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:
American Bird Conservancy Releases New Bird News Network Video Highlighting t...
30 Jun 2009 at 7:45pm
American Bird Conservancy's latest Bird News Network videocast highlights the recently released T...
Future Looks Brighter for One of World's Most Threatened Birds
23 Jun 2009 at 8:51pm
Reserve Created for Niceforo's Wren - Just 50 Birds Remain. American Bird Conservancy, its Colomb...
Cormorants Continue to Get a Bad Rap
16 Jun 2009 at 2:00pm
In a joint letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, American Bird Conservancy, National Audu...
Progress on Protecting Birds from Wind Turbine Collisions
12 Jun 2009 at 11:01am
Pressure from environmental organizations to make wind energy bird friendly and therefore truly g...
New Film Shows Failure of Popular Stray Cat Management Program
1 Jun 2009 at 3:46pm
American Bird Conservancy has produced a new, short film that reveals how a feral cat management ...
Peru Recognizes Private Conservation Areas on Community Lands in High Andes
20 May 2009 at 3:28pm
Project to conserve and restore forest fragments saves rare birds and boosts the quality of life ...
House Hearing Raises Profile of Key Bird Conservation Initiative
15 May 2009 at 7:28am
Expert witnesses testified at a House Natural Resources subcommittee hearing in favor of legislat...
EPA Bans Deadly Pesticide Responsible for Millions of Bird Deaths
14 May 2009 at 3:59pm
The EPA announced its final decision to revoke all food tolerances for the highly toxic pesticide...

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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