Seabirds, the humming bird, the kakapo parrot, the archaeopteryx …..
Ornithology, the study of birds, links naturally to environmental sciences and conservation. Understanding migration involves natural history, evolution, aerodynamics and meteorology; it links to climatology, physical oceonography and marine meteorology. To understand even more, we could investigate chemical oceonography and satellite remote sensing, cloud physics and atmospheric chemistry. Then, there is geology and biology, marine geology, zoology, poetry and myth ….
CREDIT: Daniil Komov via UNSPLASH
CREDIT: Long-tailed tit Gennevilliers Alexis Lours (CC BY 4.0)
CREDIT: long-tailed tit, Aegithalos caudatus Peter von Bagh via flickr (CC BY 4.0)
Leonardo
Leonardo, painter, taking
Morning air
On Market Street
Saw the wild birds in their cages
Silent in
The dust, the heat.
Took his purse from out his pocket
Never questioning
The fee,
Bore the cages to the green shade
Of a hill-top
Cypress tree.
‘What you lost’, said Leonardo,
‘I now give to you
Again,
Free as noon and night and morning,
As the sunshine,
As the rain’.
And he took them from their prisons,
Held them to
The air, the sky;
Pointed them to the bright heaven.
‘Fly!’ said Leonardo.
‘Fly!’
Charles Causley
“I would like to paint the way a bird sings”
weighing less than a pencil
CREDIT: Matt Bango via Negative Space
not all robins are red
CREDIT: NZ Black Robin, Leon Berard CC BY-SA 3.0
the northern cardinal
CREDIT: Greg Reese on PIXABAY
is not always
red
CREDIT: Lieutenant Elizabeth Crapo, NOAA Corps
archaeopteryx
western screech owl
project ideas
Migration: What is the smallest migratory bird? How does the physical geography of the land and ocean shape migration routes? How do the migrants prepare for their journey? How far does the humming bird fly?
Conservation Programmes: What happened to the black robin? Where are the Chatham islands? Who were Old Blue and Old Yellow? Why is the story of the black robin so important?
Archaeology and Palaeobiology: How do we know the archaeopteryx is a link between dinosaurs and birds? What does the name mean? Where can I see it?
History of Science: Who presented the bird-like dinosaur as proof of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution?
Biology: Caretonoid pigments are produced by plants and algae: what are they? How do they affect the colours in cardinals and in the boobies’ feet? What is xanthochroism, and how does it affect cardinals?
Physics and Evolutionary Biology: What creates the velvet black feathers of the superb bird of paradise? How did scientists determine that they were looking at a new species?
Zoology and Ethology: Like many nocturnal birds, the potoo’s large eyes reflect the light of flashlights; how do the notches in its upper eyelid sense movement with closed eyes? The great potoo perches upright on a tree stump during the day; how does camouflage protect it from predators? It is solitary and shy; what does it do if it senses danger?
Ornithology and Bird Vocalisation: The Western screech owl sleeps in a tree cavity during the day; what position does it put its head and body feathers (its crypitic plumage) in? What sound does it make? (Despite its name, it doesn’t really screech.)
Legend: Bede tells a story told to a great king, which compared the life of man on Earth to the swift flight of a sparrow, as it flew through the mead hall. Who was Bede, and when was he writing?
sparrow
CREDIT: Urszula on PIXABAY
“the sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of sight, passing from winter to winter again”
IMAGE CREDIT: Dianne Mason Department of Conservation NZ CC BY 2.0
“The kakapo ... is a bird out of time. If you look at one in its large, round, greeny-brown face, it has a look of serenely innocent incomprehension that makes you want to hug it and tell it that everything will be all right, though you know that it probably will not be.”
vogelkop superb bird of paradise
great potoo
