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Brood Patch
A brood patch is a patch of featherless skin on the underside of birds during the nesting season. Feathers act as inherent insulators, and prevent efficient incubation. Birds have solved this evolutionary dilemma by developing dedicated brood patches. This patch of skin is well supplied with blood vessels at the surface, enabling heat transfer to the eggs when incubating. In most species, the feathers in the region shed automatically, but ducks and geese may pluck and use their feathers to line the nest. Feathers regrow sooner after hatching in precocial birds than for those that have altricial young. Upon settling on a nest, birds will shift in a characteristic side to side manner to ensure full contact of the brood patch with eggs or young. The positions of brood patches can vary. Many have a single brood patch in the middle of the belly, while some shorebirds have one patch on each side of the belly. Gulls and Galliformes may have three brood patches. Pelicans, penguins, boobi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Riparia Riparia-Brutfleck
''Riparia'' is a genus of passerine birds in the swallow family Hirundinidae. These are small or medium-sized swallows, ranging from in length. They are brown above and mainly white below, and all have a dark breast band. They are closely associated with water. They nest in tunnels which are usually excavated by the birds themselves in a natural sand bank or earth mound. They lay white eggs, which are incubated by both parents, in a nest of straw, grass, and feathers in a chamber at the end of the burrow. Some species breed colonially. The cosmopolitan sand martin is almost completely migratory, breeding across temperate Eurasia and North America and wintering in the tropics. The other species are partial migrants or resident. ''Riparia'' martins, like other swallows, take insects in flight over water, grassland, or other open country. Taxonomy The genus ''Riparia'' was introduced by the German naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster in 1817 with the sand martin (''Riparia ripar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Galliformes
Galliformes is an order of heavy-bodied ground-feeding birds that includes turkeys, chickens, quail, and other landfowl. Gallinaceous birds, as they are called, are important in their ecosystems as seed dispersers and predators, and are often reared by humans for their meat and eggs, or hunted as game birds. The order contains about 290 species, inhabiting every continent except Antarctica, and divided into five families: Phasianidae (including chicken, quail, partridges, pheasants, turkeys, peafowl (peacocks) and grouse), Odontophoridae (New World quail), Numididae (guinea fowl), Cracidae (including chachalacas and curassows), and Megapodiidae (incubator birds like malleefowl and brush-turkeys). They adapt to most environments except for innermost deserts and perpetual ice. Many gallinaceous species are skilled runners and escape predators by running rather than flying. Males of most species are more colorful than the females, with often elaborate courtship behavio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Broodiness
Broodiness is the action or behavioral tendency to sit on a clutch of eggs to incubate them, often requiring the non-expression of many other behaviors including feeding and drinking.Homedes Ranquini, J. y Haro-García, F. Zoogenética. 1ra. edición, 1958, (La Habana, 1967 Ed. Revolucionaria) Being broody has been defined as "Being in a state of readiness to brood eggs that is characterized by cessation of laying and by marked changes in behavior and physiology". . Broodiness is usually associated with female birds, although males of some bird species become broody and some non-avian animals also show broodiness. In wild birds In wild birds, egg incubation is a normal and essential phase in the process of reproduction, and in many families of birds, e.g. pigeons, the eggs are incubated by both male and female parents. Broodiness in males In all species of phalaropes, the males become broody rather than the female. The females leave the nest after finishing laying to let the m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cuckoo
Cuckoos are birds in the Cuculidae family, the sole taxon in the order Cuculiformes . The cuckoo family includes the common or European cuckoo, roadrunners, koels, malkohas, couas, coucals and anis. The coucals and anis are sometimes separated as distinct families, the Centropodidae and Crotophagidae respectively. The cuckoo order Cuculiformes is one of three that make up the Otidimorphae, the other two being the turacos and the bustards. The family Cuculidae contains 150 species which are divided into 33 genera. The cuckoos are generally medium-sized slender birds. Most species live in trees, though a sizeable minority are ground-dwelling. The family has a cosmopolitan distribution; the majority of species are tropical. Some species are migratory. The cuckoos feed on insects, insect larvae and a variety of other animals, as well as fruit. Some species are brood parasites, laying their eggs in the nests of other species and giving rise to the metaphor ''cuckoo's egg' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brood Parasitism
Brood parasites are animals that rely on others to raise their young. The strategy appears among birds, insects and fish. The brood parasite manipulates a host, either of the same or of another species, to raise its young as if it were its own, usually using egg mimicry, with eggs that resemble the host's. The evolutionary strategy relieves the parasitic parents from the investment of rearing young. This benefit comes at the cost of provoking an evolutionary arms race between parasite and host as they coevolve: many hosts have developed strong defenses against brood parasitism, such as recognizing and ejecting parasitic eggs, or abandoning parasitized nests and starting over. It is less obvious why most hosts do care for parasite nestlings, given that for example cuckoo chicks differ markedly from host chicks in size and appearance. One explanation, the mafia hypothesis, proposes that parasitic adults retaliate by destroying host nests where rejection has occurred; there ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gannet
Gannets are seabirds comprising the genus ''Morus'' in the family Sulidae, closely related to boobies. Gannets are large white birds with yellowish heads; black-tipped wings; and long bills. Northern gannets are the largest seabirds in the North Atlantic, having a wingspan of up to . The other two species occur in the temperate seas around southern Africa, southern Australia, and New Zealand. Etymology "Gannet" is derived from Old English ''ganot'' meaning "strong or masculine", ultimately from the same Old Germanic root as "gander". Taxonomy ''Morus'' is derived from Ancient Greek ''moros'' "stupid" or "foolish" due to lack of fear shown by breeding gannets and boobies, allowing them to be easily killed. Behaviour Hunting Gannets hunt fish by diving into the sea from a height of and pursuing their prey underwater, and have a number of adaptations: * They have no external nostrils; they are located inside the mouth, instead. * They have air sacs in the face an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Booby
A booby is a seabird in the genus ''Sula'', part of the family Sulidae. Boobies are closely related to the gannets (''Morus''), which were formerly included in ''Sula''. Systematics and evolution The genus ''Sula'' was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760. The type species is the brown booby. The name is derived from ''súla'', the Old Norse and Icelandic word for the other member of the family Sulidae, the gannet. The English name "booby" was possibly based on the Spanish slang term ''bobo'', meaning "stupid", as these tame birds had a habit of landing on board sailing ships, where they were easily captured and eaten. Owing to this, boobies are often mentioned as having been caught and eaten by shipwrecked sailors, notably William Bligh of the ''Bounty'' and his adherents during their famous voyage after being set adrift by Fletcher Christian and his followers. Six of the ten extant Sulidae species called ''boobies'' are in the genu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Penguin
Penguins (order Sphenisciformes , family Spheniscidae ) are a group of aquatic flightless birds. They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere: only one species, the Galápagos penguin, is found north of the Equator. Highly adapted for life in the water, penguins have countershaded dark and white plumage and flippers for swimming. Most penguins feed on krill, fish, squid and other forms of sea life which they catch with their bills and swallow it whole while swimming. A penguin has a spiny tongue and powerful jaws to grip slippery prey. They spend roughly half of their lives on land and the other half in the sea. The largest living species is the emperor penguin (''Aptenodytes forsteri''): on average, adults are about tall and weigh . The smallest penguin species is the little blue penguin (''Eudyptula minor''), also known as the fairy penguin, which stands around tall and weighs . Today, larger penguins generally inhabit colder regions, and smaller pengu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pelican
Pelicans (genus ''Pelecanus'') are a genus of large water birds that make up the family Pelecanidae. They are characterized by a long beak and a large throat pouch used for catching prey and draining water from the scooped-up contents before swallowing. They have predominantly pale plumage, except for the brown and Peruvian pelicans. The bills, pouches, and bare facial skin of all pelicans become brightly coloured before the breeding season. The eight living pelican species have a patchy global distribution, ranging latitudinally from the tropics to the temperate zone, though they are absent from interior South America and from polar regions and the open ocean. Long thought to be related to frigatebirds, cormorants, tropicbirds, and gannets and boobies, pelicans instead are now known to be most closely related to the shoebill and hamerkop, and are placed in the order Pelecaniformes. Ibises, spoonbills, herons, and bitterns have been classified in the same order. Fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gull
Gulls, or colloquially seagulls, are seabirds of the family Laridae in the suborder Lari. They are most closely related to the terns and skimmers and only distantly related to auks, and even more distantly to waders. Until the 21st century, most gulls were placed in the genus ''Larus'', but that arrangement is now considered polyphyletic, leading to the resurrection of several genera. An older name for gulls is mews, which is cognate with German ''Möwe'', Danish ''måge'', Swedish ''mås'', Dutch ''meeuw'', Norwegian ''måke''/''måse'' and French ''mouette'', and can still be found in certain regional dialects. Gulls are typically medium to large in size, usually grey or white, often with black markings on the head or wings. They typically have harsh wailing or squawking calls; stout, longish bills; and webbed feet. Most gulls are ground-nesting carnivores which take live food or scavenge opportunistically, particularly the ''Larus'' species. Live food often includes cr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bird
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the bee hummingbird to the ostrich. There are about ten thousand living species, more than half of which are passerine, or "perching" birds. Birds have whose development varies according to species; the only known groups without wings are the extinct moa and elephant birds. Wings, which are modified forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in some birds, including ratites, penguins, and diverse endemic island species. The digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have further evolved for swim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wader
245px, A flock of Dunlins and Red knots">Red_knot.html" ;"title="Dunlins and Red knot">Dunlins and Red knots Waders or shorebirds are birds of the order Charadriiformes commonly found wikt:wade#Etymology 1, wading along shorelines and mudflats in order to foraging, forage for food crawling or burrowing in the mud and sand, usually small arthropods such as aquatic insects or crustaceans. The term "wader" is used in Europe, while "shorebird" is used in North America, where "wader" may be used instead to refer to long-legged wading birds such as storks and herons. There are about 210 species of wader, most of which live in wetland or coastal environments. Many species of Arctic and temperate regions are strongly migratory, but tropical birds are often resident, or move only in response to rainfall patterns. Some of the Arctic species, such as the little stint, are amongst the longest distance migrants, spending the non-breeding season in the southern hemisphere. Many of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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