Let’s face it, birds have funny names. Prothonotary Warbler? Who came up with that? Phainopepla? Chachalaca? Kagu? Bengal Florican? OK, I know all of these common names make a certain amount of sense once you know their origin. Phainopepla, from the Greek, means “shining robe”, a reference to the sleek, glossy plumage of the male […]
I have given hundreds of talks about birds over the years in a great variety of venues. If I speak to the Boy Scouts or the local Master Gardener’s club, the talks are pretty straightforward as the attendees aren’t very experienced in birdwatching. The same with women’s social groups, retired teachers, senior citizen gatherings, and
There are about 10,000 species of birds extant in the world today, but over 200 million years or so there were many more. Scientists estimate that there might have been 123,000 species of birds over evolutionary time. They evolved and then went extinct. Most of the extinctions we know about were due to human causes.
Why So Many Birds? Read More »
Nearly every day I read something that makes me slap my forehead. I think: What will they think of next? How can people believe that? You have to be kidding me. But novel ideas are everywhere, and many of them are not true. To paraphrase Mark Twain, it ain’t what people don’t know, it’s what
