Throughout the long and storied history of Dawn Chorus, there have been many great diaries about birds and bird-watching, along with many terrific photos of birds and their habitats. The subjects of these diaries have varied, with some focused on a particular bird or trait, on bird behavior and migration patterns, on breeding behavior and nesting, even colors of birds or how they see, eat, fly and hunt.
But in all the Dawn Chorus diaries over the past fifteen years or so (and I’ve written more than 75 myself) there is one subject I realized that I’ve never seen covered in all that time. That subject?
Weird and ugly birds.
That’s right, weird and/or ugly birds. You know as well as I do that some birds are just crazy weird-looking and some are just plain ugly. Behold the common Turkey Vulture above. That bald red head with tiny tufts of fuzz and that odd-looking hooked beak does not an attractive fellow make (to humans anyway).
But the reason for that bald head is one shared by all vultures. Since they eat carrion, vultures have bald heads and necks to prevent their feathers from being soiled when they tuck into a meal, usually a newly discovered carcass.
So, there’s a reason that vultures are ugly. But I don’t think the other ugly birds you’ll see elsewhere in this diary have any excuses. (A poll at the end asks you to choose your favorite for the weirdest and/or ugliest bird from among the several shown in this diary).
How about this guy?
Or this one?
Both of these birds are Helmeted Hornbills even though they look somewhat different. The name seems apt. Their bills do take the shape and extend into a helmet-like form and the close-up on the first bird shows that the bill seems made up of horn. Look at how it extends to the throat of the bird as well. Must be hard to be a hornbill AND be ugly. (Not to other hornbills, though.)
Moving along, let’s take a look at the Nightjars, also sometimes called Goatsuckers. They have an almost supernatural reputation with their silent flight and their mythical ability to steal milk from goats. From my research:
“Their nocturnal habits made them mysterious, and their bizarre appearance required an explanation, and as early as the 300s BC Aristotle wrote about the trouble these birds could cause with goats. Four hundred years later not much had changed, and in 77 AD Pliny passed along the prevailing wisdom.”
That’s an awfully long time for a myth to hang around.
Look at how tiny that beak is. But that teensy tiny beak belies the size of its gape when it opens its mouth.
Safe to say, the Nightjar isn’t likely to win any beauty contests any time soon.
Next, we have this oddball species whose head in proportion to its body is something else. I’ve actually seen one of these in person; it’s one of many odd birds resident at the Los Angeles Arboretum. This specimen is known as the Helmeted Guineafowl.
Now there’s a face that won’t win any awards. But lest you think its face is the only thing that renders it less than desirable, consider this:
“Guineafowl travel behind herd animals and beneath monkey troops where they forage within manure and on items that have fallen to the understory from the canopy. Guineafowl play a pivotal role in the control of ticks, flies, locusts, scorpions and other invertebrates. They pluck maggots from carcasses and manure.”
Yecch!
Here’s another guineafowl for your consideration: the Vulturine Guineafowl.
I don’t know what you think, but this one is both uglier and prettier at the same time than the Helmeted Guineafowl. The face and that red eye are downright creepy, but the blue, black and white feathers are quite festive. Reminds me of pom poms. I rename this the Pom Pom Vulturine Guineafowl.
Next up?
I present you the Common Potoo.
It doesn’t look real, but it is. Here’s another photo of it posing as and on a wooden fence post.
The Common Potoo is a large nocturnal bird of lowland forests and forest edges. During the day, Common Potoos usually roost on snags, exposed branches or fenceposts, where their disruptive coloration helps them avoid detection. They forage at night by sallying from exposed perches to catch flying insects. The Common Potoo is one weird-looking bird.
Our next bird is hard to top for plain old ugliness. Meet the Marabou Stork.
What is there to say? It’s ugly. Period. And it’s not just me. Behold this YouTube video called “Marabou: The World’s Ugliest Stork.”
Moving on, here is a truly weird-looking bird, the Hoatzin. According to Wikipedia, the Hoatzin, also known as the reptile-bird, skunk bird, Stinkbird, or Canje Pheasant, is a species of tropical bird found in swamps, riparian forests, and mangroves of the Amazon and the Orinoco basins in South America. It is notable for having chicks that have claws on two of their wing digits.
You probably noted that one alternate name mentioned above was “Stink Bird.” I couldn’t let that go by without asking the question, “Why?” According to Wikipedia:
“The Hoatzin is known as the Stink Bird of the rainforest. The bird has a special digestive system to process the huge quantity of foliage it needs to provide enough energy. This digestive process leaves a very disagreeable manure-like odor that gives them the nickname of Stink Bird. The odor serves a purpose, however, as it keeps away most of the land animals who would be their predators.”
This bird is not only weird-looking, but it’s also downright weird. Here’s a fun and brief read in Audubon about the strange Hoatzin. www.audubon.org/…
Moving on, are you ready for the Shoebill Stork?
So here we go with another bird that looks too clownish to exist. I personally love this goofy looking, almost prehistoric-like bird. Here are a few facts about these gentle giants, which stand over 4-feet tall and have an 8-foot wingspan.
They’re eerily prehistoric — and despite their amiable expression, are even known to hunt young crocodiles and giant monitor lizards as a snack. They remain motionless for long periods each day, simply just being patient for prey to come along.
For the most part, shoebills are silent, only making noise when they clap their bills together rapidly to greet another bird or call out to their young.
They’re also pretty friendly — if you’re not prey.
Have you ever seen a bird with a goofier look than the Shoebill Stork? It looks like it’s smiling! But the size of that mouth is also terrifying — if you’re a fish, a turtle or other prey. I saw one image on Google where this stork had a duck in its jaws. That’s an image I can’t unsee.
Take a look at this short video and get better acquainted with the Shoebill Stork.
But we’re not yet finished with weird and/or ugly birds. I take you now to the next star of the show in our cavalcade of ugliness, the Bone-eating Bearded Vulture. It’s going to be hard to beat this guy in the poll at the end where you get to vote on the weirdest and ugliest bird.
One would think that the spine-tingling term in the name of this bird — bone-eating — would be the most interesting characteristic of this species, but a bit of research tells a different story. Yeah, they eat bones and bone marrow in particular, but that gets set aside for the much deeper discussion of another characteristic of these birds — the fact that they decorate themselves. They are not naturally red, but they adorn themselves by using iron oxide to turn their feathers red. Why? That’s what the scientists want to know. If you’re interested, read this article entitled, “Why do Bone-eating Bearded Vultures stain their feathers red?” www.earthtouchnews.com/… Imaginitive title, that.
Back to the bone-eating aspect, about 80 percent of this bird’s diet consists of bone marrow. It’s also the largest of the vultures, so it’s known for flying in and flapping its wings to drive the other carrion eaters off so it can get to the bones. And, in the same manner as crows who drop nuts onto highways so cars will crush them to expose the nutmeats they crave, the Bone-eating Bearded Vulture flies to a certain height and drops its purloined bone onto rocks where it smashes into bite-sized pieces. It may be ugly, but it’s also smart.
Let’s move now to another lovely creature, the Tawny Frogmouth. This one is another odd bird that has evolved to assume coloring and patterning that makes it look like wood to camouflage itself. Several birds have adapted this way, but I think the Tawny Frogmouth is the weirdest of them.
If you asked yourself, “Why is it called a frogmouth?” you likely came to the correct answer.
We’re almost done, but there’s one more weird and ugly bird I want to share with you. I shared Nightjars with you toward the beginning of this diary, but there’s one I omitted that’s a slightly different species, the Collared Nightjar. It’s the Jabba the Hutt of birds. Look at this guy:
See the resemblance? Hahaha.
So my list of weird-looking and/or ugly birds is complete for this edition of Dawn Chorus, although I know there are more birds that could be added to the ones here. If you have any to add to the list, please feel free to share them in the comments.
But before you go, please let everyone here know which of the birds shared in this diary would you name as the Weirdest/Ugliest? It will be fun to share the results!