This site uses cookies to improve your experience. To help us insure we adhere to various privacy regulations, please select your country/region of residence. If you do not select a country, we will assume you are from the United States. Select your Cookie Settings or view our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Used for the proper function of the website
Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Strictly Necessary: Used for the proper function of the website
Performance/Analytics: Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Doug Futuyma believes in science and in the scientific basis of evolution. How Birds Evolve: What Science Reveals about Their Origin, Lives, and Diversity by Douglas J. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s just a very different kind of book than popular books about bird behavior, which rely on story as much as science.
Proving that cruelty knows no bounds, some (language unsuitable for a family blog) in Virginia Beach is shooting blow darts at birds. Meanwhile, an Oregon farmer caught a beating from a neighbor irritated by his loud “bird cannons.” (Who Who knew there was such a thing?).
The magnificent history and diversity of birds on Earth came into sharper focus this month with the publication of 28 new scientific papers in Science and other journals. ’s bird family tree in a new tab and follow along as you read. American Flamingo photo by Dick Culbert). In 2008, Nick Sly published a review of Hackett et al.
The White-naped Xenopsaris is a member of the Tityra family (Tityridae), a newish family of mostly South American birds carved from various oddball birds formerly lumped with the manakins, the tyrant-flycatchers and the cotingas. It was both mysterious and plain. . Juvenile White-naped Xenopsaris by Hector Bottai (Creative Commons).
It also summarizes the vagrancy status of every bird family in the whole wide world, which makes it fun to read as well as superbly educational. The Family Accounts are the fun part of the book. The Family Accounts are also a deeply informational, documented source of information for researchers.
Animal rights activists from a group called The Militant Forces Against Huntingdon Life Sciences went to a cemetery and dug up an urn belonging to the family of Novartis CEO Daniel Vasella. If you wish the urn that was taken from the grave to be returned then you need to publically finish with Huntingon Life Sciences immediately.
This research suggests that the boom isn’t due to an influx of newcomers, but rather because more local birds are flourishing and successfully rearing families. If there is one silver lining to all of this gloomy news, it’s that the efforts of birders truly make a difference in helping to advance science.
Since this research has a strong citizen science component, we want to help Pavel spread the word: What happens with birdsong during invasion of a new territory? A similar citizen science project in the Czech Republic was a huge success. Can it work? During two years, more than 1,700 recordings were obtained.
Some jerk (I’d use a stronger word, but this is a family-friendly website) in Wisconsin is shooting raptors. (Image above by Peter Wallack/Wikimedia Commons). Magpies sometimes get a bad rap, but a new study finds that kleptomania shouldn’t be part of it. Birding in the Bronx? Yep, at the Dred Scott Bird Sanctuary.
For one thing, we become more aware of cultural biases in our science (new findings on warbling female birds, for example, reveal both gender and geographic biases). Many popular science books have neither. As Ackerman explains in her Introduction, studying extreme behavior brings new insight into what we think we know.
Lees and Gilroy delineate vagrancy status and trends for every bird family worldwide, highlighting examples, synthesizing research, and framing it all with their own thoughts and conclusions. It’s a unique title; twitchers and naturalists interested in migration will find it fascinating reading and valuable for future reference.
Nonetheless, I thought it might be interesting and informative to review a DVD put out by Crowe’s Nest Media , a family owned and operated company, which is how I found a copy of Your Backyard: A young beginner’s guide to identifying 18 common feeder birds by sight & sound in my mailbox earlier this week.
There is a fantastic paper just out in Science : “Sustained miniaturization and anatomoical innovation in the dinosaurian anceestors of birds” by Michael Lee, Andrea Cau, Darren Naishe and Gareth Dyke. The paper that just came out in science has the following spectacular conclusion. Science , 345 (6196 ), 562–566.
Their taxonomic affinities have caused great confusion and debate amongst ornithologists; they were originally assigned to the thrush family, then Old World warblers before being shifted to babblers (the last mentioned a common dumping-ground for any aberrant passerines).
Blackbirds, as a family, often have those simple descriptive names that are easy to mock ( Yellow-rumped Warbler , ugh) until a non-birder comes describing such a species to you and asking for an ID. He described the Brewer’s Blackbird for science more than a decade before Audubon.
And now we enter into a family of birds more or less unknown to non-birders. And truth told, over the years they’ve been something of a square peg for ornithologists too, not fitting precisely into any of the known families of birds. I would never have believed it, but if the science says so who am I to argue otherwise?
Earlier this afternoon my small family made a drive out to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. Do it for science! We went because Desi, my four-year-old son, wanted to see a Snowy Owl after hearing about and seeing pictures of all of the owls his dad had been seeing this winter. ” Desi with Snow. Donate now to Project SNOWstorm !
The single greatest challenge facing any book of science writing is balance. Otherwise, there would be no science writing, everyone would just go straight to the journals. That issue aside, though, this is a fascinating book which will engage not just birders, but most people who have any interest in nature or the science of the mind.
It’s a book that counterpoints and combines facts and personal experiences, science-based and eloquent writing styles, textual description and visual information, a history of abundance and an uncertain future. There are also introductions to a couple of related species within the family sections–Golden-Plovers and Willets.
The Trogon family (and order, since the order only includes one family) is quite widespread, being found in all the tropical (and some subtropical) regions of the world. So far, one third of my weekly outings have involved trogon sightings, with their distinctive calls being heard on a few other trips. Those are good numbers.
We spend time daydreaming about things that are important to us — like upcoming vacations with friends and family. There will be no regrets and no family fights over what to spend the cash on. You can register for a free webinar by Tim in which he will expand on the science of workplace motivation. Register here. Zoltners, A.,
Artists rendition of Inkayacu paracasensis There are 17 living species of penguins, which make up their own Linnean family (Spheniscidae), which is the only family in the order Sphenisciformes. Fossil Evidence for Evolution of the Shape and Color of Penguin Feathers Science, 330 (6006), 954-957 DOI: 10.1126/science.1193604
In the midst of a global pandemic, medical professionals have been heralded as heroes, with some even rising to the status of pop culture icons – even as some supposedly advanced nations have been plummeting into the depths of anti-science superstition lately. I can think of no higher honor.
Fantails are a family that, apart from the aberrant Silktail and Pygmy Drongo, are extremely similar in appearance and behaviour. The New Zealand Fantail was once placed with the Grey Fantail of Australia, but are now treated as separate, because of science. The family also reaches into India and as far east as samoa and Fiji.
How to choose bird feeders; how to make nutritious bird food; how to create a backyard environment that will attract birds; how to survey your feeder birds for citizen science projects; how to prevent squirrels from gobbling up all your black oil sunflower seed (sorry, none of that works). million people in the U.S. in 2011*) came about.
Guiding aside, Howell is a research associate at the California Academy of Sciences and the author of many books, including Petrels, Albatrosses, and Storm-Petrels of North America (Princeton). And that is what recommends Steve N. Howell and Fabrice Schmitt: both of them are international bird tour leaders with WINGS.
For example, I was going to add “no tail” to the list of features above, what all frogs share, when I remembered that there are indeed a small family of Tailed frogs, four species in New Zealand and two in North America (though, the tails are quite tiny). If you don’t live near a science museum, then read this chapter.
Ornithology By Corey • March 2, 2011 • 4 comments Tweet Share If you like science and comic strips you definitely want to read xkcd. Hes only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasnt working as a union representative or spending time with his family.
It’s relatively easy to classify birds into family groups based on physical characteristics. We view them as our enemies when they eat our crops and as an extension of our family when we see them at our feeders. Remarkably, there are 59 bird families that have very little cultural significance; these are listed in Appendix III.
After experiencing the Rachel Carson Commemorative in Duxbury, MA, she was moved to share some little-known facts about this tremendously influential nature writer’s interest in birds… I was thirteen when my mother and I took turns reading aloud the new bestseller, Silent Spring , on family vacation the summer of 1963.
The post stimulated some great discussions but not really any additional commentary on the science behind these proposed relationships. Last month, I wrote about hypothesized relationships between passerines, parrots, falcons, and seriemas , noting a need for further research on the subject.
Granted, it’s not always on a scale we can readily appreciate, and we humans are much more attuned to the differences in each other because that’s how we recognize friends, family, and celebrities on the street, but when a bird is even slightly different from the norm, it’s generally the more expected species than the unexpected.
Not only has this live camera feed provided a wonderful educational resource for science teachers across the country, but it has also shed light on some very interesting behaviors of these owls. They have recently lost the last of their juvenile fluff and it looks like they may be getting down to the serious business of raising a family!
But that is science in hierarchical institutions). Confusingly, while there are more than 50 species in the fantail family, the Yellow-bellied Fantail is not one of them. Instead, it is a member of the family of fairy-flycatchers, which sounds vaguely homophobic but probably is not.
I would be more apt to accept the science of BBI if the science of hemispheric brain functions was not subject to so much misconceptions and simplification.* I wish Karlson and Rosselet had cited scientific articles explaining the basics of brain psychobiology to support their ideas.
For example, on finding gulls: Close study of gulls is not for everyone, and birders shouldn’t feel obligated to get deep into it if you prefer colorful, less-confusing, families of birds.
Quite likely, these birds are also the inspiration for Australian science communicator Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki. Honeyeaters are a large bird family (190 species) with a strong presence in Australia. If I was a Rainbow Lorikeet, I would probably only go outside at night, when darkness covers my exuberant colors. ” (HBW).
This just doesn’t seem like rocket science to me. Our National Wildlife Refuges need our help to remain a viable entity promoting wildlife conservation. We have a simple solution to raise more money for the National Wildlife Refuge System. A lot more money! Let’s look at some facts. A 2011 survey by the U.S. million hunters.
This has happened before, Archaeopteryx and the bird family tree have had an often tenuous relationship. But it is utterly bewildering to me to see news reports about this recent science that read “… An icon knocked from its perch&# or “Archaeopteryx no longer first bird.&#
This is a delightful book, large (8-1/2 by 11 inches), filled with Sibley’s distinctive artwork and an organized potpourri of research-based stories about the science behind bird’s lives. They portray the nesting cycles of Mallard, Red-tailed Hawk, and American Robin, illustrating the various ways in which birds create families.
The photographs are from VIREO, the ornithological image collection associated with the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, which licenses bird photographs to many guides and reference books. Using the icons to locate specific bird families takes a little getting used to, but if you do it often it works well as a finding tool.
It would make a great housewarming gift for the family that just acquired a yard, and is well-suited for giving to that one relative who always wants to ask you about the bird they saw last week that was about so big, and red, but with some black on it too.
And, whether I like it or not, the much-reviled starling turned out to be one of the very first species for which I could confirm breeding in this citizen-science endeavor — and for that, I had to give them a bit more attention than usual.
The Atlas of Birds is presented in eight parts: an Introduction to Birds (evolution, structure, feathers); Where Birds Live (endemics, Important Bird Areas, places); Birds in Order (a rundown of the taxonomic families); How birds Live (feeding, nesting, migrating), Birds and People (we eat them, paint them, study them, and sometimes get very angry (..)
We organize all of the trending information in your field so you don't have to. Join 30+ users and stay up to date on the latest articles your peers are reading.
You know about us, now we want to get to know you!
Let's personalize your content
Let's get even more personalized
We recognize your account from another site in our network, please click 'Send Email' below to continue with verifying your account and setting a password.
Let's personalize your content