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:
Water Birds at Risk from Heavy Metals in the Great Salt Lake
2 Jul 2008 at 11:35pm
A Report on the Great Salt Lake, Utah indicated that selenium and mercury inputs to the lake are res...
Conservationists Develop New Guidelines to Reduce Wind Farm Bird Deaths
26 Jun 2008 at 10:50am
Wind and other renewable energy sources have generated much enthusiasm as partial solutions to globa...
Soon, No Rats on Rat Island: Seabirds to Benefit
20 Jun 2008 at 4:45pm
In the coming year, an island that has been an ecological wasteland for over 200 years will start on...
Act for Songbirds Teleconference Highlights Need to Boost Conservation Funding
19 Jun 2008 at 9:55pm
A June 11 teleconference is now available featuring Representatives Ron Kind and Wayne Gilchrest, Dr...
American Bird Conservancy Land Acquisitions Protect Threatened Birds in Five ...
18 Jun 2008 at 5:10pm
Recently, ABC has assisted several of its partners in South America with land purchases that expand ...
Congress Acts to Save Migratory Birds
11 Jun 2008 at 4:23pm
Report Highlights 71 Migratory Species of Conservation Concern; Alarming Population Declines in 29 S...
New BNN Videocast: Act for Songbirds
5 Jun 2008 at 9:43pm
ABC has launched a major new action campaign to dramatically advance the conservation for our migrat...
EPA Limits Uses of Toxic Rat Poisons: Children, Pets, Birds and Other Wildlif...
29 May 2008 at 6:54pm
EPA today announced a landmark decision to control the sale and use of rat poisons throughout the US...

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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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