There are said to be approximately around 10,000 species of bird known to man as of today ! Everyday a new species is being discovered, but the same time a few are being relegated to the endangered list and a few of them are declared extinct. But the number has been staggering around this for sometime.

But 10,000 sure is a huge number and naming each one of it is indeed an interesting task.

Ha ! hold on, I had friends in school who were called as apple, bun, caterpillar, long arm, 3/4 and a lot of names that couldn’t be recollected. You guessed it right !. These were anointments based on some striking characteristics of my friends…one had a round nose : hence “apple”, another had a small smart pot belly : hence “bun”, another fellow had a tough bristle like moustache, hence “caterpillar” so on and so forth.

Yeah , yeah..coming to birds now.

Birds are named as well as classified based on many factors, some according to their antecedents, some based on their habitats, some based on their physical characteristics and the list is huge.

Just thought that it would be fun to set a list of birds named based on their “Bills“ form and function. Yes  , beaks to say so !.

Come, let us see how much we can list…

1. Hornbill ( that was easy )
2. Spoon bill
3. Open bill ( poor fellow )
4. Ivory bill
5. Cross bill
6. Shoe bill
7. Frog mouth
8. Dusky-tailed flat bill
9. Bamboo flat bill
10. Sword-billed hummingbird (Oops !!! )
11. Yellow-billed loon
12. Long-billed dowitcher
13. Short-billed dowitcher
14. Gull billed Tern ( this is nice !!! )
15. Wry bill
16. White tipped Sickle bill
17. Black Sickle bill
18. Broad bill
19. Razor bill
20. Thorn bill
21. Keel bill toucan ( when bills are being talked about, how can toucans be missed ? !)
22. Indian Silver bill

Phew !!! that was a good list !! But, there might be more “bills” strewn over, we shall build this list still further as we stumble upon.

It would be interesting to list more “tails”, “wings” and so on.  We shall do that in due course.

In the mean while, it is tax time around, don’t misplace your paper bills.

Bye folks !, Take care.

3 Other birds.

When we were pondering about the topic to start, to talk about birds, we thought that starting from the beginning would be the right way. This is going to be a never ending journey, though.

Yes, you guessed it right. Evolution it is. Without knowing where the birds came from, and what made birds, birds, it would be an incomplete understanding of these magnificent creatures.

So, shall we pack off and start ?. Can’t wait don’t you ?.

As we have started, it would be worthwhile to set a few things in perspective. We humans and birds have lot in common. The most striking similarity is that, we are all vertebrates. We all have a central skeletal formation which acts as a pillar upon which the whole body is built around. Yes, it is your spine!

Given the magnitude of the animal kingdom, our pursuit of awareness, would last more than a lifetime, if we are to go in search of every detail. Hence, giving prudence a chance, it would be easier for us to limit ourselves to have a very brief skim over relevant information alone.

Oops!!, we have hit ROCKS !!!. yes rocks it is, there is no other way. Solid, old and weathered rocks. Don’t get perturbed.

Hard rocks are the notepads on which nature has stored records of her inhabitants and a lot of other information of events that would have happened since the earth has come into being. However inadequate and disjointed this information may be, it is all biologists have, to build up their hypothesis on. The most satisfactory story becomes the most accepted one, upon which, further theories are built upon.

In fact, in order to dig into the past, we literally have to go about digging. Dig in search of fossils. The edicts of nature.

All evolutionary biologists have to become geologists at some time.

So, we to need to step back a bit in time and understand the explored evidence in rocks. It is a bit ironical, that we would have to look into the earth to know about something high up in the sky.

It sure, is going to be interesting. Here you go… Have a look at the below picture.

Don’t get overawed as yet. Our aim is just to have a birds eye view of the origins. Nothing more, nothing less.

The above chart is just a table of time. Geological time. We are used to thinking in terms of years, centuries or millennia. Geological time is measured in terms of millions of years. Here, history has been divided into a number of time divisions called periods. These periods join to form a larger time slice called eras.

Now, a closer look at the chart would reveal three eras : the Paleozoic, the Mesozoic and the Cenzoic era. Each of these are made up of smaller periods.

The Paleozoic Era:

The Paleozoic era is a stretch of five hundred million years !!!. Fossils have been found on rocks that belong to the Cambrian period. It is not that life on earth came into being by the start of this period, it is just that we have fossil records dating back to this alone. Animals and plants have been evolving even before this period as micro organisms.

This era is made up of Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Mississippian and the Pennsylvanian. Yeah, they are tongue twisters and you can’t name your pup as one !.

Why are these periods named so ?. They are just named based on the places or people where the research was conducted and some credible fossil record was found.

Cambrian is so named because of Cambria, the ancient name for Wales. Ordovician and Silurian are named after ancient tribes of Southern England.  Devonian from Devonshire, Permian from Perm in Northern Russia and so on. Needless to say, Mississippian and Pennsylvania are named after Mississippi river and the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania. This is easy, isn’t it ?.

This era is of vital importance because many fossil records indicating the origin of vertebrates have been found.

The Mesozoic Era:

The Mesozoic era is the middle life in history of the earth. It is made up of Triassic, Jurassic and the Cretaceous. The famed term “Jurassic” is named after Jura mountains of the Alpine region.

The Cenozoic Era:

This is the most recent part of geohistory. It has two periods which are made up of smaller subdivisions of time called epochs. The names of the periods and epochs are for you to see.

That should be enough about eras.

Coming back to our original question, where did the first bird fly ?.

It is perceived that both birds and mammals originated from reptiles. The reptiles had originated at the start of the Pennsylvanian period in the Paleozoic era.

Somewhere in the mid Jurassic period when the reptiles were the most dominant of earths inhabitants, a small sect of reptiles took to air to become the birds of today.

It sure would have been an overload to you all by now.

Now that we have traced back to the approximate time when birds originated, we shall see how the first ever record of a bird looks and try to answer the many questions that are still being answered “Did the birds fly to escape predators ? Did they do so in search of food ?….“ why did birds fly ?

Bye then..

Oh !, a parting thought, when you are kicking a stone on your evening stroll or flipping a flat one to skim over the surface of a lake, take care, you might be kicking or throwing a valuable piece of history and our link with the past.

Good health,

3 other birds!.