From the Middle English meaning very small or Middle Dutch meaning small copper coin, we get the term mite. Mites are small arthropods (joint-legged animals like insects, crayfish, and spiders) belonging to the class Arachnida (spiders and allies). Most mites are tiny, less than 1 mm in length, and have a simple, unsegmented body plan. Their small size makes them easily […]
Even though Big Bird was 8 feet two inches tall, he wasn’t the biggest bird we know about. The biggest bird that ever lived was the Elephant Bird of Madagascar that stood nearly 10 feet tall and weighed about 1700 pounds. Its egg weighed 22 pounds. Extinct since the 17th century, there were reports by
This is an old blog from 2011 you might not have seen but I think it’s one of the funniest, so here it is. A while back, I listened to a radio show (Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me) and heard Wayne Newton being interviewed about his “Casa de Shenadoah”, a 42 acre ranch on which
Birdman of Las Vegas Read More »
From NPR: The new Secretary of the Interior, responsible for the protection of our natural resources, is a former gas and oil lobbyist. Bernhardt says that responsible energy development on public lands is good for both American taxpayers and towns dependent on oil, gas or coal. The Department of the Interior manages one-fifth of all
Migratory Bird Treaty Act Defiled Read More »
Part of my job as a professor and ornithologist was managing the university’s vertebrate museum. Students and faculty used stuffed specimens for teaching or research and the general pubic would come in asking various questions about what they had found (including some guy who wanted to me to confirm that the bunch of hair he
Roxie and The Feather Lab Read More »
According to Science Daily, May 23, 2019, warm blooded animals – birds and mammals – are getting smaller. That seems bizarre until you put some pieces together. Scientists have known about Bergmann’s Rule for many years. This “rule” is actually a general ecomorphological concept which says that as the environment gets colder, the body sizes
The Incredible Shrinking Birds Read More »
We can go back all the way to Aristotle in 300 or so B.C. who classified about 125 different birds on the basis of their habitat. This was a common way of classification for many years. Throughout the middle ages and the renaissance there were various schemes for classifying birds – habitat, beak, color, legs,
Quick History of Avian Classification Read More »
I’ve heard stories about attacks on people by owls, but they are few and far between. They happen usually because someone got too close to an owl nest or a domesticated owl got angry with its owner. And “attack” is often too strong a word to describe the bird’s actions. There’s a video labeled “owl
I just returned from a two week trip walking the countryside of Cumbria and Yorkshire in northwest England. My wife and I went because we enjoy the English countryside with its stone and brick houses and lovely flower gardens. Dry stone walls, works of art from the 16th century, traverse the land. It is almost
English Ornithology Read More »
The most basic definition of a species is a group of biological individuals who can interbreed. Using DNA, and morphological and behavioral studies, birds are placed into categories based upon the closeness of their relationships. Carl Linnaeus was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who formalized the modern system of naming organisms called binomial nomenclature.
What Are Bird Species? Read More »
