This post presents amazing video clips of the courtship behaviour of six birds. Such amazing behaviour that is linked to appearance and build is worth thinking about just over 200 hundred years after the birth of Darwin. The post simply explains the behaviour in a single paragraph, gives a link for further study and leaves the reader to watch the short video.
Sage-Grouse
The sage-grouse from temperate North America, is one of the many species of birds that practice lekking, a behaviour in which the male birds gather and put on displays that aim to attract female birds. The female bird selects a male based on her judgement of the display. The most attractive males mate with many females strengthening the advantage of an attractive display.
A new report published in the journal Global Change Biology shows that 45 species of the Galapagos Islands have become extinct or are facing extinction largely due to human activities.
The main causes are the 1982 El Nino and overfishing. The results show the great vulnerability of this diverse area to significant climate change and human activities.
Whether you are eating turkey or tofurkey this Thanksgiving, you cannot deny the great sacrifice that turkeys are making to fill dinner plates across the nation. I figured I would honor their sacrifice here on the eve of thanksgiving, with some fun turkey facts.
More than 45 million turkeys are eaten in the U.S. at Thanksgiving (one sixth of all turkeys sold in the U.S. each year). American per capita consumption of turkeys has soared from 8.3 pounds in 1975 to 18.5 pounds in 1997. Ten years later, the number has dropped slightly in 2007 to 17.5 pounds (more tofurkey?)
A new study shows that alligators are remarkably loyal to their sexual partners. This could help to shed light on the mating habits of some dinosaurs as well.
Communities of all sorts are being disturbed by the fires in California. As another result of climate change, bird communities are expected to see some big changes in other ways, according to a new report released on September 1.
In a new research paper the team, from Stockholm University, Sweden, report that levels of Thiamine, vital for the proper functioning of the nerves, were found to be deficient in the eggs, livers and brains of several local bird species, contributing to significant declines in many bird populations over the last few decades.
Hearteningly, it seems that paralysed individuals can be successfully remedied by thiamine treatment
Whatever the relative merits and drawbacks of biomass are, they are preferable to continuing to mine and burn coal. Until we start to bring large-scale base loading renewable capacity online, we continue inexorably on the same business as usual curve.
The recovery of peregrine falcons is one of the great success stories of conservation. Now their population in Florida has rebounded enough to remove them from the state’s endangered species list.
Upon approving their removal from the list, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission called the combined efforts of wildlife managers and individuals to save the species “one of the best examples of wise conservation practices.”
A new exterior film for glass has been developed which can be seen by birds but not humans. It could be used to help prevent the needless deaths of billions of birds which collide with windows annually.
Collisions with windows are estimated to be the most common cause of bird death worldwide aside from habitat loss. The numbers of deaths are staggering, outranking deaths by domestic cat, hunting, vehicular collisions, and wind turbine accidents combined. Thus, preventing bird-window collisions could be the simplest way to significantly reduce bird fatality around the world.
As a child, eggs were special one day of the year: Easter. Back then an egg was a treasure. But since my parents stopped hiding eggs for me, eggs haven’t held much meaning. White and, well, egg-shaped, they help me when I need to make a quick meal or mix up some cookie dough. But that’s about it. For me anyway. For some an egg means everything.
For the first time in over a century, a Common Murre egg has been found south of the Canadian border on the east coast, bringing hope to the hearts of those working to restore the bird to the sub-Canadian region.
The world’s largest oil sands company now admits that a total of 1,606 ducks were found dead last spring after initially reporting the death of only 500 birds.
