381Yellow Warbler Bathing by shelshots on Flickr.
Mandarin Duck by cm2852 on Flickr.
mandarin ducks are so fancy
how dare they
(via alkestry-deactivated20120104-de)
393
49I had never seen a baby mourning dove before so I was thrilled when I saw these two sitting outside the house. I was even happier when they decided to stay long enough for me to take a picture!
Before a green-rumped parrotlet is even able to chirp and squawk, mom and dad teach it a distinct series of sounds used by parrots to recognize a specific individual. In short, they give their nestling a name.
Researchers have observed captive parrots using so-called contact calls to identify mates and family members, but didn’t know how birds were named in the wild. Maybe they didn’t learn from their parents, but had contact calls hard-wired from birth. Or maybe it was an aberration of captivity.
To find out, Cornell University ornithologist Karl Berg and his team swapped eggs between nests in a wild parrotlet population they’d studied since 1987. Half the parrotlet pairs raised foster chicks, who used the contact calls demonstrated by their adoptive parents. Were the calls hard-wired, they’d have used their biological parents’ calls.
Among other animals known to imitate the sounds of others and give each other unique names are dolphins and humans (and, possibly, whales.) Like humans and dolphins, parrots are highly social. Using names makes it easier to keep track of relationships and individuals.
“One developmental milestone is when infants begin to relate adult sound patterns to specific meanings,” wrote Berg’s team, who described their findings July 13 Proceedings of The Royal Society B. “Among these sounds, an individual’s own name is one of the earliest adult words for which infants show evidence of acoustic pattern recognition. Our study suggests that at least a moderately convergent process may occur in parrots.”
(via treacherous-hair)
Pelicans
Pelicans have been having more and more trouble dealing with humans encroaching on them. That being said, it does give us a great opportunity to observe them up close. And pelicans are awesome.
Brooklyn College to Provide Parakeets Haven »
Brooklyn College is building a brand-new athletic field - and it wants to make sure certain high-profile members of the campus community are happy with it. The parakeets. A flock of exotic monk parakeets, also known as Quaker parrots, nest atop the light poles surrounding the current field. College officials are taking pains to ensure dozens of birds have nothing to squawk about as they embark on a $3.3 million construction project. They have earmarked about $5,000 to install 3x6-foot nesting platforms on the new light poles - kinda like parakeet condos. (NYDailyNews.com)
Why can’t other areas where Quakers live feral be this considerate?
The birds have really not proven to be a threat at all in the United States, yet are illegal as pets in so many states (in some, punishable by euthanization), and their nests are destroyed and babies are killed.
We had parrots native to the US, on both the east and west coasts, and we killed them off. One species is now completely extinct, and the other extinct in the US.
Isn’t it amazing that we’ve been given this second chance with having beautiful, intelligent parrots living alongside us?
(via kuromidou)
19
