Throughout my biological education and career, identification “keys” were very handy. Called “dichotomous” keys because they typically branch in two, they look like an upside-down tree with many branches. Identifying bird specimens in the hand with a key is pretty simple. The first choice might ask whether the bill is straight or curved. If it […]
Intuitive Birdwatching Read More »
There’s a recent (Oct 2023) article in the journal Ornithological Applications entitled “Historical racial redlining and contemporary patterns of income inequality negatively affect birds, their habitat, and people in Los Angeles, California.” It’s rather complex but the basic idea is that well-to-do or even moderate-income neighborhoods have a greater diversity of birds than do low-income
Economic View of Birdwatching Read More »
Data show that up to 65 million birds in the U.S. are killed by flying into powerlines, or perching on them and being electrocuted, each year. Worldwide, the mortality might be as high as 175 million birds. Some areas are installing powerlines with insulators so the birds do not make contact with power and putting
Power Line Fatalities Read More »
There are all kinds of reasons for the common names birds have. They are named after people (Baird’s Sandpiper, for instance), places (Carolina Wren), physical description (Purple Finch), voice (Chachalaca), and behavior (dipper). Sometimes they are misleading, like the Red-bellied Woodpecker whose belly is really pinkish and the Ring-necked Duck whose ringed neck is very
Names, Redux, Again Read More »
SOUNDS LIKE…… OK, what bird makes this call: honk, honk, tweeeeet, twitter twitter, buzzzzzz. Don’t know? That’s OK, neither do I. But I get questions like this on a regular basis from folks who want to know what bird they heard. Bird songs and calls may sound the same to different people but the descriptions
If you Google “life list”, you come up with various definitions such as goals for your life, bucket list wishes, or any other list of things you want to possess or achieve. Some people want to visit every major league ballpark or every state capitol building or own all the versions of Beanie Babies. But
Recently Slow Birding, a book all about enjoying the birds in your backyard, was published. The author, Joan Strassmann, an accomplished scientist in the field of evolution and microbes writes about her hobby of birdwatching and offers some good advice. Rather than traveling far and wide to see and list birds in new locales, the
“Ukraine is internationally important for wild birds: 434 species, 18 globally threatened birds, 19 species for which the country hosts more than 15% of the European population (over 60 percent of the Slender-billed Gull species resides in Ukraine) and 141 Important Bird Areas covering 2.5 million hectares. All of them are under the threat of
I previously wrote a post explaining why birds don’t fall out of trees while they are sleeping. Not falling out of a tree has to do with the arrangement of muscles and tendons on the lower legs, but this explanation mainly applies to those birds in the Order Passeriformes, the Perching Birds. But not to
Some estimates give 150,000 to 1.5 million as the number of bird species that have ever lived. Most went extinct as the environment changed and evolution created new forms that were better fit for the new circumstances. Evolution occurs via the accumulation of genetic changes. When the changes are sufficient, new species may arise. Typically
New Additions to Life List? Read More »
