you could also just, you know, buy it.

Like the other documentary series mentioned above, it is narrated by naturalist and great man David Attentborough. Unlike those, Sir Attenborough wrote and 'starred' in it. You see, The Life of Birds belongs to a somewhat different era of documentary film making- one where the naturalist is front and center.

Watching this show you really get a great sense of the man- his endless wonder at nature, his enthusiasm for science, and his kindness towards the animals are all evident. David Attenborough is not only the pioneer of the modern nature documentary, he's the bridge between the old way of doing things and the new. He might be a giant in the field, but here he's also very much a human. An adorable human.

Even without the presence of D. AttenB, the Life of Birds series would be a delight. To convince you, my viewing audience, I've made some .gifs just from the first few episodes. It really is a remarkable series, especially if you're used to the more slickly produced recent BBC nature offerings. You can see the beginnings of an incredible machine. These shows are notable not only for the high investment of time and effort into getting the best shots, but for their pioneering of new technology, both computer and camera.

 

For a series nearly 20 years old now, sometimes that ends up looking a little silly, but always in an utterly charming way, interspersed with some still top-notch footage and info about birds. Today's .gifs obviously focused on the man himself, but next time we'll take a look at some of the more impressive specimens on display. Tune in next week for more birds.gif and assorted other amateurnithology.