BirdsPedia™ - The Birds Encyclopedia

Welcome to BirdsPedia™ -- The Birds Encyclopedia

Our Mission:
To create the most complete and definitive source of information about the past and present of Birds.

Our Goal:
To be your source for Birds related information. We will supply our visitors with up to date news, stories, and latest Birds News Links section below.

Birds News Links:
World's Rarest Wild Macaw to Benefit From Land Purchase for Conservation
1 Sep 2010 at 1:48pm
Habitat vital to the world's rarest and most endangered Macaw surviving in the wild, the Blue-thr...
EPA Denies Petition to Protect Wildlife From Toxic Lead-based Ammunition
31 Aug 2010 at 9:27am
Conservation groups expressed dismay today after a decision by the Environmental Protection Agenc...
Prized Bird and Wildlife Area in Amazon Headwaters Purchased With Help of Ame...
26 Aug 2010 at 1:20pm
American Bird Conservancy, in cooperation with the Amazon Conservation Association (ACA), has hel...
EPA to End All Use of Bird-Killing Pesticide
20 Aug 2010 at 12:25pm
American Bird Conservancy (ABC), and other environmental groups today welcomed the decision by th...
National Ban on Lead-based Ammunition, Fishing Tackle Sought to End Wildlife ...
3 Aug 2010 at 12:10pm
A coalition of conservation, hunting and veterinary groups today filed a formal petition with the...
Appeals Court Quashes Migratory Bird Treaty Act Challenge
29 Jul 2010 at 12:55pm
The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has reaffirmed a key provision of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act...
American Bird Conservancy Applauds Proposal to List Mountain Plover as Threat...
27 Jul 2010 at 10:55am
American Bird Conservancy (ABC), today applauded the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's reinstated ...
Mercury Pollution Still a Threat, Says American Bird Conservancy
26 Jul 2010 at 12:10pm
Citing concerns about four manufacturing plants in Ohio, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia, A...

Birds:
Birds (class Aves) are bipedal, warm-blooded, vertebrate animals that lay eggs. There are around 10,000 living species, making them the most numerous tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Birds range in size from the 5 cm (2 in) Bee Hummingbird to the 2.7 m (9 ft) Ostrich. The fossil record indicates that birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs during the Jurassic period, around 150–200 Ma (million years ago), and the earliest known bird is the Late Jurassic Archaeopteryx, c 155–150 Ma.

Modern birds are characterised by feathers, a beak with no teeth, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a lightweight but strong skeleton. All birds have forelimbs modified as wings and most can fly, with some exceptions including ratites, penguins, and a number of diverse endemic island species. Birds also have unique digestive and respiratory systems that are highly adapted for flight. Some birds, especially corvids and parrots, are among the most intelligent animal species; a number of bird species have been observed manufacturing and using tools, and many social species exhibit cultural transmission of knowledge across generations.

Many species undertake long distance annual migrations, and many more perform shorter irregular movements. Birds are social; they communicate using visual signals and through calls and songs, and participate in social behaviours including cooperative breeding and hunting, flocking, and mobbing of predators. The vast majority of bird species are socially monogamous, usually for one breeding season at a time, sometimes for years, but rarely for life. Other species have breeding systems that are polygynous ("many females") or, rarely, polyandrous ("many males"). Eggs are usually laid in a nest and incubated by the parents. Most birds have an extended period of parental care after hatching.

Many species are of economic importance, mostly as sources of food acquired through hunting or farming. Some species, particularly songbirds and parrots, are popular as pets. Other uses include the harvesting of guano (droppings) for use as a fertiliser. Birds figure prominently in all aspects of human culture from religion to poetry to popular music. About 120–130 species have become extinct as a result of human activity since the 17th century, and hundreds more before then. Currently about 1,200 species of birds are threatened with extinction by human activities, though efforts are underway to protect them.

Evolution and Taxonomy:
Archaeopteryx, the earliest known birdThe first classification of birds was developed by Francis Willughby and John Ray in their 1676 volume Ornithologiae. Carolus Linnaeus modified that work in 1758 to devise the taxonomic classification system currently in use. Birds are categorised as the biological class Aves in Linnaean taxonomy. Phylogenetic taxonomy places Aves in the dinosaur clade Theropoda. Aves and a sister group, the clade Crocodilia, together are the sole living members of the reptile clade Archosauria. Phylogenetically, Aves is commonly defined as all descendants of the most recent common ancestor of modern birds and Archaeopteryx lithographica. Archaeopteryx, from the Kimmeridgian stage of the Late Jurassic (some 155–150 million years ago), is the earliest known bird under this definition. Others, including Jacques Gauthier and adherents of the Phylocode system, have defined Aves to include only the modern bird groups, excluding most groups known only from fossils, and assigning them, instead, to the Avialae in part to avoid the uncertainties about the placement of Archaeopteryx in relation to animals traditionally thought of as theropod dinosaurs.

All modern birds lie within the subclass Neornithes, which has two subdivisions: the Paleognathae, containing mostly flightless birds like ostriches, and the wildly diverse Neognathae, containing all other birds. These two subdivisions are often given the rank of superorder, although Livezey & Zusi assigned them "cohort" rank. Depending on the taxonomic viewpoint, the number of known living bird species varies anywhere from 9,800 to 10,050.

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