Some Interesting Facts About Birds

Birds are one of the six basic groups of animals. Birds, best known for their ability to fly, are unmatched in their command of the skies. Albatrosses glide long distances over the open sea, hummingbirds hover motionless in mid-air, and eagles swoop down to capture prey with pinpoint accuracy. But not all birds are aerobatic experts.

Some interesting facts about birds:

• The oldest bird was known as an Archaeopteryx and lived about 150 million years ago. It was the size of a raven, was covered with feathers, and had wings.
• The most yolks ever found in a single chicken's egg is nine.
• An ostrich egg needs to be boiled for 2 hours to get a hard-boiled egg.
  
• The Royal Albatross' eggs take 79 days to hatch.
  
• The egg of the hummingbird is the world's smallest bird's egg; the egg of the ostrich, the world's largest.
  
• The now-extinct elephant bird of Madagascar laid an egg that weighed 27 pounds.
  
• Precocial birds like chickens, ostriches, ducks, and seagulls hatch ready to move around. They come from eggs with bigger yolks than altricial birds like owls, woodpeckers, and most small songbirds that need a lot of care from parents in order to survive.
  
• Air sacs may make up 1/5 of the body volume of a bird.
  
• A bird's normal body temperature is usually 7-8 degrees hotter than a human's. Up to three-quarters of the air a bird breathes is used just for cooling down since they are unable to sweat.
  
• A bird's heart beats 400 times per minute while resting and up to 1000 beats per minute while flying.
  
• The world's only wingless bird is the kiwi of New Zealand.
  
• Migrating ducks and geese often fly in V-shape formations. Each bird flies in the upwash of its neighbor's beating wings and this extra bit of supporting wind increases lift, thereby saving energy.
  
• Falcons can swoop at over 200 mph.
  
• Penguins, ostriches, and dodo birds are all birds that do not fly.
  
• Hummingbirds eat about every ten minutes, slurping down twice their body weight in nectar every day.
  
• The homing pigeon, Cher Ami, lost an eye and a leg while carrying a message in World War I. Cher Ami won the Distinguished Service Cross. Its leg was replaced with a wooden leg.
  
• The only known poisonous bird in the world is the hooded pitohui of Papua, New Guinea. The poison is found in its skin and feathers.
  
• The American turkey vulture helps human engineers detect cracked or broken underground fuel pipes. The leaking fuel smells like vulture food (they eat carrion), and the clustered birds show repair people where the lines need fixing.
  

Groups of Birds....
Although there are several different ways experts classify birds into subgroups, on this website we recognize that there are 30 groups of birds.

Species of Birds Alive Today...
Of the 9,865 bird species, 1,227 species are considered threatened with extinction, 838 species are near threatened, 7,735 species are considered to be of least concern, and 65 species lack the data to determine their status. 133 species of birds are known to have gone extinct since 1500. There are also four species of birds that are classified as extinct in the wild. The last living members of those species survive only in captivity.

Read More

What are the Sizes and Shapes of Icebergs?

At the glacier's terminus or end, huge slabs of ice are weakened and then broken by the action of the rising and falling tides. This process is called calving and results in an iceberg's birth. By the time these mountains of ice enter Baffin Bay they have seen nearly 3,000 years pass.

In order for an iceberg to reach the North Atlantic the currents typically take it from Baffin Bay through the Davis Strait and Labrador Sea. This is a long trip and most icebergs never make it. Most icebergs melt well before entering the Atlantic Ocean. One estimate is that of the 15,000 to 30,000 icebergs produced annually by the glaciers of Greenland only one percent (150 to 300) ever make it to the Atlantic Ocean. When an iceberg does happen to reach the Atlantic its long and traveled life quickly

Iceberg size classification
Size category	Height (ft.)	Height (m)	Length (ft.)	Length (m)
Growler	less than 3	less than 1	Less than 16	less than 5
Bergy Bit	3–13	1–4	15–46	5–14
Small	14–50	5–15	47–200	15–60
Medium	51–150	16–45	201–400	61–122
Large	151–240	46–75	401–670	123–213
Very Large	Over 240	Over 75	Over 670	Over 213

Iceberg shape classification
Shape category	Description
Tabular	Steep sides with flat top. Very solid. Length-height ratio less than 5:1
Non-Tabular	This category covers all icebergs that are not tabular-shaped as described above. This includes bergs that are dome-shaped, sloping, blocky, and pinnacle.

Iceberg Shapes

Tabular: A flat-topped iceberg. Most show horizontal banding.
Blocky: A flat-topped iceberg with steep vertical sides.
Drydocked: An iceberg which is eroded and a U-shaped slot is formed. Pinnacled: An iceberg with a central spire, with one or more spires.
Wedged: An iceberg which is flat on top and with steep vertical sides on one end and sloping on the other.

Read More

Alpine Mountains Revealed Beneath Antarctic Ice

A series of prefabricated buildings perched on stilts create a boxy but unremarkable hamlet on the Antarctic ice. What is astonishing about this research base is that it is set 500 metres above the peaks of a 3500-metre mountain range.

The Gamburtsev mountains are not a new discovery – they were first located 50 years ago by a team of Russian scientists. But little was known about their scale and morphology. Now, an international team has returned with data revealing that if you could strip away the ice, the view would look rather like the European Alps.

The existence of this mountain range, called the Gamburtsev Mountains, shocked the Russian scientists who first discovered it more than 50 years ago, and mystery still shrouds the nearly 750-mile-long (1,200-kilometer-long) series of subglacial peaks.

At the International Polar Year conference in Oslo, Norway, scientists unveiled new radar images of an area of the mountains the size of the state of New York.

"What we'd shown before was an estimate based on gravity data — a little bit of a coarse resolution tool," said Robin Bell, a senior research scientist at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York. "What we showed at this meeting was the radar data. It's like going from using a big, fat Sharpie [pen] to using a fine-tipped pencil."

What the pictures reveal, Bell said, is spectacular: a dramatic landscape of rocky summits, deep river valleys, and liquid, not frozen, lakes, all hidden beneath the ice.

Bell was among a team of scientists from seven countries who spent two frigid months collecting geophysical data in the remote antipodean wilderness via sophisticated, aircraft-mounted instruments in late 2008 and early 2009.

Mountains in the Antarctic interior are few and far between. Many are a special kind of mountain called a "nunatak". The Trans Antarctic Mountains that stretch from one side of the continent to the other break through the ice cap in places to form such nunataks - they are mountains that are surrounded completely by an ice field. A sort of cold version of the ocean and islands except that these are on land and raised high above sea level.

Read More

Some Interesting Caves and Caverns of the World

The following list names interesting caves and caverns of the world, including Aggtelek in Hungary, Blue Grotto in Italy, Kent's Cavern in England, Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, Wind Cave in South Dakota, and more.

Aggtelek. In village of same name, northern Hungary. Large stalactitic cavern about 5 mi. long.

Altamira Cave. Near Santander, Spain. Contains Stone Age animal paintings on roof and walls.

Antiparos. On island of same name in the Grecian Archipelago. Some stalactites are 20 ft. long. Brilliant colors and fantastic shapes.

Blue Grotto. On island of Capri, Italy. Sea cavern hollowed out in limestone by constant wave action. Now half filled with water because of sinking coast. Name derived from unusual blue light permeating the cave. Source of light is a submerged opening allowing light to pass through the water.

Carlsbad Caverns. Southeast New Mexico. Contains some of the largest and most impressive stalactities and stalagmites, particularly in the Lechuguilla Cave.

Fingal's Cave. On island of Staffa off coast of western Scotland. Penetrates about 200 ft. inland. Contains basaltic columns almost 40 ft. high.

Jenolan Caves. In Blue Mountain plateau, New South Wales, Australia. Beautiful stalactitic formations.

Kent's Cavern. Near Torquay, England. Source of much information on Paleolithic humans.

Lascaux Cave. Southwestern France. Features prehistoric cave paintings estimated to be tens of thousands of years old. Closed to the public.

Lubang Nasib Bagus. Sarawak, Malaysia. World's largest cave chamber: 2,300 ft. long, 1,480 ft. wide, and everywhere at least 230 ft. high.

Luray Caverns. Near Luray, Va. Has large stalactitic and stalagmitic columns of many colors.

Mogao Caves. Located along the old Silk Route in China, Mogao is composed of 492 cells and cave sanctuaries that are famous for their statues and wall paintings, spanning a thousand years of Buddhist art.

Mammoth Cave. This limestone cavern in central Kentucky is the longest cave system in the world. Cave area is about 10 mi. in diameter but has 345 mi. of irregular subterranean passageways at various levels, plus underground lakes and rivers.

Peak Cavern or Devil's Hole. Derbyshire, England. About 2,250 ft. into a mountain. Lowest part is about 600 ft. below the surface.

Postojna Grotto. Postojna, Slovenia. Largest cavern in Europe; numerous beautiful stalactites. Famous example of a karst cave—grooved and irregularly eroded limestone formations carved out by underground streams. Pivka River flows through part of it.

Singing Cave. Iceland. A lava cave; name derived from echoes of people singing in it.

Waitomo Cave. North Island, New Zealand. Glowworms on cave ceiling look like thousands of stars in the night sky.

Wind Cave. In Black Hills of South Dakota. Limestone caverns with stalactites and stalagmites almost entirely missing. Variety of crystal formations called “boxwork.”

Wyandotte Cave. In Crawford County, southern Indiana. A limestone cavern with five levels of passages; one of the largest in North America. “Monumental Mountain,” approximately 135 ft. high, is believed to be one of the world's largest underground “mountains.”

Read More