Birds

Birds are bipedal, warm-blooded, vertebrate animals that lay eggs. There are around 10,000 living species, making them the most diverse tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic.

A Few Random Notes on the Bald Eagle [1]: Just a few days ago I read in a national magazine of wide circulation that the eagles are seldom gentle and are amongst the fiercest birds of prey.

A Swift In A Granite Wall [2]: The narrow mountain gorge in which the nest was found is forested with tall sugar and yellow pines, white fir, incense cedar, and giant sequoia.

A Trumpeter of the Marshlands [3]: Nature painted the plumage of the ptarmigan, the grouse of the moss-covered tundras, with a summer coat of russet-brown that blended perfectly with its surroundings, and a winter coat as white as the snowdrifts.

An Avian Creche [4]: Until you have served as foster parent to eighteen nestling birds at once you have never really been busy. Fourteen feathered parents should have been trying to quiet the quivering wings and satisfy the coaxing calls of this troop.

An Example Worth Following [5]: Miss Hutchins declares a recess for two days in every week for the purpose of devoting her time to the many birds that make the immediate vicinity of the stone house, which she occupies alone, their habitat.

Digging For Birds [6]: Somehow or other, on my hands and knees, I managed to crawl up that cabin stairway. It seemed to my disordered mind that there might be some ray of comfort in dying in company rather than alone.

Killdeer [7]: Killdeer get into the news frequently, both because they are interesting birds and because of the precarious sites they sometimes select for their nests.

Marshland Dwellers [8]: From out of the mass of cat-tails, bullrushes, and other tall reeds come many interesting sounds. In spring there sometimes can be heard a mysterious pumping, yet it comes from a swamp in which you know there are no human inhabitants.

Red Shoulders and the Camera's Eye [9]: The majority of the birds of prey nest early in the spring. One of the common species of North America is the red-shouldered hawk, Buteo lineatus lineatus, which builds its homes from the Atlantic to the Great Plains and from Florida to Maine.

Some Birds Of Britain [10]: In Britain, particularly in the southwest, we have many hanging woods-woods that run down the slope of a hill into the valley. I remember one of tall stately beeches and spreading oaks on the border of England and Wales.

Upland Plover [11]: The species used to occur in great abundance over an enormous area. It nested in suitable places from central Alaska and British Columbia eastward to Hudson Bay, south to our middle states, and nearly to the Pacific.

Wild Goose Haven [12]: From hunting down birds, exulting in the good shot that sent a plump duck or goose hurtling earthward, to spending long, cold hours scraping out a pond on which such birds might find sanctuary, seems quite a long step.

Wilson's Phalarope [13]: The phalaropes are notable from the fact that, contrary to the general rule among shore birds, the female is the larger and more brightly colored, does most of the courting, and permits the male to undertake all the brooding, and the care of the young.