Talk:Birds

Draft

• Many birds fly south for the winter, leaving Canada for warmer climates. Genetics also give these animals a leg up, as many birds and mammals grow more fur and feathers in the winter to insulate warmth and undergo torpor by dropping their body temperatures a few degrees to reduce heat loss.
  Food and water are scarce during these periods, making every day an act of survival. It truly is incredible how wildlife can prevail.
  • Vindi Sekhon Birds that Winter in Canada (October 24, 2020)

• Females looking for the best mate can gauge their suitors based on their plumage. When females prefer brighter males, they leave a double legacy to their offspring. Sons inheriting the genes of their fathers will have colorful plumage, too; daughters may inherit their mothers’ liking for colorful mates.
  • Miyoko Chu, Songbird Journeys (2006), ISBN 0-8027-1518-4, p. 95

• Traditionally birds were viewed as a model of monogamy. Before the availability of molecular techniques to analyze genetic relationships, to the best of any ornithologist’s knowledge, some 93 percent of taxonomic songbird families were monogamous, with just one male and one female attending each nest. However, genetic studies since the 1980s have turned that estimate upside down. As of 2002, only 14 percent of songbirds surveyed using DNA have proved to be truly monogamous. For example, among nests of reed buntings, an Old World species, 86 percent of broods contained at least one chick not sired by the male attending the nest! On average among “monogamous” birds, 19 percent of broods include at least one offspring who has a different father than its nest mates.
  • Miyoko Chu, Songbird Journeys (2006), ISBN 0-8027-1518-4, p. 98

• Birds can fly at astonishing heights in the atmosphere: On November 29, 1975, a large vulture was sucked into a jet engine at a height of 37,900 feet above the Ivory Coast in West Africa. Other birds, such as the migrating bar-headed geese and the whooper swans, regularly fly higher than 25,000 feet.
  • Mario Livio, Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe. Simon and Schuster. 27 May 2014. p. 12. ISBN 978-1-4391-9237-5.  -- may be suitable for an article on Bird flight Ficaia (talk) 11:03, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

• In our own lifetime we are witnessing a startling alteration of climate…Activities in the nonhuman world also reflect the warming of the Arctic-the changed habits and migrations of many fishes, birds, land mammals, and whales.
  • Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us (1951)