West of the Mississippi from Canada to Central America lives the Burrowing Owl. These small, brownish tan-colored owls with bright yellow eyes are the only raptors in North America that live underground in burrows they dig themselves or usurp from a ground squirrel or tortoise. In open habitats like grasslands and deserts, they eat rodents […]
Birds are among the most colorful of animals, their colored feathers evolving mainly as an adaptation for reproduction. Males of species such as hummingbirds, sunbirds and t tanagers attract mates with their colors and Red-winged Blackbirds establish and defend territories with their blazing epaulets. And of course, in the thickness of tropical forests, the range of
The Colorful Critters Read More »
Like many birds, Barn Owls show variation in their plumage coloration. There could be several reasons, but there are at least two that I know of. I’m sure you have driven at night when a white owl flies across the road in front of your car. Often they look bright white. But look at a
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In 1889 a religious book emphasized the spur provided by the possession of a song. This notion matched the quotation under examination: A bird sings because it has a song and must sing it. In 1902 a column in “The Brooklyn Daily Eagle” of Brooklyn, New York suggested that duty was not the key motivator:
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,
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Recent surveys indicate that only about 40% of American adults believe that evolution is a scientific fact. According to the latest survey of the PEW Research Center,“Roughly six-in-ten U.S. adults (62%) say humans have evolved over time, according to data from Pew Research Center’s ” only a little more than half of them (33% of all
Archeopteryx and Evolution Read More »
For many years a fossil discovered in a Bavarian limestone quarry was considered to be the first bird. Archeopteryx lithographica (ancient wing of limestone) lived about 150 million years ago and had many reptilian and avian characteristics; of the latter, feathers were the most notable. Its discovery was a very clear indication that birds evolved
Birds are modern dinosaurs. In the news recently was a study by China’s Institute for Vertebrate Paleontology which found the first clear evidence of dinosaur coloration from a 125-million-year-old fossil called Sinosauropteryx, an orange bird-like dinosaur with white tail stripes. More and more fossils of birds and bird-like ancestors are being found which demonstrate a
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For many years, ornithologists classified birds on the basis of their anatomy and behavior – feather color, plumage patterns, leg length, bill curvature, song, nest structure, and hundreds of other characteristics. In the last twenty or so years, however, DNA has been used to clarify relationships among birds, as we do now with humans. Without
