One of the fist steps to becoming an accomplished bird watcher is knowing exactly what a bird is and/ or isn't. You can buy guides in shops that will tell you a lot of what you need to know. I, personally, use Colin's Bird Guide, and he hasn't even asked for it back yet. Some of these books are, literally, several pages long and contain all sorts of information about what makes a bird or not. This first lesson is a crash course in bird identification. By the end of it you should be able to identify whether something is a bird more than 78% of the time.
What is bird?
Birds are a kind of fancy lizard. Most, if not all, birds have feathers and beaks and, unlike trombones, many of them can fly. Birds were invented in 1903 by the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur (Orville himself was a bird; a kind of green duckling in a nappy.) Up until then people used to spot trains instead, but most trees could not support the weight of a perching steam engine so it was decided something smaller and lighter was needed.
 |
| The Wright brothers with an early design of the goldfinch. |
A bird is defined as being "a person with warm blood, which lays hard, shelled eggs and, typically, has feathers, wings and beaked, toothless jaws." Birds constitute the animal class of 'Aves' (as opposed to the 'ave nots') and are further divided into 'orders'. There are 40 known 'orders' of birds. The largest order being the passeriformes, which constitutes well over half of bird species and one hundred percent of passeriform species. Other orders include Psittaciformes (parrots), Strigiformes (owls), Charadriiformes (Shorebirds) and Cuneiformes (one of the earliest systems of writing.)
Birds are, technically speaking, dinosaurs. Now that you know this you can tell everyone down the pub and they'll all think you're really cool as you belch that fact at them between drunken rants about the EU, or your latest theory about the Catholic church that you learned in a Dan Brown novel. This poses a very contentious and much discussed question among ornithologists - If science made a T.Rex, like what they done in the movies, would it be permitted on your bird list?
Birds range greatly in size. The smallest bird in the world is the bee humming bird. Males weigh in at 1.95g, which is about the same weight as 1.95g of sugar, but not quite as sweet. The largest bird in the world is Big Bird, although, this is a human being (homo sepien) in a suit.
There are approximately exactly 10,000 species of birds to chose from, for example, ducks. Birds have adapted to almost every terrain and weather. Some have developed funny bits that grow out of their face, whilst others have evolved weird long sections, and other ones have developed straighter, browner parts - but all birds have one thing in common; they are all birds. This is what differentiates them from most other types of animal, for example ocelots, because almost no other animals, apart from birds, are birds. The exception to this is the bat, which is the only species of mammal that is also a bird.
Birds, like most other things, are comprised of 'parts' or 'bits', and some of these bits have special names to help us identify which pieces are which.
Where bird?
Since the beginning of time, birds have spread to almost every country on earth. The only place on earth that birds have not been found to live is the Moon. Birds live in a wide variety of situations. Some birds live almost exclusively 'on the wing', such as the swift, which only lands in order to mate. The ostrich, on the other hand, is the complete opposite, in that it spends all of its time on the ground, apart from when it is time to breed.
The best countries to see birds are countries with what is known as a "sky". This is a form of bird storage that almost all countries use to some degree or other. Examples of countries that have birds are France, Tonga and Spain.
Most birds are what is known as "outside birds," meaning their natural habitat is outside. There are some birds, such as Budgies, which evolved and adapted to 1980s front rooms, but the majority of birds can be found out and about.
Birds are attracted to nests, so if you can find an area with a lot of bird nests, there is a good chance you will find birds nearby.
Birds have also been known to be in two places at once, this is called migration. One of the most well known and evocative examples of this hobby is the swallow, which returns to the skies above U.K every spring. It was once believed that the swallow remained in the U.K during the winter, and that they hibernated under water, in rivers and ponds. Once they invented science it was discovered that swallows actually migrate to Africa every year, where they hibernate in African rivers and ponds.
 |
| The Earth is home to almost all bird species known to Man |
What bird do?
One of the things birds are most known for doing is their song, with which birds tell each other how horny or how violent they're feeling, very much like in rap music. Some birds' calls are so distinctive that they have become named after the noise they make, such as the chiffchaff, jackdaw, cuckoo and pied-wagtail.
Another thing that birds do is eat. This is the process of obtaining energy, in the form of nutrients, from external sources, otherwise known as 'food'. Bird diets vary widely depending on the species. Some, like blackbirds and dunnocks will eat worms, finches favour seeds, birds of prey will eat other birds or small mammals and ferral rock doves (the common pigeon, or filth pigeon as it is otherwise known) lives almost exclusively off of human vomit.
Birds reproduce by a process called "reproduction." They lay eggs, which eventually evolve into some sort of bird or other. The possession of bird eggs was actually made illegal in the 1950s, which is the reason why so many birds have criminal records.
Most birds are extremely dangerous and will attack without warning or reason.
Test
Can you tell which of these following items is a bird? If so, you are ready to move on to Lesson Two...
No comments:
Post a Comment