Birds in Video Games: Overwatch

Reader Meredith Nickerson passed along a tidbit recently about an avian character in the popular online multiplayer shooting game, Overwatch. It's a cute little tiny bird named Ganymede.

I don't play this game and so pardon me if I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but Ganymede follows around a giant robot character named Bastion, that actually does fights in the game. The backstory is that Bastion had shut down in a German forest and had overgrown with moss and stuff until Ganymede came along and woke him up. Now they're buds.  Wanna see a video of that? Here you go. 

Importantly, according to Meredith, Ganymede can take a number of forms, including some real life actual (sorta) birds.  Ganymede starts off as this little guy (gal?):

That is ... uh ... not a real bird. Some bastardized canary? I don't even know. Too bad.

The good news, however, it that Ganymede's got some other looks. You can change Bastion's skin in the game, and when you do Ganymede changes along with it. Check it out, as assembled by the folks at Overwatch Writing:

Pretty good! Check out that cardinal on top! ACCURATE BILL COLOR! The Rock Dove is spot on, and the Blue Jay ain't half bad either. The woodpecker could use a bit of work (if it is supposed to be a Pileated ... I couldn't find anything closer) but it's close. The White Dove is stupid but forgivable. 

Anyway, if I played this game I'd probably get my ass kicked because I'd just be watching Ganymede fly around instead of killing anyone. The end. Thanks, Meredith, for the tip. 

Birds At Large IV: Brian Regan

I've been a fan of Brian Regan's stand-up since that first special of his was on TV a bunch of years ago (the one with the jokes about looking like an idiot when you walk into a spider web because no one else sees it but you...). Here's a bit from his most recent special where he talks about the fake bird noises pumped into golf telecasts. He busts us birders pretty good, but gets a Birds at Large tag for involving the Blue-Breasted Whipper-Willow.

Birds at Large: Jeep Liberty Commercial

New feature here: Birds at Large. It could also be called Media Birds or Commercial Bird Errors or I Can't Believe It's Not A Real Bird or People Are Stupid and Lazy. BaL is essentially this: as a live my life and interact with the world around me I notice that birds are often misrepresented or presented incorrectly to non-birding public. I want to point out those errors and mock those involved. Cool? Let's get started with this wicked stupid Jeep Liberty commercial:




Around the 30 second mark a pair of birds fly into the Jeep and start singing along with the idiot driver. Notice anything weird about those birds? I do. What do I notice? They aren't a real species of birds. Not in North America, anyway. The commercial was created by hotshot American shop Cutwater, themselves a branch of the terrifyingly-named advertising juggernaut Omnicom. I say this because I presume that the commercial was shot in America and designed for and American audience, thus ruling out the possibility that this freak-bird is a species elsewhere.

So what is it? The crest-feathers are reminiscent of a quail or something, but the body is clearly different. The long, thin body and the small, flat, sharp beak reminds me of something in the lark family. India's Malabar lark (pictured) or a gray, mutant version of the good ol' Horned Lark.
But it ain't neither of those birds. It doesn't exist. So many annoying questions arise: Why wouldn't the people behind the commercial just use a bird that actually exists? Why go to all the trouble of inventing a new bird when you can use any of the perfectly good ones we've already got? There are no answers to these questions except "laziness." It's a dumb commercial, and it's a dumb mistake.