Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Bird ringing is the term used in the UK and in some other parts of Europe, while the term bird banding is more often used in the U.S. and Australia. [49] bird strike The impact of a bird or birds with an airplane in flight. [50] body down The layer of small, fluffy down feathers that lie underneath the outer contour feathers on a bird's body. [51]
In most squirrel species, the hind limbs are longer than the forelimbs, while all species have either four or five toes on each foot. The feet, which include an often poorly developed thumb, have soft pads on the undersides [14] and versatile, sturdy claws for grasping and climbing. [15] Tree squirrels, unlike most mammals, can descend a tree ...
Birds "of a feather" (in this case red-winged blackbirds) exhibiting flocking behavior, source of the idiom. Birds of a feather flock together is an English proverb. The meaning is that beings (typically humans) of similar type, interest, personality, character, or other distinctive attribute tend to mutually associate.
Many birds migrate in flocks. For larger birds, it is assumed that flying in flocks reduces energy costs. The V formation is often supposed to boost the efficiency and range of flying birds, particularly over long migratory routes. All the birds except the first fly in the upwash from one of the wingtip vortices of the bird ahead.
Bird species living in a flock may capture prey, likely injured, from an unsuccessful bird within its flock. [2] This behavior is known as the beater effect and is one of the benefits of birds foraging in a flock with other birds. [2] It can be seen that birds in a flock may perform the information-sharing model. [2]
Black-headed gulls, bar-tailed godwits and sanderlings foraging on a beach. A mixed-species feeding flock, also termed a mixed-species foraging flock, mixed hunting party or informally bird wave, is a flock of usually insectivorous birds of different species that join each other and move together while foraging. [1]
Aves can mean the last common ancestor of all the currently living birds and all of its descendants (a "crown group", in this sense synonymous with Neornithes) Under the fourth definition Archaeopteryx , traditionally considered one of the earliest members of Aves, is removed from this group, becoming a non-avian dinosaur instead.
Sometimes known as perching birds, passerines generally have an anisodactyl arrangement of their toes (three pointing forward and one back), which facilitates perching. With more than 140 families and some 6,500 identified species, [ 1 ] Passeriformes is the largest order of birds and among the most diverse clades of terrestrial vertebrates ...