article thumbnail

Well Adapted for a Plunge-diving Lifestyle

10,000 Birds

Watching Humboldt seabirds on the cold waters off the coast of South America , I noticed that of them dive for their fish/food. Small birds will take shallow dives with little or no head start (terns and some gulls) whereas other will take impressive head starts for deeper dives and generally larger fish. Birds Peruvian Boobi'

Lifestyle 196
article thumbnail

The five most unique birds in the world

10,000 Birds

What are the world’s most distinctive birds? That question could be answered in several ways, but a new paper released this month — Global Distribution and Conservation of Evolutionary Distinctness in Birds (Jetz et al. The Oilbird today lives only in South America, but fossils of similar species are known from Wyoming.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Trending Sources

article thumbnail

The Endangered Andean Flamingo

10,000 Birds

The Andean Flamingo ( Phoenicopterus andinus ) is one of the three flamingos occurring in the high Andes of South America. The status of its preferred wetlands throughout the year dictates movements that often results in a nomadic lifestyle. It is the largest and easiest to identify in all age stages.

Chile 155
article thumbnail

Here’s the new bird family tree. It’s amazing.

10,000 Birds

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. One of the central papers, Whole-genome analyses resolve early branches in the tree of life of modern birds (Jarvis et al. American Flamingo photo by Dick Culbert).

Family 279
article thumbnail

The Amazing Exploding Dove Meets Montana

10,000 Birds

And reports of birds nesting – not owls, of course, those weirdo snow fetishists, but other birds nesting – light up my life. Most exotics, at least in the bird world, stick close to their point of arrival and barely hang on – or don’t – over the generations. In 1998 W. And of Wyoming.

Montana 138