Birds

Aquatic bird (299)
Avian (81)
Bird (1871)
Bird of prey (407)
Birdcall (31)
Cuckoo (20)
Goatsucker (8)
Kingfisher (12)
Oilbird (2)
Parrot (95)
Passerine (433)
Piciform (55)
Pigeon (118)
Ratite (74)
Seabird (386)
Swifts (40)
Trogon (1)

Synopsis: 4.4. animals: Birds:

It's actually fairly common among birds. Many chicks intentionally abandon the nests in which they hatched to seek out temporary or full adoption by foster parents.

This nest switching has been seen in seabirds like gulls and terns as well as storks, raptors, egrets and herons.

Take white storks. In one breeding season, biologists from Spain's Universidad de Cordoba found nest switching in 40%of broods across three distinct white-stork breeding colonies.

That infant birds seek out new digs actually makes sense, since they could benefit from a longer period of parental care.

If they moved into nests containing fewer or younger chicks than their previous homes, then they could also receive more food by more easily outcompeting smaller adoptive siblings.

But why would the adoptive parents allow the intruder into their nest especially to the detriment of their own young?

This lack of discriminatory ability is seen particularly starkly in Lake erie's ring-billed gulls. Nest invasions are common,

but unlike for white storks, there is a significant cost incurred by the foster parents: half as many of their own chicks grow to fledging age than the gulls that did not adopt.

White storks allow baby intruders to share their nest and food-but why?(Thinkstock) Given such high risks for adoption, why hasn't evolution endowed these birds with a better ability to identify oe and reject oe intruders?

Biologist Kevin Brown of York University thinks that the costs of better chick discrimination could be even higher.

If the cost of rejecting one's own offspring is greater than accepting an alien chick,

But in all of those cases the adoption has always been within species. Storks adopt stork chicks,

Another set of studies demonstrated that ravens, too, know what others do and do not see.

the ravens usually picked up and tried to hide their cache elsewhere. Together, these experiments demonstrate both the ravens'gaze-following abilities and their tactical deception skills.

How about our pets? Well, researchers know dogs can be sneaky. In one experiment, dogs were instructed not to take food from boxes, a few

which helps cater to specific species of birds. The task of conserving water can also be addressed on a smaller scale, beginning with improvements to architecture and homes.

and Margaret Atwood's Oryx & Crake (along with its sort of sequels The Year of the Flood and the about to be published Maddaddam)

How do birds actually navigate? The price of hypocrisy Evgeny Morozov Frankfurter Allgemeine 24 july 2013 Lessons from the Snowden affair."

 How do birds navigate? Tom Standage The Economist 17 july 2013 I hereby propose a new law of science journalism,

The global positioning system with which birds are born appears to rely on particles of iron in the ear, nerves in the beak, a chemical reaction in the eyes,

birds see magnetic fields as patterns of spots. For more articles worth reading, visit The Browser.

We are also living in close proximity to domestic creatures like pigs, chickens and ducks.

attracting birds and wildlife to sky-gardens, tens of floors up. In Singapore, for example, the Marina Bay Sands hotel features a skypark on the 56th floor, with trees,

growing food in the urban environment on regular multistorey plots is likely to increase as hobby farmers,

and once-polluted industrial wastelands now chirp with birdsong, rivers swim with fish and populations of animals that have become rare in the countryside are thriving in urban niches.

to skyscraper-nesting peregrine falcons, animals have made cities their home in some cases, their natural habitats have disappeared.

Seagulls, for example, now often live in cities hundreds of kilometres from the coast. As their traditional food oe fish oe becomes scarcer,

songbirds have got louder to compete with traffic noise. And, as many city dwellers know, there are now new varieties of urban rat, housemouse and cockroach.

the Harrier jump jet. Designed by Ralph Hooper and John Fozard of Hawker Aircraft, this highly sophisticated 50-year old aircraft has been modified

Plant-powered planes show promiseto the eye, there was nothing remarkable about the aging Falcon 20 jet as it took off from Ottawa International airport in Canada at the end of October in 2012.

For example, newly released figures collected by a plane trailing the Canadian Falcon 20 suggested that there was a 50%reduction in aerosol emissions compared to conventional fuel.

and the head of a pigeon-racing club, who described a recent competition where some of the unfortunate competitors were eaten by predators

and birds, reduces the risk of being attacked. Lions and cheetahs stalk before they ambush prey,

a bird that many think of as having more to do with barbecue sauce than with arithmetic. If a chicken sits in front of two small opaque screens,

If this sounds complicated for the three-day-old bird, think again. Infant chickens correctly approached the screen hiding more balls nearly 80%of the time.

and squirrel monkeys, lemurs, dolphins, elephants, birds, salamanders and fish. Recently, researchers from Oakland University in Michigan added black bears to the list of the numerically skilled.

Even though the carcass had been visited by jackals, hyenas, vultures, and was under the control of lions by the fourth day,

whenever even a seabird attempted to approach the floating calf, it would immediately be chased away by the other dolphins.

and western scrub jays may mourn as well, each with their own customs. But we humans like to convince ourselves that we are somehow special, unique among the entire animal kingdom.

in the form of vast quantities of guano oe bird droppings oe which indigenous people had been using for centuries as a soil enricher.

and creepers that blocked their way. Over time, their perseverance paid off as their hand-drawn maps began to reveal long-forgotten parts of the massive Mayan city of Caracol.

where the leaders kept their stores of hummingbird and macaw feathers, the dominant currency. A year later

including a low-cost nutcracker for farmers in Morocco and a solar-powered incubator for guinea fowl in Burkina faso.

and start discussing some bird in the tree, I would still be looking for the bird

when they were finished, Â he says.""For everybody else, the bird jumped out. But to me, it was just part of the background.

 All that changed when the lights went down and the previews finished. Almost as soon as he began to watch the film,

Environmentally, the new reservoir can be a haven for wildlife, especially birds; however, inappropriate flooding of vegetation can cause greenhouse gas emissions and poison the water for fish.

A century ago, vast flocks of passenger pigeons covered the North american skies. Hundreds of millions, even billions, stretched across the horizon in every direction.

the last known passenger pigeon, died in Cincinnati Zoo. But if Church has his way, this majestic sight could one day return to our skies.

he and other scientists are dreaming up ambitious plans to resurrect long-dead animals from pigeons to Tasmanian tigers and wooly mammoths.

 The same technologies could also prevent endangered species from going the way of the dodo oe or the passenger pigeon.

though he does not underestimate the effort required to bring the passenger pigeon back to the skies.

Armed with this code, they then need to find a way of engineering a regular pigeon's stem cells into behaving like a passenger pigeon's stem cells by mutating the genome.

Church says the complete genome of the passenger pigeon from museum specimens will soon be published and researchers are beginning to alter the genetic make-up of a more familiar bird oe the chicken oe to practice their techniques."

"What you can do for chicken you should be able to do for pigeon, and that can include creating DNA that you haven't seen alive for a 100 years,

 he says. But even if Church has the passenger pigeon's full genetic code, which he expects to recreate within a decade,

Church admits that bringing it back to life requires a significant improvement in existing genome engineering technologies.

However, he admits that creating a passenger pigeon from the stem cells of an ordinary pigeon would involve a massive scale up of the same technologies.

"If there's enough people enthusiastic about bringing an extinct species like a mammoth or passenger pigeon,

of singing birds Every season, song birds lose some of their brain cells. The cells that allow the birds to learn songs commit suicide only to be replaced by newly grown cells.

This is interesting because brain cells arent supposed to be regenerative, and these so-called precursory cells are native to the bird brain.

The entire process exists only so the birds can learn new songs. http://www. news. harvard. edu/gazette/1998/04. 16/Experimentsrais. html 4. Using immature cells from the brains of mammals to replace dead

or dying human adult cells This is related to the oesong bird secret, except applied to the human brain.

We dont need to regenerate brain cells to learn new songs, but we do need a cure for Alzheimers disease and Parkinsons disease.

Recent experiments show that dead brain cells in mice (which are mammalian like us) can be regenerated with immature brain cells.

The implications are exciting, one day we might even be able to rebuild the entire brain from scratch. http://www. news. harvard. edu/gazette/1998/04. 16/Experimentsrais. html 5. The Suda Experiment:

#Angry Birds Unlikely Pop-Culture Craze Goes From Cellphone Screen to Mainstream Fans celebrate Angry Birds Day It may sound like a tough sell:

a game that involves catapulting birds at elaborate fortresses constructed by evil pigs. But Angry Birds, a hit game by Rovio, a small Finnish company, is one of the unlikeliest pop-culture crazes of the year

and perhaps the first to make the leap from cellphone screens to the mainstream. Angry Birds, in which the birds seek revenge on the egg-stealing pigs,

is meant to be played easily in the checkout line and during other short windows of downtime but some players have trouble stopping.

Put another way, that is 16 human-years of bird-throwing every hour. The game has inspired parodies, homages and fervent testimonials.

Homemade Angry Birds costumes were big hits on Halloween. Conan OBRIEN demonstrated the game in a Youtube video promoting his new show,

and a sketch from an Israeli TV SHOW about a birds-and-pigs peace treaty was popular online.

Justin Bieber and other celebrities have professed their love of Angry Birds on social networks. Games like Angry Birds are reaching a wide audience of players who might never consider buying an Xbox or Playstation,

but are now carrying sophisticated game machines in their pockets smartphones. Software developers eager to become the next Rovio,

The trajectory of Angry Birds also suggests a larger shift in entertainment and in the kinds of brands that can win wide popularity.

And unlike many of the best-known console video games like the classic Super Mario Bros. from Nintendo or the latest in the Call of Duty series, from Activision cellphone games like Angry Birds

got swept up in the Angry Birds craze when her 8-year-old son, Roenick, asked for a birthday cake based on the game.

but he kept most of the bird figures. A photo of the cake ricocheted around the Web. oerequests from people who want one have been pouring in on Twitter and via e-mail

and his boyfriend were such big fans of the game that they decided to create full-body bird costumes for Halloween. oeit was crazy,

Fans of the game took to the streets on Saturday for Angry Birds Day, celebrating its first anniversary.

Rovio says it will create Angry Birds levels for the top 10 cities that celebrate Angry Birds Day.

none have come close to the success of Angry Birds, which cost about $100, 000 to make

when a Rovio designer sketched a rough outline of a bright red bird with a furious expression. oewe didnt know what the game concept would be loved,

but we the birds, he said. oethe entire game and storyline was built around the birds.

Mr. Vesterbacka said the company took notice of the intricate storylines in Pixar films and the popularity of Mario and Luigi

from Super Mario Bros. The stars of Angry Birds do not express themselves much apart from squawks and grunts,

and is working on versions of Angry Birds for gaming consoles and PCS, along with a line of stuffed birds and pigs.

It also hopes to spin the franchise into a movie or childrens TV SHOW. Rovio made a smart choice in making the birds angry

said Jesse Schell, a professor at Carnegie mellon who studies game design and entertainment technology. oeyou can smash them into things and its O k.,

if they were cute little birds. It might be kind of funny on some level, but most people would probably be repulsed a little.

#How the Most Symbolic American Bird Got the Name Turkey Turkey For a species of bird found only in the forests of North america and so symbolic of a U s. holiday,

Well, it turns out that the origins of how this jowly bird arrived at its strikingly Turkish title reflect the history of its international popularity.

has yet to be corrected making turkeys one of the most curiously named birds on the planet.

To pin down an answer to why one of North americas most celebrated birds came to be named after a distant nation all one has to do is look at the history of global commerce.

In turn, one popular type of bird shipped from Africa, called a Guinea fowl, became known as oeturkey cock throughout England.

And, when British settlers arrived in the New world and encountered a large woodland bird that looked a bit like the Guinea fowl fowl theyd grown fond of eating back in England perhaps out of confusion that the two were the same species,

or maybe in longing for something familiar so far from home they ended up referring to this bird as a oeturkey cock too.

Later it was shortened to simply turkey. Another factor that helped perpetuate this unusual choice of names occurred

when these new North american birds became a popular commodity throughout the world sure enough, mostly by way of Turkish merchants.

But it turns out that English speakers werent the only ones to name these birds based on a bit of misinformation.

Sixteenth century importers in Portugal were apparently under the impression that that was where the birds originated from.

The Turks, better than anyone, knew the birds werent from their homeland, but may have thought originally they came from India thanks to a little miscalculation by Columbus. In the end,

for the birds themselves it matters little by what moniker we refer to them though I suspect they would prefer to be called anything but dinner.

¢Birds Nest The Chinese make soup out of this, and one bowl costs anywhere from$30 to $100!

including a cuckoo bee, which will invade another sweat bees next and lay its eggs on the pollen

#Finance Site Lists Most Expensive Invasive Species A Canadian goose Asian carp arent the only invasive species causing trouble in the United states

sometimes the first reaction is to remove the animals from the equation, even with native species like the double-crested cormorant.

The cormorant didnt make this Top Ten list, from Daily Finance, an AOL site. The site based its list on animals

Rounding out the bottom five are killer bees, starlings, mountain pine beetles, brown tree snakes and Asian mongooses.

can play the songs of more than 900 bird species. Using microphones, it can also capture the chirps

and warbles of wild birds and match them against a database of bird sounds to help the oereader identify the species

His recovery was dragging until he made friends with this pigeon, and now the two are rarely apart.

and close to death until it became best friends with a pigeon. The macaque is thriving and the pair are inseparable.

cats and birds cant all be friends somehow? From a sheep that brought a baby elephant out of a deep depression to natural enemies that snuggle down together for every nap,

Cats and birds are known not for their peaceful relations (just ask Tweety and Sylvester), but Snowy and Gladys are the exception to the rule.

when she became the only hen to survive a fox attack on her farm in Suffolk, England,

When they first hatch out, the tiny caterpillars look like little brown bird droppings. They spend most of the day folded up inside leaves as they develop.

small washing machines, scooters, dental work, cellphones, and satellite television with oe21 Tamil TV STATIONS. oerural communities buying insurance and moving into the consumer classes is proof of the growing aspirations, awareness,

not-too-bright, testosterone-filled birds into cities and suburbs, which often provide a wonderful habitat for turkeys on the prowl.

and the bird was returned to the woods unharmed. Turkey-human confrontations are sometimes comical. New jersey Turnpike drivers were befuddled by wild turkeys hanging out at tollbooths.

The birds couldnt hack it. The invention of a netting gun that captured wild turkeys alive changed everything.

The birds thrived in reforested areas. Today, 7 million wild turkeys live in 49 states. Alaska is the only turkey-free state.

because there are so many birds. Feeding wild turkeys is the biggest cause of turkey trouble, he says.

One resident fed buckets of corns to the birds. oewe had complaints about property damage,

The birds have spurs on their feet, wings sharpened like razors from dragging on the ground and a willingness to fight.

But the typical turkey is 20 to 25 pounds. oeyoure more likely to be injured running away from the bird,

Mostly, male birds interact with humans. Mating season lasts from February through May, depending on an areas climate.

British RAF pilots in the early 20th century were the first to spot the strange kite-like lines on the deserts of Israel, Jordan and Egypt from the air and wonder about their origins.

A new study of 16 of what are called desert kites in the eastern Sinai desert confirms

The walls form large funnels to direct gazelle and other large game animals into killing pits Whats more, the kites are between 2, 300 and 2,

The research shows that the construction of the kite was sophisticated actually more than it seemed before,

in Israel. oewe have no doubt at all that the kites were built for hunting, not for any other suggested function.

For a time, many researchers suspected the kites might be corrals for protecting domesticated animals, but that idea has fallen out of favor as more research has been done. oethe hunting theory is accepted the most,

and it appears that for most kites this was indeed the use, said Dani Nadel,

another kite researcher from the University of Haifa, Israel. oethere are similar structures, either from wood or from stone, on most continents.

Interestingly, the walls of the kites are not high enough to actually block the animals.

A careful examination of not just the kites but their locations in relation to pastures and migration routes makes it very clear that desert kites were specialized for specific types of animals.

Some kites cleverly exploited low spots in the landscape to lure animals into the unseen killing pit. oeindeed,

the pit would have appeared to the animals in the funnel as an opening in the boundary walls of the kite through

Another sort of kite was found on steep slopes or ridges below a plateau or shoulder of a hill so that animals driven over the ridge would suddenly be confronted by the installation before and below them,

As for why the kites fell out of use its still a bit of a mystery, says Nadel. oethey were abandoned, in several south-Negev cases,

Mr Kerin says this situation has made post graduates in agriculture oescarcer than hens teeth. He blames the image of agriculture

and youll see birds, bugs, plants, and animals that youd never come across on the ground.

like mammals and birds, said Donoghue. Why the mismatch between different approaches to dating the tree of life?

The research was carried out by the Institute on behalf of Birds Eye the frozen food manufacturer. Nutritionist Dr Sarah Schenker said:

scorpions, dragonflies, barnacles, copepods and centipedes. Remipedes, one of the two species of Xenocarida in the study, had to be fetched from partially submerged limestone caves in the Yucatan peninsula and preserved just so.

and possibly the world, said Dr. Peter English of The University of Texas at Austin. oeamphibians, birds,

The study is published in the open-access scientific journal PLOS ONE. oewe have documented so far 596 bird species occurring in Yasuni,

a bird specialist. oethats incredible diversity to find in just one corner of the Amazon rainforest and rivals any other spot on the planet.

550 bird species and around 200 mammal species, said Dr. Kelly Swing of the University of San francisco in Quito,

or erotic, think of the many African birds that will have nowhere to perch if the rhino is gone.

An especially memorable recommended concoction for this instructs the man to catch a vulture by himself (very important)

Apparently, rubbing your body with dead vulture paste has the ability to bewitch the opposite sex,

a longtime employee Webb assigned to work on the Flamingo and who later became president of Del Webb Corp,

a longtime employee Webb assigned to work on the Flamingo and who later became president of Del Webb Corp,

what youd call a high roller, but Ive taken my share of lickings up there up to $9, 000 or $10, 000 on a few nights.

That hobby made him the acquaintance of Alfred Winter, who ran gambling operations illegally in Portland,

Mr. Kobayashi built an oval birds nest of a house, 12 feet high and 9 feet in diameter, reached by a circular staircase,

#said Kimberly Jaeger, a Publix spokeswoman. We are working with our suppliers to secure as much organic milk as we can.#

#Birds in cities sing at higher pitch: study Because sounds bounce and travel in different ways,

birds have to use songs that can cope with this#.#Birds living in urban areas sing at a higher pitch to reduce the impact of echoes from surrounding buildings, a study claims.

Higher-pitched songs travel further in built-up areas because their echoes fade more quickly, meaning the following notes are clearer and easier to pick out.

It had suggested previously that great tits and other common birds raised their pitch in urban areas to distinguish their song from the low-pitch drone of traffic and machinery,

but now scientists believe it could be a combination of the two. Emily Mockford, a researcher from Aberystwyth University

birds have to use songs that can cope with this#.#The study, published in the PLOS One journal, also found that urban birds songs were heard more clearly in woodland than those of forest-dwelling birds,

possibly because rural birds use clues like how muffled songs are to determine their distance from one another.

Dr Rupert Marshall, another of the researchers, added: In woodland where trees and leaves obscure the view,

many species of songbird can tell how far away a rival is degraded by how its song is.

and song doesn t degrade as quickly, so city birds may just concentrate on being heard.##Via Telegraph Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati T

#Apple Picks Instagram as the iphone App Of The Year#Instagram is the year end winner.

This year, the biggest winner on the apps front was Angry Birds, which ran away with the number one spot on the iphone and ipad-in all categories except top free iphone app,

#Angry Birds, which is available on ios as both a paid and free application, not only dominated the year-end lists as the number one download in several cases,

it also occupied additional slots on multiple lists for its spinoffs, Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio.

1. Angry Birds 2. Fruit Ninja 3. Angry Birds Seasons 4. Cut the Rope 5. Tiny Wings 6. Angry Birds Rio

1. Facebook 2. Pandora Radio 3. Words with Friends Free 4. Angry Birds Free 5. Skype 6. Netflix 7. Angry Birds Rio

1. Angry Birds HD 2. Pages 3. Angry Birds Seasons 4. Garageband 5. Angry Birds Rio HD 6. Penultimate 7

Keynote Top Free ipad Apps 1. Angry Birds HD Free 2. The Weather Channel for ipad 3. Netflix 4. CNN App for ipad 5

. Angry Birds Rio HD Free 6. Kindle 7. Skype for ipad 8. Calculator for ipad Free 9. Pandora Radio 10.

#Turkey researchers working hard to build a better bird Eastern wild turkeys have that classic turkey look,

Meleagris gallopavo, the quintessential New world bird, was already an Old world favorite by the time colonists in North america first celebrated any Thanksgiving feasts.

Today s turkey researchers are investigating the big bird s genetic heritage and biology as part of an effort to improve several aspects of its cultivation.

and trying to figure out, are there traits in the original wild bird that might be useful for today s bird?#

The birds were established well as a food source by the time the Conquistadors arrived. The Spanish took the birds back to Europe,

and they quickly spread across the continent. Very quickly the domesticated turkey became, as far as I could tell,

they found large populations of wild birds that provided a reliable food source. Colonists eventually began raising turkeys,

but did not domesticate the wild birds. The commercial birds that we eat today were developed actually in the United states,

#said Long. But they were developed on stocks that came from Europe that originally came from Mexico.#

then you can have these birds again more resistant to the toxin, #said Dalloul. No natural matingeven the intended consequences of commercial turkey breeds have introduced complications.

Breeders developed birds with more white meat. The resulting turkeys, such as the broad breasted white, grow muscle quickly,

when the birds need to reproduce,##said Long. In the commercial turkey industry there are no birds that naturally mate.#

#The great majority of turkey farmers must therefore depend upon artificial insemination, said Long. She suggested that there may be rare exceptions among small farms raising older breeds of turkeys, called heritage breeds,

and female hens inseminated weekly. The amazing thing about the turkey hen is she s capable of keeping viable sperm cells for up to ten weeks after a single insemination,

#said Long. The best we can do and still maintain high levels of fertility is about six hours.#

including why some hens lay more eggs than others. Via MSNBC Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati

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