Relaxing this Sunday? Catch up with The Roost!

by The Roost, posted in African Greys, Amazon Parrots, Amazons, Animals, Behavior, Behaviour, Beneath the Cage Grate, Birds, Cheeks, Cockatiels, Cockatoos, Comic, Comic strips, Conures, Endangered Species Act, Facebook, Feathered Frenzy, Finches, Florida, Fossils, Fun, Games, Habitat Loss, Humor, Instagram, It's A Birb Thing, Migratory Birds, Morty, Parrots, Photography, Photos, Pictures, Puzzles, Science, Sun Conures, The Roost, Twitter, Uncategorized, Wildlife

Sept announcementWhat could be more relaxing than enjoying a Sunday Siesta in a cushy armchair and catching up with The Roost’s crazy flock!  Catch up with Morty, and then why not head over to get up to speed on how Bubbles and Zack are attempting to keep their mom on the straight, narrow- and sane path!  Sunday chuckles are guaranteed on It’s A Birb Thing!

Grab that pencil and enjoy one of our games!  Catch up on what’s been happening around social media on our News page.

So relax, catch up, and tell us what you think of The Roost!  Have a great Sunday Everybirdie!  October edition on the way soon!

The earliest known animal? — Why Evolution Is True

by The Roost, posted in Animals, Evolution, Fossils

The Ediacaran fauna, a group of extinct species that lived between 571 and 541 million years ago, has been an evolutionary anomaly. Its fossil record contains multicellular organisms, but they are just plain weird, bearing little resemblance to present-day metazoan (multicellular) animals. The two species of “dickinsoniids” shown below, for example, lack a mouth or […]

via The earliest known animal? — Why Evolution Is True

September Issue is Out!

by The Roost, posted in African Greys, Amazon Parrots, Amazons, Babies, Behavior, Behaviour, Birbs, Birds, Climate Change, Cockatiels, Cockatoos, Comic, Comic strips, Conures, Eggs, Endangered Species Act, Evolution, Facebook, Feathered Frenzy, Fids, Fun, Funny, Games, Habitat Loss, Instagram, It's A Birb Thing, Migratory Birds, Morty, Parrots, Photography, Photos, Pictures, Puzzles, Science, Sun Conures, The Roost, Twitter, Uncategorized, Wildlife

Sept announcement

Some of the highlights in our September Edition include:

  • Morty’s sage advice to Chiyome and flock
  • Zack and Bubbles try to help mom with her spatial challenges
  • The Trump Administration’s threat to weaken the Endangered Species Act
  • A new search-a-word
  • A collection of posts from around social media, including everyday heroes doing their part to save species, environments and habitats for future generations of wildlife and humans alike

Head on over to the blog to read these and many more interesting articles and posts!

News on the Wing: September Edition

by The Roost, posted in African Greys, Amazon Parrots, Amazons, Birbs, Birds, Climate Change, Cockatoos, Conures, Endangered Species Act, Facebook, Fids, Instagram, Migratory Birds, Parrots, Photography, Photos, Pictures, Science, Sun Conures, The Roost, Twitter, Uncategorized, Wildlife

Check out our September’ News on the Wing edition to catch up on bird and wildlife-related happenings over the last few weeks – like the following

Art my Fire Art my Fire – @ArtLify
“Some birds are not meant to be caged, that’s all. Their feathers are too bright, Their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go…” ~ Stephen King
: © Yoshinori Mizutani ‘kawau’ (Birds) Series

Image

Scientists crack mystery behind shape of bird eggs

by The Roost, posted in Birds, Eggs, Parrots, Science, Uncategorized

Fascinating article from phys.org .  Follow the link here to the website and article.

August 23, 2018 , University of Sheffield

Scientists crack mystery behind shape of bird eggs
Credit: University of Sheffield

A centuries-old mystery behind the shape of a bird’s egg has been solved by scientists at the University of Sheffield as part of one of the longest-running scientific studies of its kind.

The study, led by Professor Tim Birkhead from the University’s Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, has discovered the reason why guillemot eggs have such a peculiar shape – a mystery that has been puzzling biologists for hundreds of years.

Guillemots lay and incubate their single egg on bare cliff ledges close to the sea, which led scientists and nature enthusiasts to believe that the egg’s pointed shape had evolved to help it roll in an arc – thus keeping it from the cliff edge should it become dislodged

However, Professor Birkhead, who has been studying the behaviour of guillemots, puffins and razorbills on Skomer Island in Wales for almost 50 years, has discovered that the egg’s shape has evolved in order to keep the egg in place and prevent it from rolling away in the first place.

 

Origin of the species: where did Darwin’s finches come from? – the guardian.com

by The Roost, posted in Birds, Darwin, Evolution, Finches, Origin of the Species, Science, Uncategorized

Galápagos finches have been the subject of a plethora of evolutionary studies, but where did the first ones come from?

Four of the species of finch observed by Darwin on the Galápagos Islands, showing variation of beak.
Four of the species of finch observed by Darwin on the Galápagos Islands, showing variation of beak. Photograph: Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images

When the first of the Galápagos Islands arose from the ocean floor around 3m years ago, they were naked, angry, lava-spewing cones devoid of life. Now, millions of years later, they are alive with some of the world’s most iconic animals. Giant tortoises. Sea iguanas. Flightless cormorants. And those finches equipped with Swiss army knife beaks.

The Galápagos finches are probably one of the most well-known examples of evolution and will forever be tightly linked to Charles Darwin’s voyage and his theory of natural selection (although you may be surprised to learn that the Galápagos finches were not as central to Darwin’s theory as we like to think). With their diversity of bill sizes and shapes, each species has adapted to a specific type of food; the ground-finch (Geospiza) has a thick beak adapted to feeding on a variety of crunchy seeds and arthropods, whereas the warbler finch (Certhidea olivacea) developed a slender, pointy bill to catch tasty insects hiding between the foliage. The woodpecker finch(Camarhynchus pallidus) even uses twigs or cactus spines to pry arthropods out of treeholes

Read the full article here.

Don’t blame wildfires on climate change – it’s environmentalists’ fault, says Zinke

by The Roost, posted in Climate Change, Uncategorized, Wildfires, Wildlife

From theguardian.com

US interior secretary Ryan Zinke blames environmentalists for the devastation in California and calls for an increase in logging

A wildfire burns near Yosemite national park.

 A wildfire burns near Yosemite national park. Photograph: US forest service/Reuters

The US interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, has blamed environmentalists for California’s ferocious wildfires and claimed, contrary to scientific research, that climate change had “nothing to do” with them. Instead, he said the fires were worsened because of limits on logging.

“America is better than letting these radical groups control the dialogue about climate change,” Zinke told KCRA, a TV station in northern California, on Sunday. “Extreme environmentalists have shut down public access. They talk about habitat and yet they are willing to burn it up.”

His remarks come on the heels of a USA Today op-ed, published last week, where he held environmentalists partly responsible for the fires because of a stance some have taken against logging. Zinke described it as a responsible means of forest management and called for an increase in timber harvesting, adding that this would also be a boon for the economy.

“This is not a debate about climate change,” he said on a trip to the affected area, the Sacramento Bee reported. “There’s no doubt the [fire] season is getting longer, the temperatures are getting hotter.”

Read the full article here.

Toxic ‘red tide’ algae bloom is killing Florida wildlife and menacing tourism

by The Roost, posted in Algae bloom, Birds, Facebook, Fish, Florida, Instagram, Marine Life, Migratory Birds, The Roost, Toxins, Uncategorized, Wildlife

From: theguardian.com – full article here 

Fish washed up after dying in a red tide in Captiva, Florida.
 Fish washed up after dying in a red tide in Captiva, Florida. Photograph: Cristobal Herrera/EPA

This year 267 tons of marine life, including thousands of small fish and 72 Goliath groupers, have washed up along 150 miles of the Gulf Coast from the unrelenting bloom

With its long, white, sandy beaches, Sanibel Island off the coast of south-western Florida is usually a perfect place for families to enjoy these last days of summer.

This year, however, 267 tons of marine life, including thousands of small fish, 72 Goliath groupers, and even a 21-ft whale shark have washed up on the beach since July – thanks to a a disastrous “red tide” of toxic algae.