A team of scientists from the United States and Denmark has found specialized pecking-related regions in the woodpecker forebrain that show characteristics that until now have only been associated with vocal learning in animals and language in humans; instead of being related to vocalization, activity in these brain regions is related to the characteristic tree […]
Tag: Hummingbirds
Man Finds Baby Hummingbird and Nurses her Back to Health Until She’s Strong Enough to Fly
This man spotted a tiny lump on the sidewalk and found out that it was a baby hummingbird. The baby was too young to fly and appeared malnourished, so Sammy took her home and nursed the bird back to health. Sammy didn’t have any birds, so all the tools he used were makeshift. He made […]
Birds, bats, bees and butterflies are essential for pollination in your garden
Pollinators include birds, bats, bees, butterflies, and a variety of other insects. We’d be in a lot of trouble if they didn’t exist. Pollinators are involved in one out of every three bites of food humans consume, and they are critical to the ecosystem’s balance. According to estimates, between 75 and 95 percent of all […]
Some hummingbird females display male coloring to avoid being harassed
Female hummingbirds sometimes look like the brightly colored males of their species. Researchers have long pondered the reason for this. Now, a study of hummingbirds in Panama suggests that sporting male-like feathers helps some females avoid intense bullying, researchers recently reported in Current Biology. To find out why this surprising pattern arises, researchers studied the […]
I thank my lucky stars for the rosellas that led to my career in ornithology
A flash of colour that takes my eye at the age of 10 in 1968 and learning that it is an Adelaide rosella. Reaching the edge of a vast swamp north of Birdsville in 1982 thinking, “This is perfect habitat for grey grasswrens. They must be here.” And they are! Right at the edge of […]
Meet the beautiful birds that are rebuilding Brazil’s Atlantic Forests
Want to restore a degraded forest? Why not let the birds do the work! Find out how – with a little help from BirdLife – some of Brazil’s most threatened birds are coming back, and bringing the whole forest with them… When you think of Brazilian forests, the Amazon is probably the first place that […]
Jamaican Hummingbirds
Jamaican Hummingbirds are quite dazzling. A year ago today, while visiting Jamaica, I was blessed to have a visit from a stunning maleRed-billed Streamertail (Trochilus polytmus.) Early mornings, I stoodon my balcony waiting for them to come sip from the bright hibiscus blossoms covering a large bush just below my railing. During my walks to […]
Endemic & Endangered Birds of the “Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta” (Colombia-South America)
Colombia, is one of the countries with the highest biodiversity on the planet, the highest number of animal and plant species per square kilometer anywhere in the world. With 1871 bird species, it has the largest number of bird species of any country on earth, this number continue to rise each year, 74 birds are […]