In honor of vulture awareness day, let me ask you a question.
Do you love vultures?
You should.
Here’s why:
1, They are simultaneously the most majestic, and the most f*cking derpy of birbs. Observe -
2. THEY’RE SO FUCKING BADASS. We all know that they eat dead things. Eww, right? Wrong. They’re capable of digesting fucking rabies, cholera, hundreds of strains of bacteria that would straight up kill your ass given the chance. They deserve ALL of the respect, but they don’t get any, because ‘eww they eat dead things’.
3. THEY ARE FUCKING AMAZING AT WHAT THEY DO - Some of the highest flying birds ever recorded, with amazing eyesight and smell. Vultures are highly specialised - yes, that means they sometimes have bald heads. So what? People are all over sphinx cats and those semi-hairless dogs.
4. If you think they’re ugly, well, look at these precious babs and tell me you still don’t feel anything:
I have more reasons, but, look, I’ll just get straight to the point:
THEY’RE GOING EXTINCT, AND MORE PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW.
Populations of some vultures have fallen more than 90% in the last 20 years, and that’s scary as fuck. Reasons for this range from livestock carcasses being contaminated with certain drugs, to poachers killing them off because vultures give them away. But whatever the reasons, they’re dying off fast, and we need to act before it’s too late. We need to help protect them and conserve them as much if not more than some of the ‘cuter’ endangered creatures.
So what can you do? Here are some useful links if you want to learn more:
Please consider helping our seldom appreciated vulture buddies, either by donating, or even just by helping to change their bad reputation!!
They really are amazing birds ~ thank you for sticking with my long-ass post
:P
IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN, PALS!!!!
in the last year, I’ve visited several bird of prey specialist centres, many of which are now actively championing the plight of our vulture friends - trying hard to endear them to the public and supporting/ participating in overseas causes that help in various ways. One of these places was the Hawk Conservancy Trust which, if you’re in the UK, I HIGHLY recommend - both for the quality of the centre and the displays they run, and for the extensive conservation work they do at home and overseas!
Anyway, enough talk. It’s time to appreciate this sleepy boy.
But you forgot my most favorite of all!! The Bearded Vulture (Lammergeier or Ossifrage)!!!
for the love of god please listen to old users when we say this site works differently. that you can’t just sit around with a blank blog. make posts or reblog, but do something at least. this site works because we don’t have an unavoidable garbage algorithm forcefeeding us posts based on our likes. we do not need another fucking twitter, tiktok or instagram.
liking a post is literally useless here. we don’t have an algorithm. we see posts when people reblog them onto our dashes, they show up in a tag we’re following/searching, or they end up chucked into our recommended page (very inaccurate, basically just popular posts that may be vaguely related to your interests sometimes). liking doesn’t do anything. it’s just a button that’s there to show, hey, i saw this post. or you’re saving it for later
this is (partially) why art blogs are dying. if you don’t actually reblog the art posts you enjoy, they won’t reach anyone and just…stay there with a few likes.
I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.
Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.
The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.
I just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.
