Some birds intentionally spread fire from place to place, sometimes in cooperation with other birds, says this new study. “Intentional Fire-Spreading by ‘Firehawk’ Raptors in Northern Australia,” Mark Bonta, Robert Gosford, Dick Eussen, Nathan Ferguson, Erana Loveless, and Maxwell Witwer, Journal of Ethnobiology, vol. 37, no. 4, 2017, pp. 700-718. The authors write: “We document Indigenous […]
Tag: Birds
Stimulating interest in ornithology: The “Masturbation in birds” project
Dr. Price’s “Masturbation in birds” project aims to stimulate interest in ornithology. Dr. Price, based at the University of Liverpool, explains: One of the projects I work on is trying to understand why some species of bird seem to masturbate loads, and other species don’t seem to do it at all. Masturbation is a pretty […]
Attracting birds – with a ‘Songbird Magnet’
Want to attract birds? Specifically, Purple Martins or Eastern Bluebirds, Baltimore Orioles, House Wrens, House Finches, American Goldfinches, & Indigo Buntings etc etc. Then you could try the Bird-X Songbird Magnet. “As bird lovers, it only makes sense with the science & resources we have available, to offer an electronic songbird attractant.” – say the […]
Why Are Bird Eggs Bird-Egg-Shaped? [New research from an Ig Nobellian]
Mahadevan, who won an Ig Nobel Physics Prize in 2007 for studying how/why wrinkled sheets become wrinkled, has a new study out about how/why bird eggs become bird-egg shaped. The study, by Mahadevan and several collaborators, is: “Avian Egg Shape: Form, Function, and Evolution,” Mary Caswell Stoddard, Ee Hou Yong, Derya Akkaynak, Catherine Sheard, Joseph […]