There’s snow on the ground — again — this morning. We’re used to it here in western Pennsylvania but in some places it’s unusual.
What happens the first time chickens see snow?
p.s. The background music is apt … the first two movements of Winter from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
(video by MrLotineGuy on YouTube)
15 December 2017
This photo looks odd until you see a bird in it.
White-tailed ptarmigans (Lagopus leucura) hide in plain sight by blending into the landscape. They’re speckled brown in summer and white as snow in winter. They virtually disappear when they close their eyes.
In late November Dan Arndt found these birds in the snow at Highwood Pass, Highway 40 in Alberta, Canada.
How many ptarmigans do you see?
Willow ptarmigans hide, too. Practice finding them in this 2010 article: Where’s Willow?
(photos by Dan Arndt)
Birds use alarm calls to warn each other of danger but pigeons are generally silent. What sound could a pigeon make to signal danger? The crested pigeon (Ocyphaps lophotes) of Australia uses his 8th feather.
Crested pigeons make a whistling sound when they fly — a high note on the down stroke, a low note going up. Researchers found out that the eighth primary feather is the source of the high note and that the speed of the low-high modulation provides the warning.
When a bird flaps slowly the whistle repeats slowly, so other pigeons decide the bird is not afraid. When the sound repeats rapidly it sounds like the pigeon is fleeing, so the other birds do, too.
Watch the video or read about this discovery here in Science Magazine.
p.s. Mourning doves (Zenaida macroura) make a similar whistling sound when they fly. I wonder if it functions as a warning sound.
How do you tell a wild turkey from a domestic one (ignoring the fact that they’re in a pen)?
In my experience, wild turkeys walk away from you. Domestic turkeys walk toward you and they try to get as close as they can.
And then they make you laugh. 😉
Happy Thanksgiving.
(YouTube credits: Produced in Cooperation with NasenNews Location: Turkey Farm in the wonderful Odenwald, Germany)
Here’s some trivia for Turkey Day.
Did you know you can determine a male turkey’s health and his success with the ladies by the length of his snood?
What’s a snood?
On humans it’s a large-mesh hairnet worn by women, or …
… a beard snood worn by men.
But on turkeys the snood is the piece of flesh that dangles from the male turkey’s forehead and droops over his beak.
Here’s a Wikipedia diagram of the male turkey’s anatomical ornaments:
1. Caruncles, 2. Snood, 3. Wattle (Dewlap), 4. Major caruncle, 5. Beard
The two wild turkeys at top are displaying to females. Which one has the best snood? I can’t tell but the females can. Click here to see how the ladies reacted.
(photo credits: two wild turkeys by Cris Hamilton; women wearing snoods from Wikimedia Commons; man wearing a beard snood from sales page at Creeds UK; wild turkey diagram from Wikimedia Commons. click on the images to see the originals)
A new DNA study of the passenger pigeon brings up an interesting question: Could we bring the species back from extinction?
Genetic engineering now makes it possible to transfer genes across species boundaries. Using these techniques a group named Revive and Restore is working to modify the genes of the passenger pigeon’s closest living relative, the band-tailed pigeon (Patagioenas fasciata), to make a new bird that resembles a passenger pigeon.
If successful, they’ll release the new bird in the wild to repopulate eastern North America.
But a new study published this month in Science may throw a wrench in their plan.
Researchers gathered DNA from the toepads of passenger pigeon museum specimens and sequenced the full genomes of four birds. In doing so they discovered that passenger pigeons were extremely diverse at the ends of their chromosomes but had low diversity in the middle. Most animals, including the band-tailed pigeon, aren’t like that. Most animals are diverse all the way through.
This trait may indicate that the passenger pigeon in its final form had evolved to live in enormous flocks.
Ed Yong at The Atlantic interviewed the study’s author, Beth Shapiro, and writes:
So, why did this superspecies die out? Shapiro thinks it’s because the bird specifically evolved to live in mega-flocks, and developed adaptations that became costly when their numbers suddenly shrank at human hands. “Maybe they were simply not adapted to being in a small population, and didn’t have time to recover,” she says. Maybe they hit a tipping point when there were just too few of them to survive, regardless of whether they were being hunted.
Would a small population of passenger pigeons be possible in the wild? And could the birds survive in this century’s altered and deforested landscape? Revive and Restore believes the answer is yes.
Can humans bring back the passenger pigeon? Should we try?
Read more in The Atlantic at: What DNA Says About the Extinction of America’s Most Common Bird … and its possible resurrection.
(photo credits: Passenger pigeon specimens at Carnegie Museum of Natural History by Kate St. John. Band-tailed pigeon from Wikimedia Commons; click on the image to see the original)
On Throw Back Thursday:
Remembering an encounter with a spruce grouse …
Click here to read about Bruce the Fabulous
(photo by Jim Honeth)
On Labor Day let’s take a look at some working birds.
Chickens were first domesticated about 9,000 years ago in both China and India but the idea didn’t really take off for another 2,000 to 4,000 years. Then it spread slowly westward to Persia (Iran), Egypt, Europe and Africa. Chickens are now the most numerous bird species on Earth because humans like to eat them and their eggs.
Because of our close relationship to chickens we tend to forget that they are birds and we can learn from their behavior.
What does a hen do when she wants to lay an egg? This video answers the question among a flock of free range chickens.
“What is my chicken telling me?”
(video by Plant Abundance on YouTube)
Silent songbirds and hot weather make birding less interesting in August. Here’s a project to get you going in Pennsylvania: It’s time to count wild turkeys.
Every August the Pennsylvania Game Commission conducts a wild turkey survey to determine breeding success. Everyone from biologists to birders can help. Two factors add interest to the count:
The guidelines for the survey are pretty simple:
Click here for the Turkey Survey form.
Thanks to Mary Ann Pike for passing along this news.
(photo from Wikimedia Commons; click on the image to see the original)
p.s. Did you know you can sex turkeys by the shape of their droppings? Learn more at PGC’s Turkey Biology FAQ page.
In Pennsylvania we have only one kind of pigeon and he isn’t really ours. He’s the descendant of European birds named rock pigeons because they nest on cliffs. This distinguishes them from another European pigeon that nests in trees, the common wood pigeon (Columba palumbus).
Wood pigeons used to be shy and stay in the woods but now they hang out in parks and cities and are the most numerous bird in London, even more numerous than rock pigeons.
When these two encounter each other you can see that “wood” is bigger than “rock.”
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In some parts of Europe wood pigeons are migratory. In winter large flocks browse in the fields as shown below. Notice the bright white patches on their necks and white wing bars visible in flight.
When it’s time to nest they’re back in the trees …
… raising baby pigeons in the woods.
(photos and video from Wikimedia Commons; click on the images to see the originals)