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Nutcracker (bird)
The nutcrackers (''Nucifraga'') are a genus of four species of passerine bird, in the family Corvidae, related to the jays and crows. The genus ''Nucifraga'' was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760 with the northern nutcracker (''Nucifraga caryocatactes'') as the type species. The genus name is a Neo-Latin translation of an old German name ''Nussbrecher'', "nut-breaker". Extant species Following reappraisal of species limits in the genus in Asia, the genus is now treated as containing four species: This follows the split of Southern and Kashmir nutcrackers from a former broad view (e.g. Voous, 1977) of all Eurasian nutcrackers as being a single species. The most vital food resources for these species are the seeds (pine nuts) of various pines (''Pinus'' sp.), principally the cold-climate (far northern or high altitude) species of white pine (''Pinus'' subgenus ''Strobus'') with large seeds: ''P. albicaulis, P. armandii, P. cembra, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northern Nutcracker
The northern nutcracker (''Nucifraga caryocatactes''), previously known as spotted nutcracker and Eurasian nutcracker, is a passerine bird in the crow family Corvidae. It is slightly larger than the Eurasian jay but has a much larger bill and a slimmer looking head without any crest. The feathering over its body is predominantly chocolate brown with distinct white spots and patches. The wings and upper tail are black with a greenish-blue gloss. The northern nutcracker is one of four species of nutcracker currently accepted. The southern nutcracker (''Nucifraga hemispila'') and the Kashmir nutcracker (''Nucifraga multipunctata'') were formerly considered as subspecies of the northern nutcracker. The species complex was known by the English name "spotted nutcracker". The other member of the genus, Clark's nutcracker (''Nucifraga columbiana''), occurs in western North America. Taxonomy The northern nutcracker was one of the many species originally described by Carl Linnaeus in his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pine Nut
Pine nuts, also called piñón (), pinoli (), or pignoli, are the edible seeds of pines (family Pinaceae, genus ''Pinus''). According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, only 29 species provide edible nuts, while 20 are traded locally or internationally owing to their seed size being large enough to be worth harvesting; in other pines, the seeds are also edible but are too small to be of notable value as human food. The biggest producers of pine nuts are China, Russia, North Korea, Pakistan and Afghanistan. As pines are gymnosperms, not angiosperms (flowering plants), pine nuts are not " true nuts"; they are not botanical fruits, the seed not being enclosed in an ovary which develops into the fruit, but simply bare seeds—"gymnosperm" meaning literally "naked seed" (from and ). The similarity of pine nuts to some angiosperm fruits is an example of convergent evolution. Species and geographic spread In Asia, two species, in particular, are widely harvested: Korea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Himalayas
The Himalayas, or Himalaya ( ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the Earth's highest peaks, including the highest, Mount Everest. More than list of highest mountains on Earth, 100 peaks exceeding elevations of above sea level lie in the Himalayas. The Himalayas abut on or cross territories of Himalayan states, six countries: Nepal, China, Pakistan, Bhutan, India and Afghanistan. The sovereignty of the range in the Kashmir region is disputed among India, Pakistan, and China. The Himalayan range is bordered on the northwest by the Karakoram and Hindu Kush ranges, on the north by the Tibetan Plateau, and on the south by the Indo-Gangetic Plain. Some of the world's major rivers, the Indus River, Indus, the Ganges river, Ganges, and the Yarlung Tsangpo River, Tsangpo–Brahmaputra River, Brahmaputra, rise in the vicinity of the Himalayas, and their combined drainage basin is home to some 6 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nucifraga Multipunctata
The Kashmir nutcracker or large-spotted nutcracker (''Nucifraga multipunctata'') is a passerine bird related to the northern nutcracker and southern nutcracker. Until recently, it was considered a subspecies of the former. It is found in the western Himalayas. Taxonomy and systematics The Kashmir nutcracker is closely related to the northern nutcracker (''N. caryocatactes'') and has only been split from it recently. Some authorities still treat these forms as conspecific. The two species are similar in appearance, though the Kashmir nutcracker in distinguished by a more whitish general appearance from its larger white spots, along with a contrasting blackish crown, wing, and base of tail. It also has bold white spots on the base of its tail, with a relatively slimmer tail, and longer tail. It is monotypic. Description It is a distinctive corvid with heavily streaked and spotted plumage. They are usually in length. They have a wing length of , with a weight of for females ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Collingwood Ingram
Collingwood "Cherry" Ingram (30 October 1880 – 19 May 1981), was a British ornithologist, plant collector and gardener, who was an authority on Japanese flowering cherries. Personal life Collingwood Ingram was a son of Sir William Ingram and Mary Eliza Collingwood , daughter of Australian politician Edward Stirling. His maternal grandfather was born in Jamaica to a Scottish planter and an unnamed woman of colour. He concealed his racial identity and later settled in South Australia, where he was elected to parliament; his sons (Ingram's uncles) Lancelot and Edward Charles Stirling were also members of parliament. He was a grandson of Herbert Ingram, founder of ''The Illustrated London News''. Sir William Ingram succeeded Herbert as the owner of the paper, and was a brother of Bruce Ingram, editor from 1900–1963. Collingwood's uncle, Sir Edward Charles Stirling, was a noted anthropologist, physiologist and museum director, with a great interest in the natural world. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hugo Weigold
Max Hugo Weigold (27 May 1886 – 9 July 1973) was a German zoologist and a pioneer bird bander who worked at the Heligoland Bird Observatory, one of the world's first bird-ringing sites. Weigold was born in Dresden. He studied natural sciences and geography in Jena and Leipzig. Here he was influenced by Ernst Haeckel, Richard Woltereck, Otto zur Strassen and Carl Chun. He worked for the Scientific Commission for Marine Research in Heligoland, a German island in the North Sea, where he continued the work of Heinrich Gätke (who died in 1897) in bird migration studies, setting up the bird observatory in 1910 to trap and band the migratory birds passing through the island. For six years Weigold carried out zoological research in China and Tibet and was the first Westerner to see a live giant panda in the wild, buying a cub (which did not survive for long) while part of the Stoetzner Expedition in 1916. He later became Director of Natural Sciences at the Lower Saxony State Mus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otto Kleinschmidt
Otto Kleinschmidt (13 December 1870 – 25 March 1954) was a German Ornithology, ornithologist, Theology, theologist and pastor. He was also an artist and taxidermist who produced specimens and illustrations of birds for his writings. He was critical of Darwinian ideas on evolution and natural selection and developed a kind of creationist superspecies concept called ''Formenkreis'' which involved variation with geographic dispersal that he illustrated with what he called "geogramms". He edited a periodical ''Falco'' (1905 to 1945) which was a companion to a monograph series called ''Berajah'' (until 1937). After speculating on the variations of birds he also examined human variation and gave theories that have been interpreted variously as a form of scientific racism. Life and career Kleinschmidt was the son of a potato processing factory overseer Adolph Kleinschmidt and his wife Elise (maiden name Dreydorff) in Geinsheim (Kornsand) on the Rhine. The house of the family was loca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Outram Bangs
Outram Bangs (January 12, 1863 – September 22, 1932) was an American zoologist. Biography Bangs was born in Watertown, Massachusetts, as the second son of Edward and Annie Outram (Hodgkinson) Bangs. He studied at Harvard from 1880 to 1884, and became Curator of Mammals at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology in 1900. He died at his summer home at Wareham, Massachusetts. Works"The Florida Deer" ''Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington'' 10:25–28 (1896)''The hummingbirds of the Santa Marta Region of Colombia''American Ornithologists' Union, New York (1899)"The Florida Puma" ''Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington'' 13:15–17. (1899)"The Mammals and Birds of the Pearl Islands, Bay of Panama" ''Harvard University Museum of Comparative Zoology, Bulletin 46'' (8) : 137–160 (1905) with John Eliot Thayer"Notes on the Birds and Mammals of the Arctic Coast of East Siberia" ''New England Zoological Club, Proceedings'', 5 : 1–66 (1914) with Glove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Thayer (ornithologist)
John Eliot Thayer (April 3, 1862 – July 29, 1933) was an American amateur ornithologist. Early life Thayer was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on April 3, 1862. He was a son of Cornelia Paterson (née Van Rensselaer) Thayer (1823–1897) and Nathaniel Thayer Jr., a banker who built Harvard's Thayer Hall. Among his siblings were twin brother Bayard Thayer (yachtsman and horticulturalist), older brother Nathaniel Thayer III (a banker and railroad executive), and sister Cornelia Van Rensselaer Thayer (the wife of New York State Senator J. Hampden Robb). His maternal grandparents were Stephen Van Rensselaer IV (the 10th Patroon and 7th Lord of the Manor of Rensselaerswyck) and Harriet Elizabeth (née Bayard) Van Rensselaer. His paternal grandparents were Sarah Parker (née Toppan) Thayer and the Rev. Dr. Nathaniel Thayer, a Unitarian congregational minister from Lancaster, Massachusetts. Through his father, he was descended from John Cotton, the preeminent minister and th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicholas Aylward Vigors
Nicholas Aylward Vigors (1785 – 26 October 1840) was an Ireland, Irish zoologist and politician. He popularized the classification of birds on the basis of the quinarian system. Early life Vigors was born at Old Leighlin, County Carlow, in 1785. He was the first son of Capt. Nicholas Aylward Vigors, who served in the 29th (Worcestershire) Regiment of Foot, 29th (Worcestershire) Regiment, and his first wife, Catherine Vigors, daughter of Solomon Richards of Solsborough. He matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford, in November 1803, and was admitted at Lincoln's Inn in November 1806. Without completing his studies, he served in the army during the Peninsular War from 1809 to 1811 and was wounded in the Battle of Barrosa, Battle of Barossa on 5 March 1811. Though he had not yet completed his studies, he still published "An inquiry into the nature and extent of poetick licence" in London in 1810. He then returned to Oxford to continue his studies and achieved his Bachelor of Arts ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nucifraga Hemispila
The southern nutcracker (''Nucifraga hemispila'') is a passerine bird in the crow family Corvidae. It was formerly considered to be conspecific with the northern nutcracker (''Nucifraga caryocatactes'') and the Kashmir nutcracker (''Nucifraga multipunctata'') under the English name "spotted nutcracker". Taxonomy The southern nutcracker was formally described in 1831 by the Irish zoologist Nicholas Vigors under the binomial name ''Nucifraga hemispila''. He specified the type locality as just "the Himalayas"; however, research into Vigors' travels has been able to restrict the locality to the Shimla and Almora districts of northern India. The genus name ''Nucifraga'' is the Latin name given to the northern nutcracker by the English naturalist William Turner in 1544, as a translation of the German name ''Nussbrecher'' meaning "nut-breaker". The specific epithet ''hemispila'' combines the Ancient Greek ἡμι-/''hēmi-'' meaning "half-" or "small" with σπιλος/''spilos'' m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
