Welcome to my blog.
All tagged birds
A female peregrine falcon sank her talons into a much larger brown pelican mid-flight, and photographer Jack Zhi was on hand to capture the attack on film. The image, among the 23,000 entries submitted to the Bird Photography of the Year contest, is so good it was the Overall Winner and it took the gold in another category, Bird Behaviour.
The humans in Pinecrest, Florida have devised a novel plan to control the peacock population in town: vasectomies. The big birds – the males can grow over 8 feet long and splay their fantails nearly as much – have stalked into town from Coconut Grove, where large new houses are replacing the trees they once called home.
Most birds are monogamous(ish) and a few species even mate for life, but divorce is also common, and may even be on the rise. A German-Chinese research team analyzed data on 232 bird species to document the avian discontent.
Researchers at Northeastern University, in collaboration with MIT and the University of Glasgow, taught a group of domesticated birds to call one another on tablets and smartphones. The birds seem to really enjoy it.
Australia has a few million too many cats: feral cats, which kill an estimated two billion animals annually; and outdoor house cats, which whack some 83 million native reptiles and 80 million native birds every year. To address the latter carnage, many municipal councils are imposing nighttime curfews on the furry murderers.
Due to climate change and related factors, a dozen or two bird species have expanded their ranges into New York City. Among them: The black vulture, a grim looking fellow with a five-foot wingspan who, in the old days, never strayed this far north.
The European woodcock spends a lot of time on the forest floor, and so much of its plumage is mottled brown, beige, and black – perfect camouflage for foraging in the leaf litter. But underneath this unassuming bird is a flashy secret: tailfeathers that are whiter than any ever measured.
Scientists at the far reaches of South America have identified a new bird species, the subantarctic rayadito. The little bird inhabits the Diego Ramírez Archipelago, 62 miles from southern Cape Horn and the southernmost point of the Americas. The discovery is reported in the journal Nature.
Birds everywhere are swimming, nesting, and living in human garbage, most of it plastic. Crowd-sourced photos from all over the world in a project called Birds & Debris are documenting the mess.
