10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 30, 2023

The Ashy Tailorbird is a good example of the different perspectives of describing a bird – while the English name focuses on the body of the bird, the Latin species name ruficeps refers to the rufous head. The paper cites the example of the Blue-footed Booby: Its foot color becomes duller when the birds are malnourished.

Woodpeckers 222

Woodpeckers Birds Eggs India 222

10,000 Birds

JUNE 27, 2018

There are important details within that dictum that we will ignore here, but this has to do with knowing when a characteristic doesn’t really tell you about the relative position of species on a “tree of life” vs when the characteristic works for that purpose. Rather, cladistics is a way of looking at the process of evolution of species.

Monkeys 144

Monkeys Gorillas Whales Whaling 144

10,000 Birds

JULY 21, 2022

The one bird I did not see here, however, was the Bateleur Eagle … One highlight in the area is the Saddle-billed Stork , likely to be the tallest species in the stork family. The African Spoonbill is one of the six global spoonbill species, and the main African one (there are also some Eurasian Spoonbills in Africa).

Ostriches 147

Ostriches Parrots Birds Eggs 147

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 19, 2014

So, for example, humans are apes. Fortunately for we humans, placing primates properly phylogenetically in relation to the other mammals requires an act or two of faith at the deeper ends of the family tree, but it is probably true that primates and rodents share a common stock to the exclusion of others, so maybe we are all mice.

Camels 204

Camels Whales Whaling Apes 204

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 18, 2016

Primates are exceptional among the mammals, living amphibians (which represent only a small part of the original amphibian family tree) are pretty noisy too. It is costly, it determines mating success, it defines and controls territoriality, and in some species may be communicative in other ways as well.

Groups 171

Groups Collecting Primates Bats 171

10,000 Birds

JUNE 16, 2011

But that is because we often have the relationship between dinosaurs and birds reversed in our little primate minds; Much of what is bird-like is not exclusive to birds, but rather, to a larger group of dinosaurs. For example, there seems to have been dinosaurs that used feathers as their body covering.

Birds 271

Birds Primates Marsupials Whales 271

10,000 Birds

JUNE 21, 2016

More on this here , as well as some audio examples for you to listen to. For example, some of that brainy tissue needed to be a singing, territory defending, mate seeking male bird is added during breeding season, and removed later when not needed. And the more the juveniles paid attention, the better they learned. Here’s the problem.

Mammals 113

Mammals Zebras Birds Primates 113