|
Chaetops Aurantius
The Drakensberg rockjumper or orange-breasted rockjumper (''Chaetops aurantius'') is a medium-sized insectivorous passerine bird endemic to the alpine grasslands and rock outcrops of the Drakensberg Mountains of southeastern South Africa and Lesotho. This taxon is closely related to the allopatric Cape rockjumper ''Chaetops frenatus''; the two species of ''Chaetops'' are the only living members of the Chaetopidae (rockjumper family). This rockjumper is 23–25 cm long with a long black tail and strong legs. The male has a dark grey head with a thin white supercilium and a broad white moustache. The back and wings are dark grey. The underparts are orange and the rump is rufous red. The female and juvenile have a paler grey head, upperparts and wings, a duller head pattern, an orange rump, and buff underparts. The call is a loud ''wheeoo''. The Cape rockjumper male has rufous red underparts, and the female and young are darker buff below than in ''C. aurantius''. This is a gr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edgar Leopold Layard
Edgar Leopold Layard MBOU, (23 July 1824 – 1 January 1900) was a British diplomat and a naturalist mainly interested in ornithology and to a lesser extent the molluscs. He worked for a significant part of his life in Ceylon and later in South Africa, Fiji and New Caledonia. He studied the zoology of these places and established natural history museums in Sri Lanka and South Africa. Several species of animals are named after him. Early life and education Born in the Berti Palace, Florence, Italy, to an English family of Huguenot descent, Layard was the youngest of seven sons (two of the earlier siblings died in infancyLayard, E.L. Unpublished autobiography. MS at Blacker-Wood library, McGill University, Canada.) of Henry Peter John Layard of the Ceylon Civil Service (the son of Charles Peter Layard, dean of Bristol, and grandson of Daniel Peter Layard the physician) with his wife Marianne, a daughter of Nathaniel Austen, banker, of Ramsgate. Through her, he was part ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buff (color)
Buff () is a light brownish yellow, ochreous colour, typical of buff leather. Buff is a mixture of yellow ochre and white: two parts of white lead and one part of yellow ochre produces a good buff, or white lead may be tinted with French ochre alone. As an RYB quaternary colour, it is the colour produced by an equal mix of the tertiary colours citron and russet. Etymology The first recorded use of the word ''buff'' to describe a colour was in '' The London Gazette'' of 1686, describing a uniform to be "...a Red Coat with a Buff-colour'd lining". It referred to the colour of undyed buffalo leather, such as soldiers wore as some protection: an eyewitness to the death in the Battle of Edgehill (1642) of Sir Edmund Verney noted "he would neither put on arms rmouror buff coat the day of the battle". Such buff leather was suitable for '' buffing'' or serving as a '' buffer'' between polished objects. It is not clear which bovine "''buffalo''" referred to, but it m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Birds Of Southern Africa
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight Bird skeleton, 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 Order (biology), orders. More than half are passerine or "perching" birds. Birds have Bird wing, 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 Flightless bird, loss of flight in some birds, including ratites, penguins, and diverse endemism, endemic island species. The digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chaetops
The rockjumpers are medium-sized insectivorous or omnivorous birds in the genus ''Chaetops'', which constitutes the entire family Chaetopidae. The two species, the Cape rockjumper, ''Chaetops frenatus'', and the Drakensberg rockjumper, ''Chaetops aurantius'', are endemic residents of southern Africa.del Hoyo, J.; Elliot, A. & Christie D. (editors). (2007). ''Handbook of the Birds of the World. Volume 12: Picathartes to Tits and Chickadees.'' Lynx Edicions. The Cape rockjumper is a resident of the West Cape and south-west East Cape, and the orange-breasted (or Drakensberg) rockjumper is distributed in the Lesotho Highlands and areas surrounding them in South Africa. The two rockjumpers have been treated as separate species but differ in size and plumage. The ranges do not overlap, but come close to doing so. Also found in the mountain of a small town Middelburg in the eastern Cape where they are protected because they are endangered species. Taxonomy and systematics Originally, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Howard And Moore Complete Checklist Of The Birds Of The World
The ''Howard and Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World'' is a book by Richard Howard and Alick Moore which presents a list of the bird species of the world. It was the first single-volume world bird list to include subspecies names, and until the publication of the 5th edition of James Clements' ''Checklist of Birds of the World'' was the only one to do so. It is currently in its fourth edition (2013), and is published by Aves Press in the UK. First edition The first edition was published in 1980, with a foreword by Leslie Brown. A revised edition was published in 1984. Second edition The second edition was published in 1991, and a reprint was issued in 1994, and included an appendix with a further 282 changes. The jacket paintings are by Martin Woodcock. Third edition The third edition was published in 2003. It was edited by Edward C. Dickinson, with the assistance of four other regional compilers: David Pearson (covering Africa), James Van Remsen, Jr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Picathartes
The picathartes, rockfowl, or bald crows are a small genus of two passerine bird species forming the family Picathartidae found in the rain-forests of tropical west and central Africa. They have unfeathered heads, and feed on insects and Invertebrate, invertebrates picked from damp rocky areas. Both species are totally bird migration, non-migratory, being dependent on a specialised rocky jungle habitat. Both species are listed as Vulnerable species, vulnerable to extinction on the IUCN Red List. Taxonomy and systematics The taxonomic position of the clade and its two species has been confusing. At various times, it has been grouped with the babblers, flycatchers, starlings, crows and others before being placed in a family of its own. William Serle, Serle in 1952 thought it resembled the Asian genus ''Eupetes'' while Charles Sibley, Sibley used egg-albumin protein similarity, determined by electrophoresis, to suggest that it belonged to the Timaliidae. Storrs L. Olson, Olson revive ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rail-babbler
The rail-babbler or Malaysian rail-babbler (''Eupetes macrocerus'') is a brown and pied rail-like ground-living bird. It is the only species in the genus ''Eupetes'' and family Eupetidae. It lives on the floor of primary forests in the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra (the nominate subspecies ''macrocerus''), as well as Borneo (ssp. ''borneensis''). It is distantly related to African Picathartes, rockfowl. Its population has greatly decreased because much of the lowland primary forest has been cut, and secondary forests usually have too dense a bottom vegetation or do not offer enough shade to be favourable for the species. However, it is locally still common in logged forest or on hill-forest on slopes, and probably not in immediate danger of extinction. The species is poorly known and rarely seen, in no small part due to its shyness. Taxonomy Opinions on the correct taxonomic placement for the rail-babbler have differed. At one time, it was placed in the Old World babbler family, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Passerida
Passerida is, under the Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy, one of two parvorders contained within the suborder Passeri (standard taxonomic practice would place them at the rank of infraorder). While more recent research suggests that its sister parvorder, Corvida, is not a monophyletic grouping, the Passerida as a distinct clade are widely accepted. Systematics and phylogeny The Passerida quite certainly consist of the 3 ''major'' subclades outlined by Sibley & Ahlquist (1990). However, their content has been much revised. In addition, it has turned out that not all passeridan lineages neatly fit into this arrangement. The kinglets are so distinct that they might actually form a separate infraorder, as they are only slightly less basal than the Corvoidea or the Picathartidae. See Jønsson & Fjeldså (2006) for details on phylogeny. Superfamily Sylvioidea Mostly smallish insectivores, distribution centered on the Indo-Pacific region. Few occur in the Americas, highest diversity of fami ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Basal (phylogenetics)
In phylogenetics, basal is the direction of the ''base'' (or root) of a phylogenetic tree#Rooted tree, rooted phylogenetic tree or cladogram. The term may be more strictly applied only to nodes adjacent to the root, or more loosely applied to nodes regarded as being close to the root. Note that extant taxa that lie on branches connecting directly to the root are not more closely related to the root than any other extant taxa. While there must always be two or more equally "basal" clades sprouting from the root of every cladogram, those clades may differ widely in taxonomic rank, Phylogenetic diversity, species diversity, or both. If ''C'' is a basal clade within ''D'' that has the lowest rank of all basal clades within ''D'', ''C'' may be described as ''the'' basal taxon of that rank within ''D''. The concept of a 'key innovation' implies some degree of correlation between evolutionary innovation and cladogenesis, diversification. However, such a correlation does not make a given ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thrush (bird)
The thrushes are a passerine bird family, Turdidae, with a worldwide distribution. The family was once much larger before biologists reclassified the former subfamily Saxicolinae, which includes the chats and European robins, as Old World flycatchers. Thrushes are small to medium-sized ground living birds that feed on insects, other invertebrates, and fruit. Some unrelated species around the world have been named after thrushes due to their similarity to birds in this family. Characteristics Thrushes are plump, soft-plumaged, small to medium-sized birds that inhabit wooded areas and often feed on the ground. The smallest thrush may be the shortwings, which have ambiguous alliances with both thrushes and Old World flycatchers. The lesser shortwing averages . The largest thrush is the great thrush at and ; the larger, commonly recognized blue whistling thrush is an Old world flycatcher. The Amami thrush might, however, grow larger than the great thrush. Most species are gre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cooperative Breeding
Cooperative breeding is a social system characterized by alloparental care: offspring receive care not only from their parents, but also from additional group members, often called helpers. Cooperative breeding encompasses a wide variety of group structures, from a breeding pair with helpers that are offspring from a previous season, to groups with multiple breeding males and females ( polygynandry) and helpers that are the adult offspring of some but not all of the breeders in the group, to groups in which helpers sometimes achieve co-breeding status by producing their own offspring as part of the group's brood. Cooperative breeding occurs across taxonomic groups including birds, mammals, fish, and insects. Costs for helpers include a fitness reduction, increased territory defense, offspring guarding and an increased cost of growth. Benefits for helpers include a reduced chance of predation, increased foraging time, territory inheritance, increased environmental conditions and an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Underparts
Standard anatomical terms of location are used to describe unambiguously the anatomy of humans and other animals. The terms, typically derived from Latin or Greek roots, describe something in its standard anatomical position. This position provides a definition of what is at the front ("anterior"), behind ("posterior") and so on. As part of defining and describing terms, the body is described through the use of anatomical planes and axes. The meaning of terms that are used can change depending on whether a vertebrate is a biped or a quadruped, due to the difference in the neuraxis, or if an invertebrate is a non-bilaterian. A non-bilaterian has no anterior or posterior surface for example but can still have a descriptor used such as proximal or distal in relation to a body part that is nearest to, or furthest from its middle. International organisations have determined vocabularies that are often used as standards for subdisciplines of anatomy. For example, ''Terminologia Anato ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
