The Bird In HD
This is a video of a bird sitting atop my car in the Buenos Aires suburb of Martinez. Oddly, the bird didn’t seem to want to move. Birds typically fly away at even the slightest movement. Did it want to be left alone? Was it injured? There’s reason to believe it needed to poop. Perhaps it was constipated and couldn’t move until it had done its damage? Or did it poop only after becoming so nervous that it lost control of its bowels? Whatever the case, it was cool to see a bird sit still for so long. Do any of you readers out there know enough about birds to say what was going on here?
The following videos are of exactly the same footage. But the first one uses YouTube’s old quality settings while the second uses YouTube’s new HD settings. Let me know if you can see the difference:
I shot this video in HD (720P) with my new Flip HD video camera. You can see it in HD in a much larger, widescreen version by clicking on the video box. Doing so will take you to YouTube, and there, at the bottom right-hand corner of the video, you can click on “Watch in HD.” Then, voila, you’ll see the video in 720P at a bigger size.
YouTube has been silently upgrading its service to display HD videos, but it’s still not perfectly clear how to best embed HD videos into blogs like this one.
Let me know if you can view this video alright. I have a whole new series of “Scooping Argentina” videos in HD that I’ll upload as soon as I find a good way of doing so. For now, I’m experimenting with different formats, trying to figure out which is the best, most user-friendly way of displaying video. Any feedback would be appreciated.
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I think you scared the crap outta him!
Did you see the little AFIP logo on his right leg? Yeah, one of their new remote controlled cameras for undeclared assets like cars, pools and fancy cell phones.
From my vantage point here in snow-bound, Northern Hemisphere Seattle, that is a juvenile, smart-ass bird. It still has the baby bird downy tufts around its’ head and still has the undeveloped beak of a young bird, but is old enough to have learned to fly. It is comparable to a snotty teenager who taunted you, dared you to get close, then as a prank, gave you the “bird” and ran away. In reality, it’s just a young and dumb bird who has yet to develop a healthy fear of humans.
The HD was great!
I love HD! Pretty good video too, given the situation. Looks like a baby thrush, I am sure you have seen oddes of them in Martinez. The birds are very tame in this area (thanks God!) and you’ll find them ungraciously moving over a half inch or so to let you walk by.
Thanks
Pete
Hey guys,
Many thanks for the feedback. It was a strange though very cool thing to see up close. It looks like the audio didn’t sync well through YouTube. But now that I know I can share HD videos so easily like this, I’ll be adding them more frequently.
Thanks again and best wishes to you all,
Taos
Hi. It’s clearly a baby bird, and it seems to be healthy. Adult birds fly away quickly, but baby birds don’t. It’s just learning to fly, and that’s an exhausting process. Flying takes a lot of practice!
Probably the parents were watching the baby from a nearby tree. They might even have come down to feed it, if it had seemed safe to do so.
Birds poop just whenever they need to poop, it’s usually not a conscious act (and not related to being afraid). Except that adult birds don’t poop in the nest — they wait and poop an enormous amount when they get off the nest periodically (more than you wanted to know about bird poop, but hey! you brought the subject up!).
My guess is that it’s a zorzal colorado (the bird you see in the parks here, looks kind of like a robin).
The difference between the HD video and the other is “clear as s**t” Which, noticeably, is the thing I was able to see in the second one and have not noticed in the first one.
Flip mode! Taos, how’s it going buddy?? I think the bird was imitating CFK in the G20 picture. And by the way, I wasn’t sure whether I was going to see a middle finger in HD based on the headline
a second by the way, are you on twitter these days?? you should tweet away, and rss your posts to your feed.
…too many bird references in this post.
Much love!
O