- Dude what's up?
- Aw, she pooped all over my jacket. - [Man] That means
she likes you. - Tiny. (toucan chirping) There you go. Oh, he's eating the spoon. I would say that the only
thing this bird is missing is a tail and if it had one, it really would be a dinosaur. (suspenseful music) (animal roars) (exciting music) Animals are perfectly
adapted to thrive in their environments. Aquatic creatures
are usually designed with streamlined bodies and have enhanced
electromagnetic receptors that help them
navigate effectively through their watery ecosystems. Land-dwelling creatures on
the other hand often rely on their appendages
for navigation. Some have four legs,
some have 100 legs, and others don't
have any legs at all. Today we're going to focus
on a class of animals that transcend almost
all other species when it comes to both
navigation and locomotion: birds. It's no secret that birds have
been notoriously difficult to feature on the channel because unlike most
animals we get up close with the cameras, they are
nearly impossible to catch. And while we do occasionally
see them from a distance, most of the avian species
we have encountered were birds living or
being rehabilitated at wildlife sanctuaries. The Coyote Pack has been
asking for more bird episodes so we thought, maybe it
was time to count down our top five feathered friends. Coming in at number five, these birds might
not be the biggest. What they lack in size, they definitely make
up for with speed. (orchestral music) So excited, I absolutely
love hummingbirds. All right let's head into
the aviary, gotta move quick, we gotta go through a set
of double doors, in you go. Go go go, get that door closed
and into the aviary we go. Shawnee, hi, how are you? Nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you too. - Okay so let's talk
about wing speed. There's one incredible trait
that the hummingbird has, it's the fact that its
wings can go so fast. Now how many strokes
can that hummingbird do this a minute? - Almost 4800.
- Wow, 4800 strokes in a minute, can
you imagine that? I'm sure if I sat
here and did this-- - I don't think you'd get it.
- It would take me half a day and I'm not gonna
lift off the ground and these hummingbirds,
I'm watching them. Look at this, they're just
flying back and forth, hovering and they can move
forward, backwards, up and down. That's crazy.
- That's great, yeah. - Now your heart rate
must be going pretty quick if you're flying that fast,
how fast are their heart rates? - Over 1200 beats per minute. - This is one impressive little
animal, that is for sure. All of that power packed
into, these guys are tiny, they're like that.
- Yeah. About three grams so that's
about the weight of a penny. - [Coyote] Wow so you're telling
me that a bird this size, I mean he is tiny, but he only
weighs as much as a penny. - Yeah.
- That is impressive. Shawnee, what I love so
much about this aviary is that it feels like we're
out there in the wild. Now you do have the
enclosure over top but you barely notice it, and you can get so incredibly
close to these hummingbirds. - I know, it's a
terrific experience. - [Coyote] Oh geez! Look at how close this
one is right here! - [Shawnee] Absolutely! - Look at that! Look at how comfortable he
is getting that close to us. Wow. The Arizona Sonora
Desert Museum is one of my favorite places to visit
and their hummingbird aviary is guaranteed to
get you up-close with these speedy little birds. Up next is another
teeny tiny species, only instead of
feasting on nectar, this one is a
veracious predator. Coming in at number four on our feathered
favorites countdown, get ready to meet the scops owl. (orchestral music) Are you ready to meet
the smallest owl ever? Get ready to meet Tiny,
the African scops owl. So cute, this one's
like pocket size. I wish I could fit her
right into my jacket but she likes hiding behind it but I don't think she'd
actually wanna go in a pocket. Look at the claws. Those talons are razor sharp. I was just trying to
look at your talons. Razor sharp talons,
you notice I'm trying to talk very quietly
next to the owl. Don't wanna scare it,
don't wanna stress it out. They have incredible
hearing so any shouting next to the owl is gonna
not be good for it. All owls are lightweight,
they're mostly feathers and as we know, they
have hollow bones but this owl right here
weighs about 100 grams. That's it, that's one
tiny little bird of prey. Look at how big those eyes are. Yes, very cute. You see just blinking at me and as we know, all
species are nocturnal and they have incredibly
efficient vision in the dark. So Tiny is a female, now when
they lay a clutch of eggs, it's somewhere between
two and four eggs and the mother and the
father both take care of the babies, oftentimes the
mother will stay in the nest when the father
goes out and hunts, bringing that food back
to the nest for the mother and once the chicks hatch, they then also reap the
benefits of that prey. I got an idea, you know what
I've got right over here? - Cookies?
- Meal worms. No not cookies, these are considered
cookies for an owl though. We've got these
little tiny meal worms and let's see, this is me
feeding a teeny tiny owl. Oh there you go, that's good. Delicious, right? - [Man] Dude, what's up? - Aw, she pooped
all over my jacket. - [Man] That means
she likes you. - Tiny. Oh it smells like rotten eggs. South Africa's adventures
were sure filled with poop. From dung beetles to poop
tracking and then of course, the incident with Tiny. But even with her
bites and poos, this scops owl was a
ton of fun to work with. Flying into our number
three slot is a bird that was much more
squawky but no less messy. If you enjoyed watching
trying to feed tiny, you're going to love our
next star, the baby toucan. (orchestral music) This is the real Froot
Loops right here. This is fresh-cut fruit
and what I'm about to do is feed it
to a baby toucan. It smells really good,
this looks like something that I would eat for
breakfast so I have a feeling that this toucan is
absolutely gonna love it. Okay, oh boy here he comes. Whoa, look at that. That is a baby toucan. I have never seen
one of these before. That is so amazing. You look like a little dinosaur. Look at that curious head. Look what I've got. Now if I was a mama toucan, I would come in with some
fruit just like this. There you go. Oh, he's eating the spoon. Look at that beak,
quite the chomper. Here you go, coming
in, coming in hot. There we go. And although it's a juvenile, that beak could still give
me a pretty good chomp so I wanna keep my
fingers away from there, that's why I'm using a spoon. Here you go. Look at those eye, look at how
big and buggy his eyes are. And without the feathers
fully developed on the neck, you can see the curve
of that vertebrae. Look at the feet. You see that? You know what it looks like, it reminds me of a
baby pterodactyl. A baby toucan this size
obviously up in the trees, it's very important
that he uses these claws to keep himself in the nest
and on the tree branches. Now this baby toucan
eats four times a day, and quite a bit of food.
(toucan squawking) Oh I know, I hear you. Want more, more, he says. You are one sloppy
eater, you know that? - [Man] He is a sloppy eater. - I think you're getting
more of this fruit on the log than you are in your mouth. We featured a plethora
of cute animals at the Alturas
Wildlife Sanctuary but nothing was more adorable
than that noisy little toucan. The next bird encounter
is actually the only one on the list that took
place in the wild. And boy was it a challenge to track down these
majestic creatures. Soaring in at number
two, it's the bald eagle. (orchestral music) So just up here to my
left, we've got two eagles right on the shoreline. Filming eagles is not easy,
they can be very skittish. We wanna move in as slow
as you possibly can, stay stealthy, set up
the 600 millimeter lens and try to get this shot. (soft music) We've been on the
river for hours looking for this one opportunity to
actually film these eagles. I think this is
it, I'm so excited. So right now we're trying to
sneak in close on the eagles. Mark's got the 600 millimeter,
we're trying to stay at a straight line so that
the animals only think it's one human
sneaking up on 'em. Careful this is sink mud. - [Mark] Running speed. - Wow, that's cool. Now, the two eagles
that we're looking at, that is pretty much
the king and queen of what's considered the
eagle council grounds. And in the winter, there
will be over 1,000 eagles right here where these
two rivers converge. The water doesn't
actually freeze, so it's like an
eagle buffet line of eating all these salmon that are still
swimming upstream. Okay so right now,
we're gonna slowly try to move in and get
an even better shot. (soft music) - Okay, so we're
changing up the strategy just a touch here.
- Yup. - Mark's gonna be up front,
operating the 600 millimeter from the front of the raft. We've got an eagle
up here in the trees. We're gonna try to do a
drift-by and get an epic shot. You ready for this? All right, load it up.
- All right, get in. - We've got a mature
eagle up in the tree, so we're gonna try to just
drift by and get a shot. And maybe it'll fly just as
we're passing underneath it. It's the closest we've been
to a bird all day long. Mark's perched up on this log and he's getting the shot. (soft music) - Got it.
- Yeah. - One day we hope
to return to Alaska, with the goal of getting
an even closer look at these iconic birds
and maybe even hands-on with one at an eagle sanctuary. Well, we started small and
seemed to be working up in size. Next on our list is the
largest bird we have ever had the chance to work with. It also happens to be the
world's most dangerous bird and a true avian dinosaur. (orchestral music) Look at how ancient-looking
that face is and the coloration in the
skin, the crest of the head. Wow, the crest is a lot bigger
than I imagined it to be and that's hollow, right? - [Bearded Man] It is hollow. - [Coyote] But it's still,
it's real fibrous, right? - Very fibrous.
- Ram me in the face with it so I definitely
have to be careful. - It's very similar
in density to a beak. - Okay, so she's running
through the environment, she can kinda just
keep her head down and break through
all the underbrush. - Definitely and what they do
is they stretch their neck out real long which will
extend a few feet in front of their body
as they're running. That'll help push the
branches away from her, the rest of her
body as she runs. And I'm not sure
if you notice this but if you look
around the side here, you're gonna see these wings.
- Yes. Little tiny wings.
- Yeah. And they have
really stiff quills. - Wow, look at that.
- Yeah. - Almost looks like
a porcupine's quill. Look at the size of
this bird's legs. Look at all the scales. This bird weighs
about 130 pounds. That is a massive animal, this
is the second largest species of bird in the world,
second only to the ostrich. And they're incredibly fast.
- They are extremely fast. They can run around
30 miles per hour through jungle underbrush.
- Wow. I would say that the only
thing this bird is missing is a tail and if it had one, it really would be a dinosaur. Hi, here you go. Look at this skin. You wouldn't expect a bird to have bright blue
skin like that. It's so beautiful and here's
something you might not know, that the entire
bird's body is blue. If I just fold back those
feathers a tiny bit, look at that. Blue all the way through. Their feathers are
incredibly coarse. These ones on the outside here
almost feel like horse hairs and then underneath, she's
really soft and downy. When you look at the
feet of this bird, look at those scales
and look at the claws. It looks just like the
foot of a velociraptor, and that claw on the inside
edge of the foot, razor sharp. Now if this bird
was out in the wild and actually a couple inches
longer and sickle shaped, just like a raptor. And these birds are
capable of jumping almost six feet in the air. And I can't even imagine
how terrifying it would be to be out there in the jungle, have one of these cut through
the underbrush, run at you, leap, and you take one of
those claws to the face. And when you look down
the length of that beak and into those eyes, you transcend back 65
million years into the past, and you feel as if you were
looking straight at a dinosaur. Wow, that is
intimidating right here. Everyone knows how
much I love dinosaurs, and my interaction with a
cassowary was about as close as I'll ever come to
staring down the snout of a pre-historic creature. Birds are one of the most
unique species on our planet, and we do plan to feature more
of them in the near future. Do you have a favorite species that you would
like us to feature? If so, put your top
five bird encounters in the comment section below
and we will see how many of them we can
capture on camera. If you thought getting up close with a cassowary
seemed intimidating, make sure you go back
and watch the episode where I challenged
this avian dinosaur to an apple eating
contest, and don't forget, subscribe and click
the notification bell so you can join me and the crew
on our next wild adventure. (animals bellowing)
