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Blue-eyed Cockatoo
The blue-eyed cockatoo (''Cacatua ophthalmica'') is a large, mainly white cockatoo about long with a mobile crest, a black beak, and a light blue rim of featherless skin around each eye that gives this species its name. Like all cockatoos and many parrots, the blue-eyed cockatoo can use one of its zygodactyl feet to hold objects and to bring food to its beak whilst standing on the other foot. Among bird species as a whole, this is relatively unusual. Description The blue-eyed cockatoo is a large, about 50-cm-long, mainly white cockatoo with an erectile yellow and white crest, a black beak, dark grey legs, and a light blue rim of featherless skin around each eye, that gives this species its name. The sexes are very similar in appearance. Some males have dark brown irises and some females have reddish-brown irises, but this small difference is not always reliable as a sex indicator. The blue-eyed cockatoo is easily mistaken for the yellow-crested and sulphur-crested cockato ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walsrode Bird Park
Walsrode World Bird Park (), known as Jubs in English until 2010, is a bird park located in the middle of the Lüneburg Heath in North Germany within the municipality of Bomlitz near Walsrode in the state of Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the largest bird park in the world in terms of species as well as land area, although the Bird Paradise in Singapore (formerly the Jurong Bird Park) claims the largest number of individual birds. Walsrode World Bird Park covers and houses some 4,000 birds of 600 species from every continent and climatic zone in the world. The park celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2012. History The park was founded in 1962 by the Walsrode businessman, Fritz Geschke, for privately breeding pheasants and water birds. In 1962, his daughter, Uschi and her husband, Wolf Brehm, took over the park with the intention of creating a conservation and visitor centre, doubling the size within the first 6 years. In 1968, the "Paradies-Halle", a tropical bird house, was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endemism In Birds
Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. For example, the Cape sugarbird is found exclusively in southwestern South Africa and is therefore said to be ''endemic'' to that particular part of the world. An endemic species can also be referred to as an ''endemism'' or, in scientific literature, as an ''endemite''. Similarly, many species found in the Western ghats of India are examples of endemism. Endemism is an important concept in conservation biology for measuring biodiversity in a particular place and evaluating the risk of extinction for species. Endemism is also of interest in evolutionary biology, because it provides clues about how changes in the environment cause species to undergo range shifts (potentially expanding their range into a larger area or becomin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cockatoos
A cockatoo is any of the 21 species of parrots belonging to the family Cacatuidae, the only family in the superfamily Cacatuoidea. Along with the Psittacoidea (true parrots) and the Strigopoidea (large New Zealand parrots), they make up the order Psittaciformes. The family has a mainly Australasian distribution, ranging from the Philippines and the eastern Indonesian islands of Wallacea to New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Australia. Cockatoos are recognisable by their prominent crests and curved bills. Their plumage is generally less colourful than that of other parrots, being mainly white, grey, or black and often with coloured features in the crest, cheeks, or tail. On average, they are larger than other parrots; however, the cockatiel, the smallest cockatoo species, is medium-sized. The phylogenetic position of the cockatiel remains unresolved, except that it is one of the earliest offshoots of the cockatoo lineage. The remaining species are in two main clades. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Birds Described In 1864
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 common ostrich. There are over 11,000 living species and they are split into 44 orders. More than half are passerine or "perching" birds. Birds have wings 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 furth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cacatua
''Cacatua'' is a genus of cockatoos found from the Philippines, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Solomon Islands to Australia. They have a primarily white plumage (in some species tinged pinkish or yellow), an expressive crest, and a black (subgenus '' Cacatua'') or pale (subgenus '' Licmetis'') bill. Today, several species from this genus are considered threatened due to a combination of habitat loss and capture for the wild-bird trade, with the blue-eyed cockatoo considered vulnerable, Moluccan cockatoo, and umbrella cockatoo considered endangered, and the red-vented cockatoo and yellow-crested cockatoo considered critically endangered. Taxonomy Although the name ''Cacatua'' was used in 1760 by French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson, he did not include it in his table of genera and Brisson is not recognised as the authority by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN). The genus ''Kakatoe'' was introduced by Georges Cuvier in 1801 but this name has ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IUCN
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Founded in 1948, IUCN has become the global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it. It is involved in data gathering and Data analysis, analysis, research, field projects, advocacy, and education. IUCN's mission is to "influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable". Over the past decades, IUCN has widened its focus beyond conservation ecology and now incorporates issues related to sustainable development in its projects. IUCN does not itself aim to mobilize the public in support of nature conservation. It tries to influence the actions of governments, business and other stakeholders by providing information and advice and through buildin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Least Concern
A least-concern species is a species that has been evaluated and categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as not being a focus of wildlife conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. They do not qualify as threatened, near threatened, or (before 2001) conservation dependent. Species cannot be assigned the "Least Concern" category unless they have had their population status evaluated. That is, adequate information is needed to make a direct, or indirect, assessment of its risk of extinction based on its distribution or population status. Evaluation Since 2001 the category has had the abbreviation "LC", following the IUCN 2001 Categories & Criteria (version 3.1). Before 2001 "least concern" was a subcategory of the " Lower Risk" category and assigned the code "LR/lc" or lc. Around 20% of least concern taxa (3261 of 15,636) in the IUCN database still use the code "LR/lc", which indicates they have not been re- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bismarck Archipelago
The Bismarck Archipelago (, ) is a group of islands off the northeastern coast of New Guinea in the western Pacific Ocean and is part of the Islands Region of Papua New Guinea. Its area is about . History The first inhabitants of the archipelago arrived around 30,000–40,000 years ago. They may have traveled from New Guinea, by boat across the Bismarck Sea or via a temporary land bridge, created by an uplift in the Earth's crust. Later arrivals included the Lapita people, the direct ancestors of the Austronesian peoples of Polynesia, eastern Micronesia, and Island Melanesia. The first European to visit these islands was Dutch explorer Willem Schouten in 1616. The islands remained unsettled by western Europeans until they were annexed as part of the German protectorate of German New Guinea in 1884. The area was named in honour of the Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. On 13 March 1888, a volcano erupted on Ritter Island causing a megatsunami. Almost the entire volcano fell int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; , fossilized , also known as Papua or historically ) is the List of islands by area, world's second-largest island, with an area of . Located in Melanesia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Mainland Australia, Australia by the wide Torres Strait, though both landmasses lie on the same continental shelf, and were united during episodes of low sea level in the Pleistocene glaciations as the combined landmass of Sahul. Numerous smaller islands are located to the west and east. The island's name was given by Spanish explorer Yñigo Ortiz de Retez during his maritime expedition of 1545 due to the perceived resemblance of the indigenous peoples of the island to those in the Guinea (region), African region of Guinea. The eastern half of the island is the major land mass of the nation of Papua New Guinea. The western half, known as Western New Guinea, forms a part of Indonesia and is organized as the provinces of Pap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Britain
New Britain () is the largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago, part of the Islands Region of Papua New Guinea. It is separated from New Guinea by a northwest corner of the Solomon Sea (or with an island hop of Umboi Island, Umboi the Dampier Strait (Papua New Guinea), Dampier and Vitiaz Straits) and from New Ireland (island), New Ireland by St. George's Channel (Papua New Guinea), St. George's Channel. The main towns of New Britain are Rabaul/Kokopo and Kimbe. The island is roughly the size of Taiwan. When the island was part of German New Guinea, its name was Neupommern ("New Pomerania"). In common with most of the Bismarcks it was largely formed by volcanic processes, and has active volcanoes including Ulawun (highest volcano nationally), Langila, the Garbuna Group, the Sulu Range, and the volcanoes Tavurvur and Vulcan (volcano), Vulcan of the Rabaul caldera. A major eruption of Tavurvur in 1994 destroyed the East New Britain provincial capital of Rabaul. Most of the to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BirdLife International
BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding important sites for birds, maintaining and restoring key bird habitats, and empowering conservationists worldwide. It has a membership of more than 2.5 million people across List of BirdLife International national partner organisations, 116 country partner organizations, including the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Wild Bird Society of Japan, the National Audubon Society, and American Bird Conservancy. BirdLife International has identified 13,000 Important Bird Area, Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas and is the official International Union for Conservation of Nature's IUCN Red List, Red List authority for birds. BirdLife International has established that 1,375 bird species (13% of the total) are threatened with extinc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
