Tag Info

The male kakapo (Strigops habroptila) in that video is called Sirocco. Kakapo were (and still are) very close to extinction, so in the 1980s the Kakapo Recovery Programme was launched. As part of this programme, rangers monitor all known kakapo in the wild, visiting their nests and generally ensuring they are in good health. When Sirocco was a young chick, a ...

Flying came first, as far as we know. The earliest known bird (currently), Archaeopteryx lithographica, already had aerodynamic feathers (Feduccia and Tordoff, 1979). The Solnhofen Limestone, where it was discovered, is ~145 million years old, so we can place the "when" flight evolved to greater than or equal to that time. Gansus yumenensis is regarded as ...

Crows are omnivorous, and will eat almost anything they find or can kill. In this case the prey looks like a Northern Flicker.

European Green Woodpecker (Picus viridis) and it is native to your area according to its species range map http://woodpeckersofeurope.info/?q=green_woodpecker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Green_Woodpecker

The hoatzin has a digestive system that makes use of bacterial fermentation. Many other birds also consume grass, e.g. ostriches, ducks and geese. There's also a large body of literature on how birds can digest cellulose.

LG stands for "linkage group". It seems the Chicken Genome Sequence group (Hillier et al., 2004) allocated several linkage groups (alleles or genes which tend to be inherited together) to the microchromosomes (tiny chromosomes typical of birds and reptiles), in this case called "linkage group E64" and "linkage group E22....". There are a load more ...

In mammals there are only two species (known, there may well be others) where males lactate. They are both species of bats and this paper discusses the evolutionary mechanisms that could underlie male lactation. I have ignored human cases because they are more of an unusual occurrence (often brought on by severe dietary stress) rather than an evolved ...

I'm not really inside the field but few weeks ago I noticed a Plos One article that was dealing with this. Indeed albatross can fly for thousands of miles and this is possible at no mechanical cost, because they use a dynamic way of flight that takes the energy from wind (dynamic soaring) (ref-1). Their muscle-skeletal system further evolved so that no ...

This resource provides a short list of which general components of plumage are good indicators of a healthy bird. Your pet's plumage should be. . . Soft - feathers should be strong, yet flexible. Smooth - no rough feather shafts; no uneven or split edges Glossy - sheen extends over the entire coat Full - thick, where it needs to be ...

Another way to look at this is: How do you evolve flight when you're aquatic? There are three proposed models (or even five) for the evolution of flight: wings helped predators to better jump at prey from high positions wings helped a jumping animal to make longer jumps wings helped a tree-living animal to get around All of these models assume that you ...

It looks like a passerine bird, but I can't really tell the species without seeing the whole body. As for what to do with it, your best course of action is to leave it alone. Trust me. Once placed tissue paper over a pigeon's eggs to keep them warm, and the mother crushed them when she landed on the nest because she didn't see the eggs. If there are eggs in ...

Hmmmm... the only one I can think of fitting at least in part your description would be the golden oriole (Oriolus oriolus). I say partly because it definitely is not 2-3 times a blackbird, could be slightly bigger, but on average it is the same size. Also it sounds extremely unlikely that you have spotted it in early March in Zurich, as they should be in ...

The bird needs to be left alone; that's the best help you can give it. Anything more than watching it is liable to lead to nesting failure (e.g. abandonment of the nest). The bird looks attentive and quiet, and so is most likely an adult keeping the eggs or chicks warm. The bill suggests a seed-eating bird, but there are large numbers of those (e.g. ...

Found this image here. I've also seen references to the "closed orange ear patch" of the King Penguin, which fits with the image. So my vote is for the DK image being a King Penguin.

Birds do groom, but not like mammals do. People tend to call their grooming behavior preening. Preening removes dirt and parasites, arranges the feathers nicely, and distributes oils over the feather (very important for waterfowl.) To answer your question better, we need to look at the specific species. Lots of birds preen each other socially, so if you ...

Recent research has indicated that wild American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) can recognize individual human faces (Mazluff et al. 2010). If crows can recognize individual people, then it might not be too farfetched that other bird groups can recognize each other by appearance.

Having seen some nature documentaries about Penguins identifying their offspring using sound alone (even in flocks of hundreds of thousands of other birds), my immediate impression was that sound is likely to be more important with regard to recognizing individuals of the same species. This is corroborated by Melissa Mayntz, a bird enthusiast, who has ...