Conures

Conures are native to most of South and Central America.
In general, they are part of a large group of parrots that range from small species of 8.5 inches in length (about the size of some of the parakeets) to 19 inches (larger than some of the smaller macaws) with most of them being in the 12 to 13 inch range.

They can be very colourful birds, in both appearance and personality. These birds have a never-ending source of energy. They are fun to watch because of their vibrant colours and acrobatic natures. They are pleasant and peaceful birds. Unfortunately, the voice of many Conures is not always pleasant – often consisting of bouts of loud screaming. Although not known for their talking abilities, many can develop good vocabularies, especially if handfed.

Green Cheek Conures, like my Griffin pictured here are among the smaller conures that are fairly common as pets. They are generally very quiet and even their speaking voice is almost a whisper.

Sun Conures, like TJ who belongs to a member of the Parrot Club of Manitoba is a mid sized conure. Their voice can be considerably louder than a smaller conure, but their personality is fun and outgoing.

The Key features of Sun Conure are, it is medium-sized parrot with large, black hooked bill, large head; long wings; long, tapered tail; plumage bright yellow, intensifying to orange on head and belly; outer wing bright green, with blue on primaries and primary coverts; sexes alike. Its habits are usually seen in medium-sized flocks; mobile and noisy; feeds in trees and shrubs.

They nest in tree holes, often in palms; other details known from captive, birds 4 eggs; incubation 28 days, by female; young fledge after 56 days; 1 brood. Sun Conure sounds like high-pitched, grating “screek”, rapidly repeated. Feed mainly fruit. Their habitat is Savanna and forest.

Taking Care Of Cockatiel

One of the earth’s most well-known birds will be the cockatiel which could be popular because of its light, friendly and also clever character. This specific bird isn’t very difficult plus constitutes a fantastic pet. Even newbies will likely be more likely to have no problems adapting to this certain bird’s desires.

Individuals who curently have this bird think it’s to be truly fortunate for them.
Cockatiels are originally present in Australia as they’re viewed as the tiniest from the cockatoo (parrot) family. You’d discover plenty of commonalities between a cockatiel as well as a parrot merely for the truth that the cockatiel is amongst the species of parrot. The actual name sounds a great deal more like a Dutch word “Kakatielje” that basically recommend just a little cockatoo.

By their own really character itself these cockatiel birds are actually sociable and moderately active and they like to be touched, played and talked to. Most of the time, you may find these birds doing a trick to catch your attention and by singing also. They live for as long as 15 to 20 years and are located in yellow, white and gray color.

You may uncover these birds quite cheerful and affectionate to the extent that they will groom your hair. Affection is something they want and they would adore to get stocked and cuddled and might be trained to talk and whistle. Male are normally seen as far better than females for this, but then overall cockatiels aren’t extremely clear in their speech when compared to parrots.

In size they’re smaller than most parrots, don’t bite as significantly and are quieter and cleaner also. The point you should contemplate before taking one as a pet is that they are usually hand fed. This makes them straightforward to tame. Believe twice just before making a selection between a male and a female as they are friendly but not so costly birds. Female care are general far more nervous than males.

Also, you should consider insurance for this pets,due to the fact that they are sometimes ill and might be expensive to treat!

Please take a appear at the internet site to get all the info on cockatiel care! In case you would like to uncover our more about cockatiels, then have a peek at our cockatiel facts page.

Enjoy!

Caring for Your African Greys

African Greys are the most sought-after parrots, thanks to their amazing ability to communicate with humans. They are extremely intelligent birds and are known to be the best at mimicking human behavior.

There are two types of African Greys: The Congo African Grey and the Tinmeh Grey. The Congo subspecies is the more common pet bird. African Greys are typically 12 to 13 inches from beak to tail, and thus need adequate living space. If properly cared for, these birds can live to be 50 years old or older. If you’re thinking of owning an African Grey, or if you are new owner, there are some important things you should know.

Along with the intelligence of the Grey comes an extreme sensitivity. Greys need the special attention that human children require. Experts say that these birds need at least three hours of interaction per day. Greys, like children, need to be put on a schedule; they thrive when following a routine.

It is also very important to note that all Teflon products (including kitchen pans and accessories, and beauty tools) must be removed from the house before a parrot takes up residence. Teflon is deadly toxic to parrots. Once you use a Teflon product, the particles become airborne and then deadly to your pet parrot. Please seek your veterinarian's advice about which kitchen and/or beauty tools you can purchase to replace those with Teflon.

However, not all Greys speak well or at all. Those that do speak tend to do so after age 1. Experts advise that these birds should not be taken on as pets solely because the human wants the bird to speak. Greys form a special bond with their human owners, Hollander says. They often will bond this way with only one human, and may act shy around other people. Not only will the birds mimic the words of that special human in their lives, they are also known to take on their emotions. If you’re upset, there is a good chance your Grey will be, too.

A familiar and noisy American bird - Blue jay

Blue jays are natural forest dwellers, but they are also highly adaptable and intelligent birds. They are a familiar and noisy presence around many North American bird feeders. The blue jay's "Jay! Jay!" call is only one of a wide variety of sounds the bird employs—including excellent imitations of several hawk calls.

Blue jays are sometimes known to eat eggs or nestlings, and it is this practice that has tarnished their reputation. In fact, they are largely vegetarian birds. Most of their diet is composed of acorns, nuts, and seeds—though they also eat small creatures such as caterpillars, grasshoppers, and beetles. Blue jays sometimes store acorns in the ground and may fail to retrieve them, thus aiding the spread of forests.

Common in much of eastern and central North America, blue jays are gradually extending their range to the Northwest. They are fairly social and are typically found in pairs or in family groups or small flocks. Most northern birds head south for the winter and join in large flocks of up to 250 birds to make the long journey. However, this migration is a bit of a mystery to scientists. Some birds winter in all parts of the blue jay's range, and some individual birds may migrate one year and not the next. It is unclear what factors determine whether each blue jay or family decides to migrate.

The Eagle Is Not Really Bald

The bald eagle is a species of eagle species, the most popular. Bald eagle found in many regions of North America. His name is bald eagle, but the eagle is not really bald, it was just the name alone. Characteristic of bald eagle is the color of the head until his neck is white, you also must have been very popular with the kind of eagle this one, because the bald eagle became the national symbol of the United States.

There is an unquestionable awe in witnessing the natural phenomenon that occurs in Brackendale every winter as 1000s of Bald Eagles congregate but there is no mystery to it. What these birds have found here, on the shores of the Squamish, Cheakamus and Mamquam rivers, is an inviting environment complete with all that is necessary to survive winter's harsh realities.

Eagles have wintered in the Squamish Valley for perhaps millennia but it wasn't until about 25 years ago, when habitat along the Pacific Coast was increasingly lost to misguided logging practices and dwindling salmon stocks often due to the damming of rivers, that bald eagles discovered Brackendale en mass.

A truly unique way for up close and personal encounters with the wintering eagles is a gentle float trip through the heart of where the eagles and other birds gather. Eagles are relatively unperturbed by the rafts as they float gently down the river sometimes only a few metres away from these magnificent raptors. Sunwolf Outdoor Centre, located on the banks of the Cheakamus River, offers daily Float Tours where guests see up to a thousand eagles (often in groups of twenty in one tree) during a two hour tour. On your return from the river the Sunwolf Lodge awaits with a hot and hearty fireside lunch. An invigorating soak in the hot tub while taking in the magnificent views of the Tantalus Mountain Range is an ideal way to complete the day's adventure. Better yet, combine your winter eagle rafting experience with a night's stay in one of their cozy riverside cabins and continue to view roosting eagles from your doorstep.

Something About Parrots

The parrots are a broad order of more than 350 birds. Macaws, Amazons, lorikeets, lovebirds, cockatoos and many others are all considered parrots.

Though there is great diversity among these birds, there are similarities as well. All parrots have curved beaks and all are zygodactyls, meaning they have four toes on each foot, two pointing forward and two projecting backward. Most parrots eat fruit, flowers, buds, nuts, seeds, and some small creatures such as insects.
Parrots are found in warm climates all over most of the world. The greatest diversities exist in Australasia, Central America, and South America.
Many parrots are kept as pets, especially macaws, Amazon parrots, cockatiels, parakeets, and cockatoos. These birds have been popular companions throughout history because they are intelligent, charismatic, colorful, and musical. Some birds can imitate many nonavian sounds, including human speech. The male African gray parrot (Psittacus erithacus) is the most accomplished user of human speech in the animal world; this rain forest-dweller is an uncanny mimic.
Currently the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) bans the sale of any wild-caught species, yet the parrots' popularity continues to drive illegal trade.
Some parrot species are highly endangered. In other cases, once tame birds have reproduced in the wild and established thriving feral populations in foreign ecosystems. The monk (green) parakeet, for example, now lives in several U.S. states.

The Interesting Courtship Behavior Of Hummingbirds

Hummingbird is a small bird of the Trochilidae family. The rapid beating of the hummingbirds wings (60 to 80 beats per second) makes the distinctive humming sound from which they get their name.

They are found only in North America and South America.
The hummingbird range extends as far north as southeastern Alaska and the hummingbird range extends as far south as southern Chile.
South America has the biggest variety of hummingbirds and more than half the species are found there. The country of Ecuador in northwestern South America has the largest number of hummingbirds of any one country with 163 different species.
The Hummingbirds courtship behavior is very interesting
They communicate with one another by making visual displays. Males sometimes raise the feathers bordering the gorget and toss their heads from side to side, while uttering shrill sounds. Females and young are more likely to do perched displays in which they spread their tail feathers to show the white tips.
Sometimes both males and females do shuttle-flights, which are rapid back and forth movements in front of another bird. During the shuttle flight, the tail and gorget may be displayed.
Dive display are only done by the males. At key points in the dive, buzzing, whistling, or popping sounds might be made with the wing feathers or the vocal cords. The trajectory of the dive is U-shaped. At the top of the arc, the bird may be quite high in the air.
The narrowly-focused shuttle dance of the male is usually part of a courtship ritual. After finding a ready female, he flies in front of her in short, rapid arcs. The dance field may be about ten inches wide.
We once saw a black-chinned hummingbird shuttle like this in front of a female that was perched in a mesquite. Looking intimidated, she moved her head back and forth to watched his awesome arial movements, which were only inches from her face; then she hung upside-down by her toes as he mounted her.
In some hummingbirds--mostly species that are south of the border--the males gather in communities, which are called leks. Then they all sing together to try to entice females to come into the neighborhood for mating.

Birds Will Be Bigger Because Of Global Climate Change?

Birds in central California are significantly larger than they were 25 to 40 years ago, and researchers believe it may be because they are bulking up in body weight to ride out severe storms related to global climate change.
Over the last 25 years, a robin, for example, has increased about an eighth of an inch in wing length and about 0.2 ounces in mass, according to a paper published online in Global Change Biology.

The findings fly in the face of assumptions based on an ecological benchmark known as Bergmann’s rule: Birds and mammals tend to be larger at higher latitudes, perhaps to conserve body heat. Under this reasoning, birds and mammals would get smaller as they adapted to rising global temperatures.

But they also suggest that explanations for the bigger birds are more complex, according to researcher Jill Demers, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory.

“The degree of physical change over a relatively short scale of time is remarkable and surprising,” Demers said. “Similar studies in Pennsylvania and Europe, for example, show that birds there have decreased in size over the past several decades.”

Overall, birds in central California have grown an average of 2% to 5%  in body weight and wingspan, said Rae Goodman, who discovered the trend while working as a graduate student at San Francisco State University, analyzing data from thousands of birds caught and released each year near San Francisco Bay and the Point Reyes National Seashore.

More study is needed to determine whether these changes are good for central California birds and how they affect food chains, Goodman said.

The data was gathered from “banding stations” where dozens of species of birds each year are captured, banded around the leg with an identification tag, weighed and measured before being released, allowing researchers to analyze physical traits over several decades.

Researchers, including a team from PRBO Conservation Science, analyzed data from 14,735 individual birds collected from 1971 to 2010 near the southern end of Point Reyes National Seashore, and 18,052 birds collected between 1983 and 2009 from the southern end of San Francisco Bay.
“I recently presented my research to my students,” said Goodman, who now teaches biology at San Francisco’s Jewish Community High School of the Bay. “It was something a little more glamorous than the lessons they’re used to.”

Eye on Nature birds

We do a lot of birding on the Laguna Madre. We bird almost every day. It is a big part of keeping an eye on nature. We know birds individually and we see new ones all the time.
This time of year we get to see and meet so many species that just use this area as a migration stop over. They may stay a few hours, a few days or even a few weeks before they move on south.
One species in particular we watch for is the little shorebird called a Redknot. It is plain in the winter, a not so redknot. But one we see very few of. While we can see high numbers of other species, with this one the most I have seen at one time is a dozen.　　
　　Of all the species we see, we have seen only a handful of banded or tagged species. Ones that have been captured and banded are highly sought after as it helps researchers monitor the status of the species.
We have seen many banded piping plover, which is the species we have seen the most banded birds. We have seen a few banded brown pelicans; one osprey; one rose throated bicard, which is another story in it self; a few peregrines; and a few reddish egrets. But never a banded redknot.
As we were armchair birding the other day along the shore ooing and ahing over piping plovers and the variety of shorebirds just feet in front of us, I saw a light green tag on a bird just larger than the sanderling it was feeding next to. It was a redknot. Finally, a banded redknot.
So I took many photos and got some good ones to read what the tag said. I searched the flat for more redknots but only found pectoral sandpipers, ruddy turnstones, least and western sandpipers, a few more unbanded piping plovers but no more redknots, just this loner.
The wind was kicking up and we headed to the house. After uploading my photos and searching Google for tagged redknots, I found the website to report this bird, and map it, too. It was neat to see the history on this precious gem, a species that might be lost to us soon if we do not save the horseshoe crabs. Here is what we learned from the report that came back on the little redknot.
Capture on Oct. 7, 2009 at County Beach North on Mustang Island.
Resightings on Jan. 4, 2010 on Mustang Island at the Port Aransas Jetty and Beach, May 17, 2011 at the Padre Island National Seashore, and Oct. 27, 2011 in the Brownsville Ship Channel.
Keeping an eye on nature, Scarlet Colley, Dolphinwhisper on facebook. To book an armchair birding trip call 956-299-1957

Disappear "series TG4 outstanding threat to Ireland's wildlife

　　
　　　　A new six-part nature series, to be broadcast on TG4 from next week, will chart species of Irish wildlife under threat in Galway and in other areas of the country, wildlife which is in danger of joining those animals which have fallen into extinction. 　　The series, Ag Dul in Éag or Dying Out, takes a broader look at threatened Irish wildlife and recounts the facinating stories of how some of Ireland’s species suffered total annihilation. Featuring the music of Galway city man John Finn, the series is produced by County Clare based Waxwing Productions and explores the extinction of animals such as the brown bear, the wolf, and the wild boar many years ago and the danger that is posed to wildlife today, in particular water birds in Galway, for example the yellowhammer.
According to wildlife expert and director of Waxwing Wildlife Productions, John Murphy: “Some of our most interesting species have been decimated; whether centuries ago or in the past few hundred years. The wolf, the wild boar, the Eurasian crane and the brown bear were once plentiful in our woodlands, waterways and caves. Some were hunted out of extinction either by directive or demand, such as the wolf and the wild boar, whilst others fell prey to the clearance of our woodlands, such as the brown bear, the capercaille and the red squirrel. Whereas there are many other species such as the eel, the little tern, the bittern and the yellowhammer currently clinging on for their lives on our island nation.
“The clearance of our native oak woods played a large part in the drumming echo of the woodpecker disappearing from our forests centuries ago. But in the past decade we have seen the return of these colourful birds to many areas of the countryside. This is a very welcome development and in this series we will explore what has contributed to this resurgence.”
Mr Murphy further explained that the introduction of non-indigenous species into the countryside can also have a negative effect on rare and precious species. He said: “To eradicate a species once is regrettable, but to allow it to disappear for a second time is simply irresponsible. This could be the fate of our native red squirrel. In the past the clearance of our native woodlands and the open killing spree that was waged on the red squirrel decimated this cute little mammal. But after the English restocked the countryside with them, the introduction of a non-native grey squirrel from America in the 1800s once again put them in danger of survival. If these aggressive grey squirrels aren’t kept in check they will very soon eradicate our native reds, as has happened in Britain. Another example would be how the introduction of mink to the wilds of Donegal is severely endangering the survival of red-throated divers in the area.”
Ongoing efforts to ensure the protection and preservation of other species such as the arctic char, Irish pollan, the red-throated divers, the Irish red deer, the grey partridge and the little tern are also charted in this series. The strong links to Irish folklore that many of the extinct species have is also explored, a reminder of the unique and once integral part they played in the Irish countryside.

Upon whom shall I defecate?

　　
　　"Upon whom shall I defecate?"
​ Birds can do it all. They fly, have hollow bones, eat worms all day, and live in houses made of sticks and spit. If you think birds can't get any more amazing, think again. Researchers at the University of Kyoto have found that Bengalese finches follow a pitch pattern in their tweets that is essentially grammatical. Danielle Perszyk writes in Scientific American that the study found "the birds responded strongly to tunes ordered with certain structure, even when this structure was artificially constructed." Birds may be the only species that can drop a dookie on you from one hundred feet in the air while correcting your use of a split infinitive.
How does one find out if birds know grammar? Kentaro Abe and Dai Watanabe, the researchers who led the study, did the following:
In each experiment, the birds were presented with the same songs until they became familiarized with the tune. The researchers then created novel songs by shuffling the notes around. But not every new song caught the birds' attention; rather, the finches increased response calls only to songs with notes arranged in a particular order, suggesting that the birds used common rules when forming the syntax of that song. When the researchers created novel songs with even more complicated artificial grammar--for example, songs that mimicked a specific feature found in human (Japanese) language--the birds still only responded to songs that followed the rules.
Amazingly, baby finches that were isolated from other birds were able to pick up on artificially constructed songs. It took the finches only two weeks to learn standard birdsong grammar after being introduced to a group of fellow fowls. This means they "absorb the precise rules of Bengalese finch grammar" just by listening.
Should further research prove that the varying tweets convey actual meaning, like words, it's a possibility that "these animals possess other cognitive abilities once thought to be singularly characteristic of human intelligence"