Giant Canada geese, so ubiquitous today in cities across the country, were once considered extinct. What can we learn from watching them up close?

In the opening minutes of Karsten Wall’s short film, Modern Goose, a flock of geese arrives in a cacophony of honks, barks, cackles and splashes, as it touches down in a human-made pond behind an outlet mall. The ruckus blends with the hum of traffic as they waddle under the neon glow of billboards and parking lot lights, picking at patches of grass and dodging vehicles in the drive-thru lane.

It’s a scene that would feel familiar in most Canadian cities, where geese have become ubiquitous to daily life. As it happens, these geese are Winnipeggers, descendants of a historically significant flock once thought to have disappeared altogether.

“A lot of people in the cities consider them pests, but then a lot of people go to Fort Whyte to watch the migration,” he says. “It was important to me to just let people sit and appreciate their amazing flying abilities, their migration abilities and how well they’re actually doing.”

There are other aspects of goose life that are relatable to humans. They mate for life (with just a 15 per cent separation rate, according to a Canadian field naturalist study titled “Divorce in Canada Geese”), raise their young together and migrate as a family. When female geese mature and find mates, they return to the place they were hatched to build nests of their own.

With today’s geese so abundant, it’s difficult to imagine a world without them.

But at the turn of the 20th century, unregulated hunting, egg collection and habitat erosion had nearly wiped out North America’s goose population and the giant Canada goose was thought to have disappeared altogether.

Full article

linky to skynews

So they never actually meant to hit those targets?

Amaize said another reason corporations may appear to be retreating on their climate targets is a phenomenon she calls "green-hushing." That is, as a result of anti-greenwashing legislation such as amendments to Canada's Competition Act under Bill C-59, some companies might be reluctant to tout their environmental measures for fear of being sued for false claims.

A prominent example is the Pathways Alliance, a consortium of Canada's six biggest oilsands companies, which removed almost all content from its website and social media feeds in June in response to C-59.

The OWA's budget has steadily increased in recent years in anticipation of the Sequoia assets, which has resulted in higher levies charged to industry.

And taxpayers have increasingly covered some of the cost to clean up aging wells, including the federal government's $1.7-billion commitment in 2020, which also aimed to provide stimulus for the oilfield service sector when oil prices crashed after the pandemic began.

lmao great gameplan

be charged "levee" to clean up all the shit I ruin as part of my business model

pay token amounts and don't actually do anything

wait for inevitable crisis to roll around once a decade so taxpayers give me $1.7 billion as "stimulus" so I don't have to actually pay for cleanup myself

Other oil industry shenanigans:

The case has its origins in the reorganization of Perpetual Energy in 2016. That Calgary-based company transferred many of its money-losing properties to an associated company. Then Sequoia, which was founded by a pair of Chinese investors that same year, acquired those assets in a deal for $1. Sequoia would go bankrupt in 2018.

PWC sought $217 million in damages from Perpetual. In 2021, while the bankruptcy battle was ongoing, Perpetual stored the majority of its assets into a new company called Rubellite Energy, which would have the same employees and office space as Perpetual.

"The Rubellite transactions and the proposed arrangement represent a radical solution to Perpetual's overwhelming financial problems: the establishment of Rubellite as a successor entity, free of Perpetual's obligations, to its creditors and other stakeholders," submitted PWC in a court filing. "Perpetual's shareholders receive clean shares in a 'pure' successor entity with 'no debt.'"

Perpetual chief executive Sue Riddell Rose described the move differently, calling it a way for "Perpetual shareholders to benefit through Rubellite to unlock the value of these high-quality assets while at the same time providing a full capital solution, reducing Perpetual's leverage and improving its liquidity to surface value from Perpetual's remaining asset base."

The creation of Rubellite was allowed, leaving Perpetual with a much lower value.

lmfao

Source: https://flipping.rocks/@loren/112831248847518661

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5823913

The saker falcon (Falco cherrug) is a large falcon species. The saker falcon is a small, powerful bird of prey with a broad wingspan for its size. It has sharp, curved talons for grasping prey, while their strong, hooked beak is used to tear its preys' flesh. Saker falcons tend to have variable plumage. Males and females are similar, except in size, as are young birds, although these tend to be darker and more heavily streaked.

Like most other falcons, the Saker Falcon doesn't build its own nest. Instead, it may choose to nest in the old nests of other raptors and ravens in trees, on bare ledges, on top of abandoned buildings, bridges, in potholes of rocky cliffs, on the bare ground, on electricity pylons or power poles. It breeds from Central Europe eastwards across the Palearctic to Manchuria.

It can be found in a variety of habitats including forested steppe, steppe, semi-deserts, open grasslands, and other dry country habitat with scattered trees, cliffs, or electricity pylons, particularly near water. It is a partial migrant, which means that some part of the population is migratory, some part is not. In Europe, for example, a part of the juveniles are migrating, while adults are mostly resident. The European and West Asian migratory sakers spend the winter in the Sahel region. On migration, they cross the Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula, and Pakistan. The migratory birds to the east from the Altai Mountains spend the winter in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

The Saker diet varies depending on prey availability, although they predominantly feed on small to medium-sized diurnal rodents and lagomorphs such as sousliks, voles and pikas. Birds also feature in the diet of Saker Falcons, especially small to medium-sized species such as pigeons, starlings and larks. Saker falcons are active during the day and spend most of their time hunting. They often hunt by horizontal pursuit and usually close to the ground. They are very patient hunters soaring in the air or sitting on the perch for hours watching for prey; when the prey is spotted they suddenly dive for the kill.

The call of this bird is a sharp kiy-ee or a repeated kyak-kyak-kyak. Here is a link so that you can listen to this bird too.

Source: https://ecoevo.social/@nemo/113222736941970553

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3556495

By turning off your lights all day every day for a month, you conserved about 1 percent of the energy needed for AI to generate a picture of a duck wearing sunglasses. Isn’t he cute? Aside from the fact that he has the feet of a human man, of course.

While biologists usually describe octopuses as solitary, the cephalopods have shown in numerous ways that they pay close attention to the creatures around them, said Alexandra Schnell, a comparative psychologist affiliated with the University of Cambridge and a peer reviewer of the new paper.

These comments made me laugh.

Dr. Sampaio compared the octopus’s role in these groups to that of a chief executive, while the fish act more like a company’s research and development team.

“You can be a leader by pushing forward and expanding boundaries and taking the group to new places,” he said. “Or you can be the leader in terms of being the decider.” The octopus lets other animals study the marketplace and then chooses the company’s direction.

[...]

However, Dr. Papadopoulou said, “I personally don’t like the use of the word ‘leadership’ when we talk about animals.” The word might make us imagine a boss making thoughtful decisions for everyone else, she said, but the movements of an animal group can emerge because everyone is following simple rules.

Dr. Papadopoulou said the octopus was more like an online influencer than a corporate executive.