If you’re not busy flinging feathered folk at pig castles, you might check out these new Angry Birds tie-in books (from rovio.com, of course). How best to describe Angry Birds: Bad Piggies’ Egg Recipes? Here, we’ll let them do it: “Be a pig for a day, no worries in the world, no Angry Birds trying to knock you down. The kitchen is your pigpen and life’s good! So go ‘head, crack an egg or two and fling your awesome self to new levels of egg-cellence with these easy and fuss-free (for the most part) recipes, addictively fun activities and impressive party moves. From the classics to off the wall, these top-secret egg recipes will fill your tummy and tickle your brain!” You heard ‘em. Also available are the Angry Birds Big Red Doodle Book and Angry Birds Big Green Doodle Book, filled with fun drawing activities for Angry Birds fans of all ages.

image c. 2012 Rovio Entertainment

When people think of the most intelligent animals other than humans, the first contenders are the dolphins and great apes. A less-obvious one may be birds of the family Corvidae, containing both crows and ravens. This was suggested when researchers at Oxford found crows are able to make specific tools, a feat never before seen in other animals.

More recently, ravens have been shown to direct other individuals' attention through gestural communication; the first time this has been seen outside of the primates. In primates, such gestures are rarely seen in the wild. Why wild ravens show this behaviour more commonly is unknown, but it is thought by some to be the foundation of language.

In a followup to the recent report on escaped and released Himalayan rose-ringed parakeets in London, BBC News reports that a new study shows that the parakeets stake out backyard bird feeders and intimidate traditional native British songbirds away from them.

The wild parakeet population in Southern England is growing at an estimated 23% per year. This has led to new demands that the parakeets be culled as an invasive pest.

The Peregrine Falcon is known as the fastest bird on Earth when diving upon prey, but a new study shows that a small European shorebird, the Great Snipe, holds the record for the longest distance in the shortest time when migrating between northwestern Sweden and central Africa. [Wired.com]

During its annual migration, a single snipe may fly for 96 consecutive hours, covering more than 4,000 miles. That’s four days without stopping or sleeping, sometimes at average speeds of 50 miles per hour.

The New York Times reports that the population of tropical rose-ringed parakeets in Britain, up from 1,500 ten years ago from escaped or deliberately released pets, has grown to an estimated 30,000 today, "turning a once-exotic bird into a notorious pest that awakens children, monopolizes garden bird feeders, and might even threaten British crops."

The problem is acute in the suburbs of London, with one retiree reporting consumption of the contents of an entire bird feeder in one day.

Disney is to release Studio Ghibli's Tales from Earthsea (ゲド戦記) in just over a fortnight. [Joe Strike/a.f.f]

The movie reached #1 at the Japanese box office in 2006, but received mixed reviews. It was nominated for Animation of the Year, but ultimately won the tongue-in-cheek Bunshun Raspberry Award after failing to meet Ghibli fans' expectations.

The plot is ostensibly based on the Earthsea novels, including sections of A Wizard of Earthsea, The Farthest Shore and Tehanu. Author Ursula K. Le Guin called Tales "a good movie" but "not my book", and was critical of its PG-13 violence.

The Mayor of London has called for a focus on pest control after a reported fox attack in the London borough of Hackney left twin nine-month girls hospitalized.

According to urban wildlife expert John Bryant, such attacks are extremely rare, and a recent poll by the University of Bristol found 65.7% households in favour of urban foxes, which number around 33,000 in the UK (as compared to 225,000 adult rurual foxes).

No such luck for the Alaotra Grebe, recently reported extinct by conservation experts. The birds – which made their homes on Lake Alaotra in Madagascar – are believed to be victims of a combination of poaching, the introduction of carnivorous fish and other invasive species, and the use of monofilament nylon gill-nets for fishing.

MIT researchers have discovered that baby birds have something in common with baby humans: they first "babble" to learn to speak. In this case, the "speech" of a bird is the adult bird's song. The parallel between bird and human may lend insights into the mysteries of human language-learning.

The full story is available at Discovery News.

An African Grey is numeralogically smarter than most birds--and some people. He understands a variant on the abstract concept of "none", something very difficult to teach animals.

The teaching techniques used with the parrot may prove useful for instructing learning disabled children. The full story is available here from Science Daily.

Trickster

As children, most of us were taught that we should never handle baby birds. The mother would detect human scent on the nestling and abandon or kill the clutch.

Not true! In fact, most birds can't even smell a human, and there are times when handling a nestling is absolutely the right thing to do.

Snopes has the lowdown.

BBC Online reports that two nearly intact, 30 million year-old hummingbird fossils have been found in southern Germany. The fossils are "strikingly similar" to modern hummingbirds. Hummingbirds have been extinct in the Old World since prehistoric times.

"Her Imperial Highness Princess Takamado of Japan was today appointed BirdLife’s Honorary President, succeeding Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan in the role.

"The announcement was made during the final day of BirdLife’s world conference, which took place this week in Durban, South Africa, and brought together representatives from more than 100 BirdLife Partner organisations from around the world. "

Bird Life International is a conservation organization based in England that works to save globally threatened bird species.

Among the newly revealed images are fantastic images of half human/half animal creatures, a rare rendering of a wombat and numerous birds, lizards and marsupials. The find also includes stenciled images of arms and boomerangs. Full article is here.

BBC Online reports that plans to restore the great bustard to the environs of Salisbury plain are progressing well. The great bustard is the world's largest flying bird. It once flourished in Wiltshire, and many other parts of the world, but now wild populations survive only in Russia and Ibera.

Built in the Aspromonte mountains of southern Italy at over 4000 feet, the "Jurassic Park" zoo may not have been the ideal home for toucans, ostriches, and zebras.

In fact, it proved that it wasn't. As the fall season came on the temperature dropped signifigantly, bringing snow and dangerous living conditions to the park's tropical species.

Half of the zoo's fifty animals perished over the winter.