What happens when Helmeted Guinea Fowl, out walking, encounter an unexpected pothole? Do they fall over? That depends, in quite an improbable way, on whether they see it coming or not … In 2005, a research team at Concord Field Station, the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, US, endeavoured to clarify things by encouraging […]
Tag: Birds
Novel Mode of Capturing a Heron (1866)
Hardwicke’s Science-Gossip was a monthly publication that brought science (mostly botany, zoology and geology) to the masses. Science-Gossip provided short summaries of scientific studies (mostly botany and zoology); advice to the hobbyist on raising reptiles, catching rare butterflies, building a microscope, etc; and most interesting, pages and pages of correspondence, answering readers’ questions and reprinting […]
Swallows and Bed-Bugs
One hundred years ago, an ornithologist confessed that one, at least, of his beliefs had been shaken. He published a paper about it: “Swallows and Bed-Bugs,” Edward R. Warren, The Condor, 1913, Vol.15(1), pp.14-16. IN MY paper in the May-June CONDOR, 1912, entitled “Some North-central Colorado Bird Notes,” I referred to the belief that swallows […]
Progress in Head Mounted Flying Animal Feeders
Some of our readers will no doubt recognise (in the drawing above) David M. Leslie’s 1999 patent for a Wearable device for feeding and observing birds and other flying animals. The invention provided, perhaps for the first time, assistance for “Persons with a sincere and deep-rooted interest in birds” who “… often share an urge […]
Vulture Day 2013
• This year’s International Vulture Awareness Day is set for September 7th. • More than 50 organisations across the globe will be participating in the event. • Full details available from VultureDay.org
Hare in the air: How rare?
One vital statistic is only implied, and that just barely, in the Australian Transport Safety Bureau‘s report “Australian aviation wildlife strike statistics: Bird and animal strikes 2002 to 2009“. The report lists the number of times various animal species struck (or were struck by) aircraft. But it does not specify what percentage of those strikes […]
How ‘human’ are birds compared to, say, dogs?
One possible way of answering such a question might be to examine what kind of names people tend to give to them. Substantial groundwork was laid out in ‘La pensée sauvage’ written in 1962 by the eminent French anthropologist and ethnologist (the late) Claude Lévi-Strauss. The book outlined his discoveries regarding subtle differences in the […]
The Value of Vomit (for Rollers)
Vomit is, for the birds, of fearful value, suggests this study: “Rollers smell the fear of nestlings,” D. Parejo, L. Amo, J. Rodríguez and J.M. Avilés, Biology Letters, epub 2012. The authors, at EEZA, CSIC, Almería, Spain, report: “Some bird species produce chemical compounds when threatened, such as nestlings of the Eurasian roller Coracias garrulus [pictured […]
The effect of climate change on great tits
This new study relates two much-discussed topics: “A model approach to project the start of egg laying of Great Tit (Parus major L.) in response to climate change,” Frank-M. Chmielewski, Klaus Blümel, Carina Scherbaum-Heberer, Bettina Koppmann-Rumpf, Karl-Heinz Schmidt, International Journal of Biometeorology, vol. 57, no. 2, March 2013, pp 287-297. (Thanks to investigator Tom Gill […]
Shakespearian delicious butchery terms
The Shakespeare’s England blog has a list of cooking/butchery words and phrases that involve certain animals. The list includes the following (and many others); I stumbled upon these rather charming 17th Century cooking terms today. To Carve is to Cut up a Dish of Meat, but according to the Meats, use these Terms for their […]