birds
retrospectacle | April 13, 2007Don't have any groundbreaking parrot research to report on today, so content your self with fun parrot news this Friday. Just take this adorable cockatoo which has spent the last two weeks trying to hatch a bunch of chocolate Easter eggs!
The cockatoo has been protecting the chocolates since she was taken outside, and saw them on a table.
Geoff Grewcock, who owns the bird at a sanctuary in Nuneaton, said Pippa had become very protective of the eggs and acted like a mum to them.
He said: "She went straight over, climbed on the creme eggs and that was it. She thinks they're her eggs."
Pippa…
retrospectacle | April 13, 2007Just came across this interesting blog, CityParrots, which catalogs and reports on feral parrot populations in cities. Quite a lot of breadth, from parrot conservation, to stories on illegal trade, to Kakapos, to wild parakeets in Connecticut! Check it out!
clock | April 10, 2007When my 'Scientific American' arrived the other day, I was excited to read the article about ravens by Bernd Heinrich, as I loved his book Mind of a Raven. I was also glad to see that new cool experiments have been done since the book came out. But I wondering how to blog about an article that is behind the subscription wall, so in the end, I abandoned the idea.
Now, Grrrlscientist comes to the rescues with an excellent summary of the article, that is well worth your time.
retrospectacle | March 23, 2007After gazing at the cute owlet all day, I was thinking, "Wouldn't it be fun to have a pet owl, like a pet parrot?" Now deep down I figured that was a horrible idea on a LOT of levels (and turns out, yeah, its a BAD idea). But I'm sure that with the huge popularity of the Harry Potter movies, quite a few people think that having a pet owl might be fun.
Think again!
Karla Kinstler, who lives with a Great Horned Owl as a "education owl" lists numerous and, frankly, quite disgusting reasons that no one should ever contemplate wanting a pet owl.
Like this:
Mating season involves a lot of all-…
clock | March 21, 2007Eavesdropping Nuthatches Appear To Understand Chickadees In Distress:
If Dr. John Watson had been chronicling the work of Christopher Templeton rather than the exploits of Sherlock Holmes, he might have entitled the latest research by Templeton "The Adventure of the Avian Eavesdroppers." The University of Washington doctoral student has found the first example of an animal making sophisticated decisions about the danger posed by a predator from the information contained in the alarm calls of another species.
Grrrrl explains.
clock | March 19, 2007New Bird Species Found In Idaho, Demonstrates Co-evolutionary Arms Race
One does not expect to discover a bird species new to science while wandering around the continental United States. Nor does one expect that such a species would provide much insight into how coevolutionary arms races promote speciation. On both fronts a paper to appear in The American Naturalist proves otherwise.
Julie Smith, now at Pacific Lutheran University, and her former graduate advisor, Craig Benkman at the University of Wyoming, have uncovered strong evidence that coevolution has led to the formation of a species…
clock | March 16, 2007
On this day in 1934 the US adopted the Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp Act, commonly known as the Duck Stamp Act. Hunters are required to buy a stamp before bagging migratory birds like ducks and geese, with the proceeds earmarked for habitat preservation. The stamps themselves are so beautifully done that many non-hunters buy and display them as art. We won't be hunting them, but here are a few quotes on Birds.
I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I…
retrospectacle | February 27, 2007Yeah, remote controlled birds.......crazy cool......
Scientists in eastern China say they have succeeded in controlling the flight of pigeons with micro electrodes planted in their brains, state media reported on Tuesday.
Scientists at the Robot Engineering Technology Research Centre at Shandong University of Science and Technology said their electrodes could command them to fly right or left or up or down, Xinhua news agency said.
"The implants stimulate different areas of the pigeon's brain, according to signals sent by the scientists via computer and force the bird to comply with their…
retrospectacle | February 19, 2007 What's very bad for one parrot turns out to be great for the species. A rare night parrot in Queensland, Australia was flying and struck a barbed-wire fence which instantly killed it, its headless body found the next day. However, ornithologists already had believed the parrot species to be extinct, so finding the dead parrot happily confirmed that Australia's most elusive parrot was still around. The night parrot is Australia's only nocturnal parrot, and it feeds and nests on the ground. Populations crashed in the 19th century, probably due to the introduction of non-native species which…
clock | February 19, 2007This was a meme I posted back on my birthday last year (May 11, 2006) - it's a shame not to move it to the new archives here....
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Carel Brest van Kempen tagged me with the 10 bird meme. A DC Birding Blog started the meme and is collecting the responses (over 50 so far) here.
As you can see, those are all birders and birdwatchers, real pros. They really know their birds. They picked their choices by beauty and grace, or by special meaning in their lives, or by excitement of having seen them.
But I am, unfortunately, not a birdwatcher. I always…
clock | February 8, 2007I and the Bird #42 is up on Neurophilosophy blog. Beautiful rendition, formatted like Charles Darwin's diaries from the "Beagle", which - the ship, I mean - as you know (Day 8), is planned to be rebuilt and sailed again, but only if you help.
clock | February 6, 2007For Some Species, An Upside To Inbreeding:
Although breeding between close kin is thought to be generally unfavorable from an evolutionary standpoint, in part because harmful mutations are more easily propagated through populations in this way, theory predicts that under some circumstances, the benefits of inbreeding may outweigh the costs.
Researchers have now reported real-life evidence in support of this theory. Studying an African chiclid fish species, Pelvicachromis taetiatus, in which both parents participate in brood care, the researchers found that individuals preferred mating with…
clock | February 5, 2007Seventeen out of eighteen Whooping Cranes from the Operation Migration were killed by the recent storm in Florida. The one survivor is being tracked right now via radiotransmitter, so the health state is still not known.
grrlscientist | January 23, 2007tags: Microraptor gui, microraptor, biplane, bird flight, evolution
The ancestors of modern birds are thought to have been small, feathered, dinosaurs, the theropods. One of these small feathered dinosaurs is Microraptor gui, a feathered dromaosaur that lived 125 million years ago in what is now China. According to the evidence, Microraptor gui was one of the earliest gliders. But unlike modern birds, it appears to have utilized four wings, like a biplane, because it had long and asymmetric flight feathers on both its hands and feet.
According to initial interpretations, Microraptor flew…
retrospectacle | January 23, 2007
If Kazakhstan wants to clean up its image (remember how much they protested about "Borat"?), they might want to curb the rampant parrot-smuggling-by-Audi practices going on.
Kazakh border guards arrested a man trying to smuggle 500 parrots in his car from neighbouring Uzbekistan, media reported on Tuesday.
"Border guards discovered a live cargo of 500 parrots in his car," Kazakhstan Today news agency quoted a KNB security service official as saying.
It was unclear how the parrots fitted into the Kazakh man's Audi. Trade in wild parrots is banned around the world, according to the U.N.…
retrospectacle | January 18, 2007 What's a kakariki? Other than an incredibly cool-sounding name, its a kind of parrot that lives in New Zealand and thereabouts. Apparently, the red-crowned kakariki is an extremely rare subspecies, one of which has recently been spotted on the island of Maungatautari. It was once believed to be extinct, outside of aviaries.
Maungatautari Ecological Island Trust chief executive Jim Mylchreest said he had received reports of possibly several of the birds on the mountain.
"We've got an excellent photo of one of the birds and we had another report that three of the birds were seen up there…
retrospectacle | January 15, 2007Previously on this blog, I've criticized the European Union for continuing to allow the import of wild-caught parrots (including African Greys) which has devastated many species of rare birds. I was never sure why the EU, which his usually a trailblazer in the areas of progressive conservation, was so slow to act to restrict the wild-caught bird industry. The only time that the EU has restricted wild-bird imports has been when "bird flu" was suspected in Europe, with imported birds thought to have been to blame.
I'm happy to say that a permanent ban on wild-caught birds has been instituted,…
clock | December 27, 2006Perhaps. But we do other stuff just like chicken (December 09, 2004):
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Fantastic news in science:
Researchers compare chicken, human genomes
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-12/nhgr-rcc120804.php
Some highlights:
Chicks have less junk DNA:
In their paper published in Nature, members of the International Chicken Genome
Sequencing Consortium report that the chicken genome contains significantly less
DNA than the human genome, but approximately the same number of genes.
Researchers estimate that the chicken has about 20,000-23,000…
clock | December 19, 2006Apparently, I am not the only one to see a hummingbird in Chapel Hill of a species that should not be found around here. While I am quite confident that the visitor to my porch was a female Blue-throated Hummingbird, usually not found this far North, these neighbors of mine have found a Rufous hummingbird. As far as I know, the Ruby-throated Hummingbird is the only species that should be seen around here.
One individual of one species is an anecdote. Another individiual of another species is another anecdote. But if there are more and more such sightings over the next couple of years, we…