this plushie shark can fit so many critters in it

i'm sorry nidhogg is having a bad time! i'll share two wikipedia lists i like, in case y'all also like to browse fun lists and read things from them

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_individual_birds

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_by_common_name

mango, shag, and chat: all kinds of birds

some fun owl facts!
-their feathers are ridged in a way to make them silent when they fly
-their ear holes are asymmetrical; one points a bit up and the other down, making it easier for them to locate prey vertically
-their eyes are SO big that they have very tiny brains! the "wise owl" idea is just a myth

We are fashionably late to this lol but here are some Bird Facts: -birds are the closest living relatives to dinosaurs. They are dinosaurs, actually. Their next closest living relatives are the crocodilians. So this means birds are closer to dinosaurs than any random lizard is to the dinosaurs. -oil birds live in caves and they use echolocation! -the night parrot of Australia is pretty much a cryptid. They hadn't been seen for 50+ years and thought extinct but now there's some pictures of them and many look like what you'd see on Hunting Bigfoot. -apparently it's really common for penguins to be gay? One of the first expeditions to Antartica saw a lot of gay penguins and they were horrified so they left that out of their reports lol. -there's a lot of lesbian albatrosses, too. For the longest time, scientists noticed that some nests had two eggs, what's up with that? But when they finally DNA tested the parents, they found out they were both girls. -birding is like pokemon; you want to see everything in your region (some people want to see all of them in the world!). But how many birds, or even which birds, are "native" to any given region is a hot debate. Even which things are different species. Different groups put out different lists and different scientists have different opinions on what's a species and what's a subspecies. -pretty much every pigeon (rock dove, the grey ones) you see is actually a feral pigeon. They're originally from...somewhere in Europe? Or the Middle East? But they were brought everywhere as messengers and food, and some escaped (or were bad at finding their way home), so now we have pigeons everywhere. That's why you'll sometimes see white ones or ones with curly feathers or feathered feet, they're related to one of the "fancy" breeds. -also pigeons are really smart. They can read (a little bit) and can identify patterns really well! They're really cool but a lot of people think they're stupid and dirty :(

You should go to your local bookstore that has a used book section, you'll probably find a birding book for your area for pretty cheap. Sometimes they'll even have books for other countries! Those have lots of facts and really good pictures of their different patterns and behaviors.