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Avocets have long legs and long, thin, upcurved bills which they sweep from side to side when feeding in the brackish or saline wetlands they prefer. Their plumage is pied, sometimes also with some red. Members of this genus have webbed feet and readily swim. Their diet consists of aquatic insects and other small creatures.
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]
The family Pycnonotidae was introduced by the English zoologist George Robert Gray in 1840 as a subfamily Pycnonotinae of the thrush family Turdidae. [1] [2] The Arabic word bulbul (بلبل) is sometimes used to refer to the "nightingale" as well as the bulbul, but the English word bulbul refers to the birds discussed in this article. [3]
The black skimmer has an additional adaptation and is the only species of bird known to have slit-shaped pupils. [ 4 ] the forehead, ends of the secondaries, tail feathers and under parts are white, the rest of the plumage is black and the basal half of the bill is crimson. [ 5 ]
Larger food items, such as big insects, snails, acorns or seeds may be wedged into cracks and pounded with the bird's strong bill. [7] Unusually for a bird, the brown-headed nuthatch uses a piece of tree bark as a lever to pry up other bark flakes to look for food; the bark tool may then be carried from tree to tree or used to cover a seed cache .
The beak, bill, or rostrum is an external anatomical structure found mostly in birds, but also in turtles, non-avian dinosaurs and a few mammals. A beak is used for pecking , grasping , and holding (in probing for food, eating , manipulating and carrying objects, killing prey , or fighting), preening , courtship , and feeding young.
The kagu possesses 'nasal corns', structures covering its nostrils, which are a feature not shared by any other bird. This bird is a juvenile, lacking the brightly coloured bill of the adult. The kagu is a ground-living bird, 55 cm (21 + 1 ⁄ 2 in) in length. The weight can vary considerably by individual and by season, ranging from 700 to ...
Snipes search for invertebrates in the mud with a "sewing-machine" action of their long bills.The sensitivity of the bill is caused by filaments belonging to the fifth pair of nerves, which run almost to the tip and open immediately under the soft cuticle in a series of cells; a similar adaptation is found in sandpipers; this adaptation gives this portion of the surface of the premaxillaries a ...