Looking at ads in the newspaper, magazines, junk mail, and television, I notice that when the ads include adult people, the guys, especially young ones, haven’t shaved for four days, have a wrinkled shirt with an undershirt peeking out below it, crumpled pants, and untied tennis shoes or scuffed sneakers. Women, on the other hand, …
I heard on NPR the other day a story about a guy who divorced his wife and married his girlfriend. The guy took his parrot with him when he moved in with his girlfriend but found out that his wife had taught the parrot some rather rude and risqué names for the girlfriend! Then Vladimir …
This and every end of year holiday season we see lots of references to birds. Christmas cards are full of birds, especially Northern Cardinals. No other bird seems to symbolize Christmas. You see it on greeting cards, note paper, figurines, clothing, tree ornaments, and other decorations. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology reported last year that …
OK, you have read all my blogs for a year, right? So how much do you know about birds? Try this quiz. Don’t Google the answers – try to do it off the top of your head first. How many avian species are there in the world? How many species are flightless? What’s your state …
Ornithological Quiz – what do you know about birds? Read More »
Now that it is almost Christmas, you will hear the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” created in about 16th century England. This song has more birds in it than any other holiday song. You know, “On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me a partridge in a pear tree.” The …
Returning from a short visit to the east coast, I had a lot of time on planes and in the airport to read. In some newspaper, a full page ad touted Hyaluronic acid, made from rooster combs, injected into the knee for osteoarthritis. According to the National Institutes of Health which I trust for health …
As you walk around the city or countryside, you might occasionally spot a dead mouse, rat, or squirrel. Driving down the highway, you regularly see road-killed raccoons, opossums, or some other mammal. But how many dead birds have you seen? Maybe an occasional road kill, but that’s all. Why is that? Birds are light in …
According to the New York Times, the oldest known wild bird in the United States, is an albatross. “Wisdom, a Laysan albatross who lives in the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the Pacific northwest of the main Hawaiian island, is 60 years old. Among birds in the wild, albatrosses are believed to be the species that …
When I was a kid I was always admonished not to feed chicken bones to the family dog. Why is that? Birds have hollow or semi-hollow bones with an internal structure of supporting struts. Physics tells us that a hollow tube is harder to bend or break than a solid tube of the same material …
Oology is the study of eggs, mostly their shells. In the 19th and early 20th century it was a hobby, like stamp and coin collecting. Eggs were collected from wild birds’ nests, holes made in both ends, and the material inside blown out. They were displayed, sold, and traded, like many collectors’ items today. I’ve …
