ornithology
grrlscientist | September 28, 2008tags: Royal Tern, Sterna maxima, birds, nature, Image of the Day
[Mystery bird] Royal Tern, Sterna maxima, photographed at Quintana and Bryan Beaches, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 3 September 2008 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/2000s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
Bring that recent ruffian of a Caspian Tern back up on your screen, and turn everything we said about that bird into its opposite. Here's a slender, graceful-footed, pale-…
grrlscientist | September 27, 2008tags: Caspian Tern, Sterna caspia, birds, nature, Image of the Day
[Mystery bird] Caspian Tern, Sterna caspia, photographed at Bolivar Flats, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 16 August 2008 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/640s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
Scared yet? This is about the meanest-looking bird I've ever seen, which identifies it immediately as a Caspian Tern.
But what are the features that make this animal look so intimidating…
grrlscientist | September 26, 2008tags: Black Tern, Chlidonias niger surinamensis, birds, nature, Image of the Day
[Mystery bird] Black Tern, Chlidonias niger surinamensis, photographed at Smith Point Hawk Watch, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 15 August 2008 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/250s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
After all of those big, mean-looking terns, it's nice to see one as sweet and gentle as this little bird. How do we know it's little? The pebbles and…
grrlscientist | September 25, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, Seychelles magpie-robin, Copsychus sechellarum, behavioral ecology, conservation biology, endangered species, population dynamics, ornithology, birds
Seychelles magpie-robin, Copsychus sechellarum.
Image: Tony Randell (Wikipedia) [larger view].
Every once in awhile, I read a paper that surprises me. Today, I read one of those papers, and it surprised me because it analyzes a phenomenon that is so obvious that I wonder why no one ever thought of studying it in a systematic and rigorous way before. I am referring to a paper that was just published by a team of…
grrlscientist | September 25, 2008tags: Gull-billed Tern, Sterna nilotica, birds, nature, Image of the Day
[Mystery bird] Gull-billed Tern, Sterna nilotica, photographed flying over Bolivar Flats, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 6 June 2008 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/2000s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Read a detailed analysis for identifying this species below the fold ...
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
Compare this bird's shape and structure to the Sandwich Tern in a recent quiz. You'll notice…
grrlscientist | September 24, 2008tags: Sandwich Tern, Sterna sandvichensis, birds, nature, Image of the Day
[Mystery bird] Sandwich Tern, Sterna sandvichensis, photographed flying over Quintana and Bryan Beach, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 26 August 2008 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/640s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Below the fold is a detailed analysis for how to identify this species ..
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
Does anybody else remember The Book of Terns? My favorite was the sketch of…
grrlscientist | September 23, 2008tags: Royal Tern, Sterna maxima, birds, nature, Image of the Day
[Mystery bird] Royal Tern, Sterna maxima, photographed flying over Frenchtown Road, Bolivar Peninsula, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 22 August 2008 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/2000s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Below the fold is a detailed analysis for how to ID this species ..
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
The taxonomically savvy will have noticed that these quizzes are proceeding in roughly…
grrlscientist | September 22, 2008tags: Mediterranean Gull, Ichthyaetus melanocephalus, Larus melanocephalus, birds, nature, Image of the Day
[Mystery bird] Mediterranean Gull, Ichthyaetus [Larus] melanocephalus, stretching her wings. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Rick Wright [larger view].
Two hints: (1) this is not a North American species, and (2) it's not a sandpiper.
Read Rick's analysis for identifying this species below ..
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
There's little doubt that we're on the coast again, but this bird of the shore is not -- to our…
grrlscientist | September 22, 2008tags: ornithology, birds, avian, National Geographic
A dragonfly has no stinger, but a European bee-eater, Merops apiaster, will beat it senseless anyway, the same way it handles its namesake prey. If the fly's wings break off, they are discarded, not eaten. The insect is then devoured as a single morsel, not as a mini-buffet of bite-size bits.
Image: Jözsef L. Szentpéteri/National Geographic online. [larger view].
I mentioned this last week, but I think it deserves a second mention: My contact, an editor at National Geographic, just sent me a link to a story and photoessay that…
grrlscientist | September 22, 2008tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
The cassowary, Casuarius casuarius,
is a large, flightless bird that is native to Australia and New Guinea.
Image: Orphaned [larger view].
Canaries in Our Coal Mine
Common birds are in decline across the world, providing evidence of a rapid deterioration in the global environment that is affecting all life on earth -- including human life. All the world's governments have committed themselves to slowing or halting the loss of biodiversity by 2010. But reluctance to commit what are often trivial sums in terms of…
tetrapodzoology | September 18, 2008Regular readers might remember the 'pigeon in the fireplace' incident of March 2007, when a Wood pigeon Columba palumbus fell down my chimney during the small hours of the morning and had to be extricated at great personal cost to my epidermis. As I grabbed the pigeon, I was slightly dismayed that its entire rectricial array (viz, all of its tail feathers) came out in one clean, bloodless mass. The word on the street is that pigeons have very shallowly rooted rectrices and can effectively 'drop' the tail when grabbed by a predator, which is pretty neat I think you'll agree.
So far as I can…
grrlscientist | September 18, 2008tags: ratite, tinamous, evolution, biogeography, phylogenomics, convergence, flightlessness, Paleognath, homoplasy, vicariance
White-throated Tinamou, Tinamus guttatus.
Image: Wikipedia.
New research suggests the ostriches, emus, rheas and other flightless birds known as ratites have lost the ability to fly many times, rather than just once, as long thought. Further, the ratites appear to form a group with the tinamous, a group of birds that can fly, while the ostriches are set apart as the "sister group" -- the closest relatives.
Birds are divided into two groups based on jawbone…
grrlscientist | September 17, 2008tags: Spotted Sandpiper, Actitis macularia, birds, nature, Image of the Day
[Mystery bird] Spotted Sandpiper, Actitis macularia, photographed at Smith Point, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow] [voice mp3: Gough, G.A., Sauer, J.R., Iliff, M. Patuxent Bird Identification Infocenter. 1998. Version 97.1. Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, Laurel, MD].
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 7 September 2008 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/1600s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Read and learn from a detailed diagnosis below ..
Rick Wright, Managing Director of…
grrlscientist | September 16, 2008tags: ornithology, birds, avian, National Geographic
Painting the Sky
A brilliant blur as it plucks a butterfly from the air, the European bee-eater, Merops apiaster, leads a colorful life on three continents.
Image: Jözsef L. Szentpéteri/National Geographic [larger view].
My contact, an editor at National Geographic, just sent me a link to a story and photoessay that details the courtship and breeding of European Bee-eaters, Merops apiaster. The story is fascinating and well-worth reading and the photographs, as always for National Geographic, brings tears of wonder to one's eyes.
grrlscientist | September 15, 2008tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
ABSTRACT: Rainbow Lory, Trichoglossus haematodus.
Image: John Del Rio. [larger view].
Birds in Science
UK Scientists have found bird fossils dating back around 55 million years that could help shed light on a period of time before humans and most mammals had evolved. The fossils, including two complete bird skulls, a pelvis and several bones, appear to be the remains of parrot-like birds and were found by a local archaeologist on marshland Seasalter Levels near Whitstable, Kent. "Birds' skeletons are so fragile, the…
tetrapodzoology | September 14, 2008
For a long time now I have been, shall we say, gently encouraged by two of my friends to write about a subject that is both familiar, and yet also strangely alien and poorly understood. Sleep behaviour. We still know comparatively little about this subject: not only about the big stuff like its function, but even about its distribution within animals. I am not, by the way, about to tackle the big questions about sleep, nor am I going to discuss the different types of sleep (e.g., REM vs NREM sleep) and on how they differ from creature to creature. Instead I'm interested in the more…
grrlscientist | September 13, 2008tags: Reddish Egret, Egretta rufescens, birds, nature, Image of the Day
[Mystery bird] Reddish egret, Egretta rufescens, photographed at Sportsman's Road, Galveston, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 5 September 2008 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/1250s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
tetrapodzoology | September 10, 2008
For my shame, I had never been to Ireland prior to last week. That's so crap that I became pretty determined to attend the 56th SVPCA, hosted by the National Museum of Ireland at Dublin, and I'm glad I did. You know, because of the giant deer, hornbills and pliosaurs [montage here shows specimens from the (currently closed) National Museum of Ireland (Natural History). The middle skeleton is a Notoryctes]...
Here I'm going to do a very speedy review of most (but far from all) of the presentations given at the meeting. There was a reasonable amount of non-tetrapod stuff that I won't, of…
tetrapodzoology | August 31, 2008
I'm now leaving, again, this time for SVPCA. I'm hoping that I might be able to do some blogging from the conference, but the last time I said this (the Munich Flugsaurier conference back in September 2007) there was neither the time nor opportunity for it, so don't get your hopes up. Thanks to SVPCA and other matters, I've obviously been unable to put anything substantial on the blog for a while now... making Tet Zoo all too much like a normal blog... and for personal (family-related) reasons, it's been a strange and sad week here. We're all in need of time off that we can't afford to take…
tetrapodzoology | August 28, 2008
Thanks to the latest issue (no. 240) of Fortean Times I've just learnt of the remarkable case whereby an unlucky Canada goose Branta canadensis was, allegedly, hit by a meteoroid (Anon. 2008). The story goes that Derbyshire postman Adrian Mannion was 'having a morning cuppa with his wife Fiona' (I'm not quite sure what a cuppa is, but assume it's a sexual act of some sort) when a rock fell, from space, onto their driveway. It was followed by the goose, which hit the roof of their car. This story was reported in that most reliable of sources, The Sun newspaper, back in February (it's here).…