The Plumed Whistling Duck (Dendrocygna eytoni) is a wetlands bird. It is also known as the Grass Whistle Duck, the Red-Legged Whistler, or the Whistling Tree-Duck.
The Plumed Whistling Duck has white side plumes (feathers) with black margins that stick out. It has brown upperparts, paler underparts, and a white rump. It chest is chestnut-brown with thin black bars. It has a long neck. Its beak is pink with black markings, and its legs are pink. Its eyes are orange-yellow.
Photographer: Martina Nicolls
The Red-Legged Seriema (Cariama cristata) is a medium-sized bird. It is also called the Crested Cariama.
The Red-Legged Seriema has medium-brown feathers with black markings. It has a pale-brown head, neck and chest, with white on its underbelly. It has a long neck, long tail, and long red legs. Its beak is red and its eyes are yellow. It has soft feathers emerging from the base of its beak. Its tail has a black band near the tip, with a white band at the tip.
The Caucasus Eurasian Bullfinch (Pyrrhula pyrrhula rossikowi) is a small passerine bird in the finch family. It is related to the Pine Grosbeak.
The male Caucasian Eurasian Bullfinch has flame-coloured underparts and the female has greyish underparts. Its upperparts are grey, its flight feathers are black, its cap and face are black, and its rump and wing bars are white.
Why do ostriches, the largest living bird species, with the largest eggs of any bird, have two legs but four knees? Specifically, ostriches have four kneecaps, and therefore four knees. Emus and cassowaries have no kneecaps.
Sophie Regnault, and her research colleagues at the Royal Veterinary College in London, examined a dead ostrich donated to the college.
They bent and straightened the ostrich’s knees, and used an imaging technique called biplanar fluoroscopy to track how the bones moved. Then they built a simple model to understand how the kneecaps affected the leverage of the muscles controlling the knee.
Kneecaps help animals to flex the extensor muscles in their knees, so that they don’t need to exert force to straighten their knees.
However, ostriches have an upper kneecap and a lower kneecap on each leg that act differently from the kneecaps of other animals.
Continue reading “RESEARCH: Why ostriches have two legs but four knees”
The Abdim’s Stork (Ciconia abdimii) is a medium-sized wetlands bird. It is also known as the White-Bellied Stork or the Grasshopper BIrd.
The Abdim’s Stork is black with white underparts. It has grey-pink legs, red knees, and red feet. It has a grey beak. It has red skin on it face in front of its eyes, and blue skin near its beak in the breeding season.
The Reeves’s Pheasant (Syrmaticus reevesii) is a large galliform game bird.
The Reeves’s Pheasant has gold, white, black, and reddish feathers, grey legs, and bare red skin around its eyes. Its beak is pale-cream, and its head is white with a narrow black band across its brown eyes. It has a very long, silvery-white tail with chestnut-brown bars. The female is brown with a blackish crown, a buff face, and a barred greyish-brown tail.
The Crested Wood Partridge (Rollulus roulroul) is also called the Roul-Roul or the Red-Crowned Wood Partridge. It is a small game bird in the Phasianidae family of pheasants.
The Crested Wood Partridge is a short, rounded short-tailed bird. It has a scarlet-red patch of bare skin around its eyes with a red eye-ring. It has red legs, without a spur or hind (back) toe. The male is metallic iridescent green on its upperparts with glossy dark-blue on its underparts. It has a purplish wing panel. Its head has a white forehead spot, black bristles, and a tall red crest.
The female has pea-green body, a grey head with bristles but no spot and no crest. It has a brownish wing panel. The male and female have a dark-grey beak and pink-grey to red legs.
The Asian House Martin (Delichon dasypus) is a small bird in the passerine Hirundinidae family of swallows.
The Asian House Martin has blue-black upperparts, a white rump, and pale-grey underparts. Its wings are brownish-black. It has a short tail. Its legs and feet are brownish-pink, and covered with white feathers. Its small eyes are brown and its beak is black.
The Hawaiian Goose (Branta sandvicensis) is a medium-sized bird. It is a water fowl. It is considered to be the world’s rarest goose.
The Hawaiian Goose is grey with black-striped markings, a black head, and chestnut-coloured cheeks. It has a dark-grey beak and dark-grey legs. It has partially webbed feet so that it can walk over rocky terrain. It does not waddle like other geese.
The Short-Eared Owl (Asio flammeus flammeus) is a medium-sized bird in the Strigidae family.
The Short-Eared Owl had mottled tawny-brown feathers with a barred tail and barred wings. It upper chest is streaked. It has short, hidden ear tufts, which are usually visible when it is defensive. It has a big head, a short neck, and large yellow-orange eyes wih black eye-rings. It has broad wings. Its beak is short, strong, hooked, and black.
The Common Caucasus Pheasant (Phasianus colchicus colchicus) is a large game bird.
The Common Caucasus Pheasant has a gold or coppery-red and chestnut-brown body with an iridescent sheen of green and purple. It has a long, black tail, flecked with brown feathers. Its wings are white or cream with black bars. Its head is dark-green with a small crest and a distinctive red wattle. It does not have a white neck ring, like other Common Pheasants. The female is dull brown.
The Pekin Robin (Leiothrix lutea) is a small bird. It is also known as the Red-Billed Leiothrix.
The Pekin Robin is olive-green on its back, with a bright orange-yellow throat and a yellow chin. It has a bright red beak and a yellow eye-ring. Its cheeks and neck are bluish-grey. The edges of its wing feathers are yellow, orange, red and black. Its tail is olive-brown and forked. The female is duller in colour than the male.
The Common Hill Myna (Gracula religiosa) is a medium-sized bird. It is related to the starling.
The Common Hill Myna is glossy black with a bright orange-yellow patch of bare skin and fleshy wattles (loose skin) on the side of its head and the back of its neck. Its beak is orange-yellow, and its legs are pale to bright yellow. It has round dark eyes.
The African Comb Duck (Sarkidiornis melanotos) is a tropical wetland bird. It is also known as the Knob-Billed Duck.
The African Comb Duck has a white head with small dark spots, a white neck, and white underparts. Its upperparts are glossy, blue-black with blue-green iridescent feathers. The male is much larger than the female, and it has a large black knob on its beak.
The Mekong Yellow-Vented Bulbul (Pycnonotus goiavier jambu) is a small passerine songbird. It is also known as the Eastern Yellow-Vented Bulbul.
The Mekong Yellow-Vented Bulbul has a slight black crest and black mask on a white head. It has brown upperparts, pale underparts, and yellow feathers at the top part of its under-tail, which is called the vent. The male and the female look similar.
The Visayan Hornbill (Penelopides penelopides panini) is a highly endangered bird. It is a tarictic hornbill.
The male Visayan Hornbill has a creamy-white head and neck, a white upper chest, a reddish-brown lower chest, reddish-brown uppertail feathers, and a creamy-white tail with a broad black tip. Its beak and casque (bony growth on its head) are blackish. Its beak has yellowish ridges. It has orange-brown eyes and pinkish-white eye-rings. The female is black, and her eye-rings are blue.
The Silver Pheasant (Lophura nycthemera) is a large game bird.
The Silver Pheasant has a bare red face and red legs. The male is black and white, with white upperparts and a white tail with some black markings. He has glossy blue-black underparts. His crest is blue-black. The female is mainly brown with grey upperparts, with a tail that has a lot of black markings. She has whitish underparts. The female has a shorter tail than the male.
The Indochinese Cuckooshrike (Lalage polioptera) is a small to medium-sized passerine songbird.
The Indochinese Cuckooshrike is a slender greyish, black and white bird. It has a grey head, grey back, and grey tail. Its rump is darker grey or brown-olive grey. Its underbelly is whitish. It has a dark-grey beak.
The Superb Fruit Dove (Ptilinopus superbus) is a medium-sized bird. It is also known as the Purple-Crowned Fruit Dove.
The male Superb Fruit Dove is very colourful with a purple crown, green cheeks, and an orange nape (back of its neck). His chest is grey, and he has olive-green wings with dark spots, and his tail is tipped with white. The female is mostly green with a white abdomen, blue wing tips, a light-blue chest, and a small dark-blue spot on the back of her head. Both sexes have yellow eyes and yellow eye-rings.