Hawkwatch at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia

Credits: Franklin Institute

For the fourth year in a row, a couple of hawks, at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, adopted a window sill, and humans collaborated placing a nest for the breading couple.

For the fourth year in a row, there were 3 eggs laid and once again hatched. 

All prior three litters (3+3+3) were well succeed and no doubt it has been astonishing to see the wonderful and experienced couple taking care of their checks.

For those who would like to follow the 2012 story and the off springs feeding here is the link.

Epic Migration of a Song Bird

If you have ever thought that tiny birds are not heroes I'm sure that's because you've never heard about the little 25g  "Oenanthe oenanthe".

It weights the equivalent of 2 sugar teaspoons but that's not a problem when the topic is "Migration".

In fact, this tiny songbird flies, each year 29.000 Km, on its migration route between Africa and Artic and then back.

Scientists managed, for the first time, to track this epic migration routes after placing tags on 2 of these tiny birds. Flying an average of 290 Km a day, these songbirds flew over Siberia and across the Arabian desert, heading to Sudan, Uganda and Kenya, a trip that took about 91 days on the outward trip but 55 days for the return leg.

"They are incredible migratory journeys, particularly for a bird this size," said Ryan Norris of the University of Guelph in Ontario. Think of something smaller than a robin but a little larger than a finch raising young in the Arctic tundra and then a few months later foraging for food in Africa for the winter."

The study appears on Wednesday in Biology Letters, a journal published by the Royal Society, Britain's de-facto academy of sciences.
Birds with larger wingspans such as the cuckoo and albatross are famous for their transcontinental migrations, but this study provides incontrovertible evidence that a songbird can do the same, say the scientists. "Scaled for body size, this is one of the longest round-trip migratory journey of any bird in the world and raises questions about how a bird of this size is able to successfully undertake such physically demanding journeys twice a year, particularly for inexperienced juveniles migrating on their own." from here

Bird Scanning - Old Egyptian Mummy Bird on a CT scan with 3-D reconstruction

A Mummy IBIS bird seen on a CT scan with 3D reconstruction 
Image courtesy Andrew Wade and Yale Peabody Museum (item ANT.006924.004)

New techniques are always surprising us by opening little windows if the past where we can peek life and ancient habits from long ago extinct civilizations.

Photogr courtesy Andrew Nelson, Univ. Western Ontario

That's what happened at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, where scientists picked an egyptian Ibis bird sacrificed for buriel purposes and submeted to a CT-scan-based 3-D reconstruction.

The images are incredibly clear and it is perfectly visible that before being mummified the bird was fed with grains and a dead snake, which was placed within, via an incision in his stomach, for the after life journey.

The bird is one of three sacred ibis mummies aged between 2,600 and 2,000 years that were found to have been packed with food for the afterlife. Now extinct in Egypt, sacred ibises have been found throughout ancient catacombs and in other chambers dedicated to offerings to the gods.  from here

Missing Links - Dinosaur Fethers Color Determined

Archaeopteryx

Archaeopteryx lived in the Late Jurassic Period around 150 million years ago, in what is now southern Germany during a time when Europe was an archipelago of islands in a shallow warm tropical sea, much closer to the equator than it is now.

Similar in shape to a European Magpie, with the largest individuals possibly attaining the size of a raven, Archaeopteryx could grow to about 0.5 metres (1.6 ft) in length. Despite its small size, broad wings, and inferred ability to fly or glide, Archaeopteryx has more in common with other small Mesozoic dinosaurs than it does with modern birds. In particular, it shares the following features with the deinonychosaurs (dromaeosaurs and troodontids): jaws with sharp teeth, three fingers with claws, a long bony tail, hyperextensible second toes ("killing claw"), feathers (which also suggest homeothermy), and various skeletal features.

For the very first time, scientists have determined the color of fossilized feather Archaeopteryx, a birdlike dinosaur that represents an evolutionary transition between dinosaurs and today's birds.

In a research taken partially by the National Geographic Society, headed by Ryan Carney of Brown University, investigators used a specialized type of electron microscope to determine the pigmentation of the feather, which they say was black. -  from here

Albino Hummingbird

This shot, of an extremely rare albino ruby-throated hummingbird

was photographed by two Virginia teenagers and two preteens:

Marlin Shank, 16, Shaphan Shank, 14, Darren Shank, 12 and Allen Shank, 9.


The Shank brothers spotted the rare bird with their father Kevin Shank, who runs Nature Friend Magazine with his wife Bethany.