birds
retrospectacle | November 10, 2006
The natural world has been a-buzz lately with new things---new island, now a new parrot? Apparently an Australian bird enthusiast, John Young, has made the claim of discovering a new type of parrot, which he has named the blue-browed fig-parrot. The Queensland Environmental Minister Lindy Nelson-Carr (what a title!) has endorsed the claim as authentic despite no governmental experts having seen the bird or its nesting hole. Young has produced only a photograph of the parrot, and has refused to reveal the bird's location. This has produced some amount of speculation that the "discovery" is a…
clock | October 13, 2006You may remember that Clark's Nutcracker is one of my favourite birds, so I'll be watching this guy (I am assuming he got his PhD with Nikki Clayton):
Researcher Uncovering Mysteries Of Memory By Studying Clever Bird:
Scientists at the University of New Hampshire hope to learn more about memory and its evolution by studying the Clark's nutcracker, a bird with a particularly challenging task: remembering where it buried its supply of food for winter in a 15-mile area. Like many animals preparing for the winter, every fall the Clark's nutcracker spends several weeks gathering food stores. What…
retrospectacle | October 10, 2006Another new bird, this time a finch, has been discovered in Columbia! Its habitat is a previous-unexplored cloud forest in the Andes. It has been dubbed the Yariguies brush-finch, so named for an indigenous tribe that once inhabited the area. Its discovery is important, insofar that the Columbian government has recently decided to create a national park (of 500 acres) where the bird now resides.
"The bird was discovered in what is the last remnants of cloud forest in that region," Camila Gomez, of the Colombia conservation group ProAves, said on Monday. "There are still lots of undiscovered…
clock | September 27, 2006Mother Birds Give A Nutritional Leg Up To Chicks With Unattractive Fathers:
Mother birds deposit variable amounts of antioxidants into egg yolks, and it has long been theorized that females invest more in offspring sired by better quality males. However, a study from the November/December 2006 issue of Physiological and Biochemical Zoology shows that even ugly birds get their day. Providing new insight into the strategic basis behind resource allocation in eggs, the researchers found that female house finches deposit significantly more antioxidants, which protect the embryo during the…
clock | September 20, 2006Bird Moms Manipulate Birth Order To Protect Sons:
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Since 2002, Badyaev, Oh and their colleagues have been intensively documenting the lives of a population of house finches (Carpodacus mexicanus) on the UA campus.
Throughout the year, the researchers capture birds several times a week to band and measure them and to take DNA and hormone samples. During the breeding season, the researchers locate the nests, keep track of activity in the nest, follow nestling growth and development, and take DNA samples from the chicks.
The researchers have also been…
retrospectacle | September 13, 2006Not for 50 years has a new species of bird been identified! But, a new and very colorful species was recently found in India, Yahoo news reports (pictured below.)
The new species, called Bugun Liocichla, was first seen this past May in a remote corner of India--the state of Arunachal Predesh which shares a border with China. It was found by Ramana Athreya, a member of Mumbai's Natural History Society, who named it after the local Bugun tribe.
Birdlife International, a global alliance of conservation organizations, described it on its Web site Tuesday as "the most sensational ornithological…
clock | September 13, 2006New bird species found in India after more than 50 years
New Delhi: A striking multi-coloured bird has been discovered in India's remote northeast, making it the first ornithological find in the country in more than half a century, experts said on Tuesday.
The Bugun Liocichla, scientifically known as Liocichla bugunorum, a kind of babbler, was discovered in May at the Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary in the hilly state of Arunachal Pradesh.
The bird with olive and golden-yellow plum-age, a black cap and flame-tipped wings is 20 cm in length and named after the Bugun tribespeople who live on the…
clock | September 12, 2006Scientists discover molecule behind birds' magnetic sense:
"Some birds, notably migratory species, are able to detect the Earth's magnetic field and use it to navigate. New results from a team of Franco-German researchers suggest that light-sensitive molecules called cryptochromes could be the key to the birds' magnetic sense.
They did not suggest it - they tested a 10-year old hypothesis.
Cryptochromes are photoreceptors which are sensitive to blue light, and they are involved in a number of processes linked to the circadian cycle, such as growth and development.
Caution: cryptochromes have…
clock | September 7, 2006I have a bunch of plants on my porch, mostly ferns, but also some flowers. One of these has really tiny flowers that I thought would be pollinated by small insects - not bigger than a honeybee. So, I was really surprised to see a hummingbird come and sip nectar out of it. Moreover, it is a huge hummingbird! OK, not as big as a stork, but huge for a hummingbird, bigger than any hummingbird I've seen before.
The bird is coming every day. It is noisy like a bumblebee. It looks at me and, as long as I do not move, it goes on and feeds, only 3-4 feet away from my face.
My daugher an I…
clock | September 1, 2006
The last Passenger Pigeon, named Martha, died in the Cincinnati Zoo on September 1, 1914.
clock | August 30, 2006I have never seen these birds around here before, yet, over the last few days I saw tons of them all over the place. Where did they come from? Why do they seem to still be paired this late in the summer?
At first, I saw them flying, mostly from the car, and their flight is undulating, almost pulsating. Then, yesterday when I was walking the dog, I followed a pair around, from tree to tree, until I managed to get a good look at one of them for a good minute or so. I was surprised at how much larger they look in flight than when sitting still.
Anyway, after getting a good look, I went home…
clock | August 30, 2006I And The Bird #31 is up on Migrateblog. Enjoy the poetry leading you to the best bird-writing on the Internet.
clock | August 17, 2006
This is a summary of my 1999 paper, following in the footsteps of the work I described here two days ago. The work described in that earlier post was done surprisingly quickly - in about a year - so I decided to do some more for my Masters Thesis.
The obvious next thing to do was to expose the quail to T-cycles, i.e., non-24h cycles. This is some arcane circadiana, so please refer to the series of posts on entrainment from yesterday and the two posts on seasonality and photoperiodism posted this morning so you can follow the discussion below:
There were three big reasons for me to attempt…