Migrating birds

Raptor petting thoughts

[Spoilers for Jurassic World and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom]

I didn't actually think of this when I came up with the headcanon for a particular JP/W raptor behavior that I've used in some of my fanworks - pressing the topside of one's head to the underside of another raptor's jaw to feel safe and taken care of (or the other way around to give reassurance of that) - but I guess it's not entirely without basis in canon.

The Jurassic World pack were raised by humans, and I think they consider Owen and Barry their parents, but obviously a lot of instinctual parent-child interactions are more difficult between a parent and child of different species. This is something wildlife conservationists who raise orphaned wild birds have to take into careful consideration, when they're dealing with an imprinting chick that they need to be able to eventually release into the wild, and thus raise as much like a parent bird of the chick's own species would as possible.

And it's amazing. Picture by International Crane Foundation.

But of course the JW raptors were intended to be always kept under human control, so them adapting to interacting with humans was not something to discourage. The humans can't make the noises raptors make to bond with their family, but the raptors understand tones of human speech well enough to pick up on what's meant as calming and soothing and when they're being given directions.

Any physical gestures of affection are difficult to provide once the raptors are big enough they can be dangerous to interact with, but we see Barry petting them and talking to them when they're in their muzzles, and Blue and Delta do seem to welcome it from him - from Hoskins not so much. As it happens, among these calming touches is Barry having his hand on the raptor's head.

Misty

Autodefenestration observation

[Spoilers for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom]

In references to the fight between Blue and the Indoraptor in Fallen Kingdom, I've seen the Indoraptor falling out of a window getting attributed to Blue causing it, and I've referred to it as her throwing him out the window, myself. But after a closer look, that's not actually what happens: it's very quick and unclear, so it's hard to see especially if you're watching at a theater and can't pause, but turns out he jumps out instead. He just lands in the clumsiest way possible and rolls down the rest of the roof hitting every corner along the way, so not exactly according to plan, but that's what you get when you don't look before you leap.

Beauty and grace, about to fall on his face

But that does make more sense. Blue is trying to keep the Indoraptor in the room, or at least from going after Owen and Maisie, so tossing him in their direction is pretty counterproductive.

I'd figured maybe things got bad enough for her that she had to, and that he hit the window was more of an accident. The only way she could have "thrown" a creature bigger than herself anywhere is by kicking, after all, the same way the Indoraptor sends her flying across the room at one point by kicking her off him, when she gets him vulnerable on his back for a moment. But if this is what happened instead, that makes more sense for the Indoraptor's behavior, too.

The redder end of the leaf spectrum

Making eyes

At the boys, or for the boys. Either way, they both have pupils again.

The orange raptor is the character Elusive, since he has green eyes, and I was going to paint over the figure's chipped and badly placed eyes anyway. Might be that the figure I'll repaint to be Finder, who has yellow eyes but otherwise the same colouring, will need to have its eyes fixed, too, but then I'll just paint more eyes, nbd.

I gave Elusive's eyes a couple of coats of green to cover the old eyes, a bit lighter and warmer at the center, and touched up with orange where the old eye paint had bled to the lower eyelid.

 Grappleclaws' eyes are a bit more complicated, and I did end up painting over them completely instead of preserving the old pupils, since that seemed it would come out neater. He's got a coat of red, another of bright pink at the center, touch-ups to mix the two more gradually, and a stripe of very light yellow at the center. I used cool reds and yellows for the eyes to contrast his colouring otherwise being very warm, and deliberately went a bit over the eyelids to enlargen the eyes a little, since the jumping raptors have kind of small eyes. It's probably because the sculpt seems to be designed for the JP3 raptors, which do have smaller eyes compared to other JP/W raptors. To help the eyes stand out even more, there's also a ring around them of the same black I use for their stripes (mixed with brown, like the white I used on Elusive's underbelly is, too, to have them not be too stark).

Hopefully I'll get to working on some of the girls, too, soon. The Fujimi raptor might become one of them, but speaking of eyes, it actually has really big eyes compared to these figures, so I'll see if I can do something about changing that, or maybe I'll just learn to live with them.

Also, I think I may have fixed the Sinornithosaurus figure's leg? After having it sit on the mold for a week continuously I took it off it, and it's been a day and it hasn't warped back. So that's nice!

Some ruska