birds
grrlscientist | May 7, 2009tags: Red-Winged Blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery birds] Red-Winged Blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus, photographed at San Bernard Refuge, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 20 March 2009 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with tsn-pz camera eyepiece 1/320s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, author of Aimophila Adventures and Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
A couple of years ago I was leading a…
grrlscientist | May 6, 2009tags: Hoopoe, Epupa epops, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery birds] Hoopoe, Epupa epops, feeding its chick [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Orphaned -- contact me for attribution [larger view].
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Can you tell me where this bird species is endemic?
Review all mystery birds to date.
grrlscientist | May 5, 2009tags: White Ibis, Eudocimus albus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery birds] White Ibis, Eudocimus albus, photographed at the San Bernard Refuge, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 1 March 2009 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with tsn-pz camera eyepiece 1/640s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
bioephemera | May 4, 2009
The Lady of Broken Hearts
Natalie Shau
Lithuanian artist Natalie Shau works in digital media, mostly using Photoshop. You can see more of Shau's work at her website and at the website of jewelery designer Lydia Courteille, for whom she illustrated a cabinet-of-curiosities themed ad campaign. hat-tip: Haute Macabre.
grrlscientist | May 4, 2009tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
BirdLife's newest flyways project will help to make one of
the world's most important bird migration flyways safer for soaring birds.
Image: Desert Vu.
Birds in Science and Technology
Zebra finches, which normally learn their complex courtship songs from their fathers, spontaneously developed the same songs all on their own after only a few generations. "We found that in this case, the culture was pretty much encoded in the genome," said Partha Mitra of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, co-author of the…
razib | May 4, 2009In Nature, De novo establishment of wild-type song culture in the zebra finch:
Culture is typically viewed as consisting of traits inherited epigenetically, through social learning. However, cultural diversity has species-typical constraints, presumably of genetic origin... Zebra finch isolates, unexposed to singing males during development, produce song with characteristics that differ from the wild-type song found in laboratory11 or natural colonies. In tutoring lineages starting from isolate founders, we quantified alterations in song across tutoring generations in two social environments…
grrlscientist | May 4, 2009tags: Jamaican Euphonia, Euphonia jamaica, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Jamaican Euphonia, Euphonia jamaica, photographed in Jamaica [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Paul Jones [larger view].
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
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grrlscientist | May 3, 2009tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"How does one distinguish a truly civilized nation from an aggregation of
barbarians? That is easy. A civilized country produces much good bird
literature."
--Edgar Kincaid
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and…
grrlscientist | May 3, 2009tags: Brown-headed Cowbird, Molothrus ater, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Brown-headed Cowbird, Molothrus ater, photographed in Arizona. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Richard Ditch, 21 June 2007 [larger view].
Date Time Original: 2007:06:21 08:39:09
Exposure Time: 1/40
F-Number: 5.60
ISO: 800
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
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grrlscientist | May 2, 2009tags: Black and White Warbler, Mniotilta varia, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery birds] Black and White Warbler, Mniotilta varia, photographed in Quintana and Beach, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 20 March 2009 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with tsn-pz camera eyepiece 1/350s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
grrlscientist | May 1, 2009tags: Song Sparrow, Melospiza melodia, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Song Sparrow, Melospiza melodia, photographed in Arizona. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Richard Ditch, 12 November 2007 [larger view].
Date Time Original: 2007:11:12 09:10:55
Exposure Time: 1/124
F-Number: 8.00
ISO: 400
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
laelaps | May 1, 2009
A herring gull (Larus argentatus) flying off with a snack. Photographed at Spring Lake, New Jersey.
edyong | April 30, 2009Snowball, the sulphur-crested cockatoo, is an internet superstar. He's known for his penchant for grooving to music, notably Everybody by the Backstreet Boys. As the music plays, Snowball bobs his head and taps his feet in perfect time with it. If it speeds up or slows down, his rhythm does too. He is one of two parrots that are leading a dance dance revolution, by showing that the human behaviour of moving in time to music (even really, really bad music) is one that's shared by other animals.
People who've attended parties at scientific events may question the ability of humans to move to a…
grrlscientist | April 30, 2009tags: Horned Lark, Eremophila alpestris, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery birds] Horned Lark, Eremophila alpestris, photographed in Paul Rushing Park, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 3 March 2009 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with tsn-pz camera eyepiece 1/200s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
grrlscientist | April 29, 2009tags: Blue Mountain Vireo, Vireo osburni, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery birds] Blue Mountain Vireo, Vireo osburni, photographed at Portland Gap, Blue Mountains, Jamaica. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Paul Jones, 18 March 2009 [larger view].
Canon 30-D, 300f4 lens, 1/250 at f4, 320 ISO.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
laelaps | April 29, 2009
An Eastern goldfinch (Carduelis tristis), photographed in suburban New Jersey.
grrlscientist | April 28, 2009tags: Roseate Spoonbill, Platalea (Ajaia) ajaj, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery birds] Roseate Spoonbill, Ajaia ajaj, photographed at Tom Bass Park, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 20 March 2009 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with tsn-pz camera eyepiece 1/1000s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
laelaps | April 28, 2009
A tufted titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor), photographed in suburban New Jersey.
edyong | April 27, 2009For many animals, living with others has obvious benefits. Social animals can hunt in packs, gain safety in numbers or even learn from each other. In some cases, they can even solve problems more quickly as a group than as individuals. That's even true for the humble house sparrow - Andras Liker and Veronika Bokony from the University of Pannonia, Hungary, found that groups of 6 sparrows are much faster at opening a tricky bird feeder than pairs of birds.
After ruling out several possible explanations, the duo put the speedy work of the bigger flock down to their greater odds of including…