animal questions are my favourite!! and i do have a few favourite birds - maybe favourite families are hornbills, raptors, gannets and cormorants! to be more specific, i really really love great hornbills, but they're all so wonderful and i have a big soft spot for the little guys too (shoutout von der decken's hornbill). i love them because they're really prehistoric looking, and have big personalities (i've known a few at zoos by name and got taken behind the scenes to feed and scratch the beak of a young wreathed hornbill once and it was one of the best days of my life). and they're mostly omnivores!! so you get to watch them toss fruit into their own mouths (but some also eat lizards and small mammals haha).

as for raptors, i have a big love for red-tailed hawks because i see them so much and they're always special, and ospreys because i love to watch birds of all kinds around the water and i think it's so cool how they hunt. i also got to see steller's sea eagles for the first time a couple years ago and was SO happy because i'd always wanted to, they're so huge!!

gannets and cormorants are my favourite sea birds because their adaptations to survive at sea are so fascinating to me. i grew up on the coast and saw them both all the time, and i never get tired of watching gannets fold themselves up like a dart to plunge into the water. the way so many seabirds look totally at home "flying" underwater is one of the coolest things ever. and the sight of cormorants with their wings out drying off makes me feel at home somehow? back in the uk at my first nature job i worked with two cormorant brothers and i adored them <333