I did my studying on you, and found your passion for birds. Beautiful birds.
And Australian ducks...
cmsellers wrote:Australia is home to a number of literal odd ducks.
Australians may know some of these, but none of these are birds I was familiar with until this year. Most of them I learned about in the past week through a Wikipedia link vortex after looking up the extinct North American Labrador duck for reasons I cannot remember now. The Labrador duck I did know about, because it's an iconic extinction in America, but what I did not know is that: A. it was the first bird to go extinct in the Americas after the arrival of Europeans and B. its bill is like baleen, designed to filter out small marine invertebrates.Spoiler: show
But any rate, Australia and it's odd ducks. To start with, you've got the freckled duck, which is the only member of its subfamily.Spoiler: show
And you've got the maned or Australian wood duck, which taxonomists just can't figure out what to do with.Spoiler: show
You've got the musk duck, which Darren Naish talks about here. He describes them as "stinky seal ducks." They're some of the most aquatic ducks as well as the ducks that are most submerged when the swim, and the males are up to four times the size of females. And the males look rather weird.Spoiler: show
The pink-eared duck represents one of two independent anatid evolutions of baleen-like filters in duck bills (the other being the Labrador duck as I mentioned earlier). They're also the only duck species to have caretonoid pigments from shellfish in their feathers like flamingos, hence the pink "ear."Spoiler: show
Both the musk duck and pink-eared duck are one of only two species in their genera. In both cases the other species is from New Zealand, and extinct.
And speaking of New Zealand: the blue duck is an adorable little endangered perching duck with no close relatives.Spoiler: show
Upon seeing your fascination with birds I considered how could I best express my feelings for you. And that gave me an idea. So on that note my dear old friend I am going to get a fire-arm license for rifles [got all the paperwork done already]. And because of you I'm going to find out all the birds I can legally shoot with it, and mark my words I will get one. And then I will cook it and feed it to both me and my dogs. And its death will be solely because of the fact you like birds.
AND IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT! AND I WILL NEVER UP-VOTE YOU!!!
Happy hate week buddies!