Birds’ songs and calls are important for survival. The ear of a bird is very much like that of a mammal’s with two important exceptions. The external ear lacks a pinna (the flesh-covered outer ear) although owls have one, and nstead of three vibration-transmitting bones birds have only one, the columella. When sound waves hit […]
The Hearing of Birds Read More »
It’s well known that crows and jays and their relatives in the family Corvidae are the most intelligent birds. There’s an all black bird native to New Caledonia known as the New Caledonian Crow. The New Caledonian crow sometimes digs for grubs in nooks or crevices of a tree’s bark by using a small twig to probe
Something to Crow About Read More »
According to the U.S. Fish and WildÂlife Service, more than 50 million North Americans feed birds. That amounts to more than one million tons of seed directly provided to birds every year. As fall approaches, the avifauna (set of bird species in an area) changes with migration patterns and some people put bird feeders into
Birds and mammals like us, are homeothermic. We often say “” is a misnomer as tuna and lizards and worms and tuna can be warm blooded at times. Better to say homeothermic which means which means that mammals and birds maintain a fairly constant body temperature at all times. To do that we have to
You may have seen the photo of a Common Merganser mom leading a brood of 76, yes, 76 ducklings. They are not all hers, of course, because there is no way she could sit on and incubate that many eggs. A pair of mergansers will usually only lay a dozen eggs. These unrelated young ducks
