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Winter Guests
December 27: Every winter, the Delhi Zoo in New Delhi, India, spruces up for the visit of some special foreign visitors. They fly in from the distant lands of China, Japan and Central Asia to escape sub-zero temperatures back home and bask in the warmer Delhi sun. These visitors include pin-tail ducks, shoveller ducks, common teals, coots, dab-chiks, yellow wagtails, yellow-winged wagtails and white wagtails. Flocks of migratory birds have made the Delhi zoo their temporary habitat....
The Peacocks are Dying
May 11: The residents of the Rajasthan State Electricity Board colony in Heerapur, 12 km from Jaipur, are in shock. They don’t know how to reconcile to the sudden, unexplained deaths of 19 peacocks in their colony in the first week of May. The priest at the Radha Krishna temple in the colony is inconsolable: there are no more peacocks to peck at the vessel filled with jowar. In the first week of May, at Sirsiya village in Phagi district, a villager saw six of the birds die, foaming at their mouth as they tried to dance....
Birds Sing in their Sleep
Just like humans, birds too rely on sound to communicate. However, they do not have a ‘language’ in the true sense of the word and instead emit a variety of squawks and chirps to convey different emotions. Often, birds recognise their mates (or young) by sound rather than sight. Hungry fledglings use begging calls to let their mothers know it is feeding time. Alarm calls, flight calls for flight coordination, and warning calls are other sounds emitted frequently by the adults....
The Gardener Bird
Look at this nest. Doesn’t it remind you of a hut? It is built by a bird with an appropriate name. It is called the gardener bird. It works hard at building its house and decorating it. The Gardener Bird [Illustration by Shridevi R.] And, after building the house, it makes a garden around it. The gardener bird likes colourful objects. So, its house is always surrounded with colourful flowers and shells....
Pelican Trouble
Many people living in Andhra Pradesh may have escaped the wrath of the cyclone that ravaged the state last month, but the migratory pelicans, in a small costal village in northern Andhra, weren’t quite as fortunate. Pelican Trouble [Illustration by Shiju George] The storms’ heavy winds and rains didn’t cause as much material damage as was expected, however it proved disastrous for the pelicans as small chicks were blown out of their nests....
High-tech Crane Migration
As winter sets in, millions of birds leave their nests in the northern hemisphere and head towards warmer lands in the south. During spring, they once again wing their way back to their original nesting grounds. This yearly ritual is known as migration. While some birds are great travellers, flying from one country to another; others merely flap down from the high mountains to sheltered valleys for the winter. The Arctic tern (of North America) is the hardiest traveller of all....
Why does a Kentish Plover Parent Desert its Family?
When couples exchange vows on the marriage day, they generally say ‘till death do us part’. For a species of shore-dwelling bird called the Kentish Plover, it is ‘till divorce do us part’. Indeed, birds of this species usually leave their partners after the incubation (hatching) of the eggs and usually it is the female who moves on, while the male stays on to look after the babies. A recent study conducted by Andras Kosztolanyi of the University of Debrecen, in Hungary, sheds light on the reason behind this behaviour....
Pretty bird no more
Where: London, England April 24, 2007: For 40 years, the people of London have been happy to spot in their parks a bird that seems to have made its way from the Himalayas to the capital of England. With its shocking green body, red beak, long tail and noisy screech, the rose-ringed parakeet brought a vivid splash of colour to parks in and around London. The parakeet (psittacula krameri) is native to a great belt of land stretching from Africa to the Himalayas in India....
The Song of the Bird
The Song of the Bird [] Humans speak when they are happy, they speak when they are sad. They speak when they are angry, and they speak when they see a thing of beauty. They try to speak even when they have toothaches, and often they speak even when they have nothing to say. Well, songbirds are quite the same. They sing to tell their winged neighbours and strangers that the branch on which they are sitting, or the shrub that grows next to the school, is THEIR home....
Bird Flu Virus Returns to Asia
Where: China December 18, 2008: The deadly Bird Flu virus is back, and hundreds of thousands of chickens are being culled (killed) across Asia and Africa to stop the virus from spreading. The H5N1 virus is commonly referred to as Bird Flu virus since it spreads through birds. It can be fatal for human beings, especially those that are exposed to birds such as poultry. Bird Flu Virus Returns to Asia [] In China, over 370,000 chickens have been culled in the country’s eastern province of Jiangsu....