I see red-tailed hawks in my backyard occasionally. This one has a squirrel on a high tree branch in my backyard. The video shows it fly away.
When I hear a murder of crows squawking loudly I often can spot a red-tailed hawk (or perhaps some other hawks) near my yard.
Related: Backyard Wildlife: Sharpshinned Hawk – Red-shouldered Hawk – Backyard Wildlife: Fox – Backyard Wildlife: Blue Jay
Rare Dinosaur-Era Bird Wings Found Trapped in Amber
The nearly 100 million year old wing shows a structure that is very similar to modern birds.
The piece in this photo, and others samples, were bought at an amber market in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin state in northern Myanmar. The region is politically unstable and most of the amber is sold to Chinese consumers for jewelry and decorative carvings.
Read the related posts for more on the wonderful discoveries saved in amber of hundreds of millions of years. We get to read about these amazing discoveries so often it is easy to lose appreciation for how amazing each one is. This photo shows a wind that was used by a dinosaur almost 100 million years ago.
Related: Marine Plankton From 100 Million Years Ago Found in Amber 2008) – Learning About Life over 200 Million Years Ago From Samples Trapped In Amber (2012) – The evolution of birds from small predatory dinosaurs – Dino-Era Feathers Found Encased in Amber (2008) – Amber Pieces Containing Remains from Dinosaurs and Birds Show Feather Evolution (2011) – Ancient Whale Uncovered in Egyptian Desert
I think this is a Great Tailed Grackle, please comment if you think I am wrong. This is taken in my backyard in Arlington, Virginia.
Related: Red-Shouldered Hawk – Backyard Wildlife: Fox and Deer – Backyard Wildlife: Blue Jay – Backyard Wildlife – Chimpmunk – Backyard Wildlife: Robins Attack Holly Tree
Blue Jay in Arlington, Virginia (in my backyard). See more of my photos.
This is a picture I simply could not have taken before I bought my new camera (a Canon PowerShot SX60 HS Digital Camera with 65 times optical zoom). Birds are still hard to photograph but now at least occasionally I get a decent photo of birds. If you want to get photos of wildlife it is a great camera. And it is a wonderful camera in general.
I like just planting things that will feed and shelter birds (and others) rather than filling bird feeders myself. There is information on how to use your backyard to promote wildlife. I see many birds flying around in my backyard, which is quite nice. Blue jays are some of my favorites.
Blue jays diet is composed mostly of insects and nuts. They especially like acorns.
Young jays may be more likely to migrate than adults, but many adults also migrate. Some individual jays migrate south one year, stay north the next winter, and then migrate south again the next year. No one has worked out why they migrate when they do.
The pigment in blue jay feathers is melanin, which is brown. The blue color is caused by scattering light through modified cells on the surface of the feather barbs.
Related: Backyard Wildlife: Robins Attack Holly Tree – Backyard Wildlife: Birds – Backyard Wildlife: Crows – Backyard Wildlife: Fox – Backyard Wildlife: Chimpmunk
In Aesop’s fable about the crow and the pitcher, a thirsty bird happens upon a vessel of water, but when he tries to drink from it, he finds the water level out of his reach. Not strong enough to knock over the pitcher, the bird drops pebbles into it — one at a time — until the water level rises enough for him to drink his fill.
Highlighting the value of ingenuity, the fable demonstrates that cognitive ability can often be more effective than brute force. It also characterizes crows as pretty resourceful problem solvers. New research conducted by UC Santa Barbara’s Corina Logan, with her collaborators at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, proves the birds’ intellectual prowess may be more fact than fiction. Her findings, supported by the National Geographic Society/Waitt Grants Program, appear today in the scientific journal PLOS ONE: Modifications to the Aesop’s Fable Paradigm Change New Caledonian Crow Performances.
Researcher Corina Logan with a great-tailed grackle and a night heron at the Santa Barbara Zoo. The zoo is one of the sites where Logan is gathering data to compare and contrast the cognitive abilities of grackles and New Caledonian crows.
Photo Credit: Sonia Fernandez
Logan is lead author of the paper, which examines causal cognition using a water displacement paradigm. “We showed that crows can discriminate between different volumes of water and that they can pass a modified test that so far only 7- to 10-year-old children have been able to complete successfully. We provide the strongest evidence so far that the birds attend to cause-and-effect relationships by choosing options that displace more water.”
Logan, a junior research fellow at UCSB’s SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind, worked with New Caledonian crows in a set of small aviaries in New Caledonia run by the University of Auckland. “We caught the crows in the wild and brought them into the aviaries, where they habituated in about five days,” she said. Keeping families together, they housed the birds in separate areas of the aviaries for three to five months before releasing them back to the wild.
Mystery of Lost Homing Pigeons Finally Solved
The explanation may solve other mysteries about pigeons — for instance, why they circle around before heading off in one direction. Because the sound waves are so long, but the birds’ ear canals are tiny, they need to circle to reconstruct the wave and figure out which way they are oriented, he said.
More interesting scientific inquiry. It is very interesting to learn what scientists are learning about our world – even when the conclusions are still preliminary and may be adjusted or refuted.
Related: Pigeon Solves Box and Banana Problem – Cool Research on Crows – Bird Using Bait to Fish – Moth Jams Bat Sonar
Parrots learn their ‘names’ from their parents
More research is required, to better understand the evolution of and interaction between these physical and behavioral traits, he said. “We still don’t have good explanations of how these behaviors help wild individuals survive and reproduce in nature,” he said.
The paper offers some possible explanations: Perhaps the parrots’ far-ranging journeys to “communal foraging sights” are what impress upon each parent the need to have their fledglings’ names sorted out — not unlike human parents’ need to call for their children by name at a crowded fair.
I enjoy learning more fun and cool stuff about the animals we share the world with. They are quite an interesting bunch of creatures.
Related: Crow Using a Sequence of Three Tools – Friday Fun: Crow Sledding, Flying Back Up and Sledding Down Again – Backyard Wildlife: Hawk – Friday Fun: Dancing Parrot
Very clever technique. Quite an effective strategy to take a byproduct of people (bread) and use it to lure in your prey. I posted another bird fishing using bait webcast previously: that post includes links to more such videos.
Related: Orangutan Attempts to Hunt Fish with Spear – Dolphins Using Tools to Hunt – Intelligent Dolphin Strategy for Hunting Fish
Aerodynamics of the hovering hummingbird
In other words, this pseudosymmetrical wingbeat cycle is good enough, and although hummingbirds do not exhibit the elegant aerodynamic symmetry of insects, natural selection rewards ‘good enough’ as richly as it does our aesthetic ideals
Related: Praying Mantis Attacks Hummingbird – Friday Fun: Crow Sledding, Flying Back Up and Sledding Down Again – Bird Using Bait to Fish
Two raptors soaring by John Hunter.
I see a fair number of birds around my current abode (a condo in a high rise) in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Getting photos of them isn’t easy though. Here are 2 hawks or eagles? If you can identify them please add a comment (if you have a link to authenticate the identification, even better).
I even have some storks that commute past my windows every morning and evening.
Related: Backyard Wildlife: Robins Attack Holly Tree – Sharpshinned hawk feeding in backyard – Big Lizards in Johor Bahru CBD
Great video of a crow sledding down a roof on a small intertube like thing (a lid?). Then it picks up the sled and flies back to the top and sleds down again. Awesome. The curious crow then flies off with its sled to try it out elsewhere (maybe).
Related: Bird Using Bait to Fish – Cat and Crow Playing Together – Dolphins Play with Air Bubble Rings – Friday Duckling Fun
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