Bird of the Week: What Is the JD Vance of Birds?
Sorry to these birds.
We’ve done “What is the Donald Trump of birds.” We’ve done “What is the Joe Biden of birds.” And now it is time for “What is the JD Vance of birds” here on Bird of the Week.
It does seem so rude to a bird to compare it to Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, but we have a job to do here. In case you needed reminding, this is what JD Vance looks like.
He looks unhappy! But does he look like a bird?? To help with this question, I turned once more to our Chief Bird Analyst, New York-area bird expert and photographer Elias Markee-Ratner. As always, he had some great ideas. Let’s go!
Red-billed oxpecker
Like JD Vance, they have prominent rings around their eyes. And like JD Vance, they attach themselves to bigger and more powerful creatures for survival. “It doesn’t find food on its own but relies on its hosts to do so,” Elias says. It’s true—as this fancy article from Oxford notes, they “feed almost exclusively on what they can collect from the skin of large African mammals.” You can find them on hippos and rhinos (as in the picture above) and zebras and giraffes and lots of other things. Here is a chilling picture of a swarm of them on an impala.
Get off of that impala JD!
“Their diet includes ixodid ticks, dead skin, mucus, saliva, blood, sweat, and tears,” the aforementioned fancy Oxford article tells us. Tears is so hardcore. But wait, can we circle back to that whole “blood” thing?
Yeah, so oxpeckers LOVE blood. The more blood the better! Oxford again (emphasis mine):
[A study shows] that oxpeckers spent more than 85% of their foraging time feeding on blood, in ears, or by scissoring their bills through the animal's hair…observable tick feeding occupied less than 5% of total foraging time. Of course, this might simply be because ticks were scarce, forcing the oxpeckers to feed on wounds, but other studies, in areas with much higher tick densities, have also recorded wound feeding and found that observable tick feeding is low (e.g., Stutterheim et al., 1976). In any case, there is strong evidence that blood is the birds' favored food…I would often see birds pecking at the place where the tick was attached to the host, making no attempt to remove it but instead trying to enlarge the break in the skin.
Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiikes ok. Here is a video of oxpeckers fighting over who can get the most blood from an open buffalo wound. Sorry in advance.
A devious parasite that leeches onto a more powerful creature and sucks its blood? This is very convincing to me. If only there was an even more convincing photo.
Yep. Good choice Elias.
Couch’s Kingbird
Elias says, “There’s nothing really to say except that it has the word ‘couch’ in the name. And it eats flies.”
To preserve the sanctity of this joke, I will not be investigating further. Thank you Elias.
OK, now it’s your turn. Any more Vance-birds you can think of? Let us know!!!
A reminder: you can check out our complete Bird of the Week list here, and get in touch with your bird suggestions at hello@discourseblog.com.
I am tired of this bird slander. These birds deserve better.
See, if it were called the red-PILLED oxpecker...