Global award for Indian conservationist who saved vultures

Britain's largest nature conservation charity Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has bestowed the prestigious Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Nature Conservation on Ram Jakati for saving India's vultures from certain extinction.In the 1990's India's vulture population was pushed to the brink of extinction due to the use of the veterinary drug, diclofenac, given to cattle but lethal to vultures feeding on their carcasses.Use of the drug was so widespread that India's vulture population dropped to just one per cent of what it had been before the use of diclofenac.Jakati, who was the Chief Wildlife Warden for the Forest Department in Haryana for many years, played a key role in not only getting the drug banned but also establishing a network of sanctuaries, breeding centres and urgent action needed to ensure that vultures did not go extinct before the ban could be implemented.His work began before the cause of the decline had been identified and his early intervention can be considered a major factor in protecting India's vultures.He subsequently helped to found SAVE (Saving Asia's Vultures from Extinction), an international partnership that to this day plays a coordination role in the conservation of South Asia's vultures.The Asian vulture conservation programme is today, 20 years on, a world-leading example of...

Read More........→October 15, 2020

Birds behave like human musicians

New York: The tuneful behaviour of some songbirds is similar to that of human musicians, who play around with their tunes, balancing repetition and variation just like jazz artists, a new study has found. Researchers studied the pied butcherbird, a very musical species, which provided a wealth of intriguing data for analysis. "Since pied butcherbird songs share so many commonalities with human music, this species could possibly revolutionise the way we think about the core values of music," said Hollis Taylor of Macquarie University in Australia. In the past, claims that musical principles are integral to birdsong were largely met with scepticism and dismissed as wishful thinking. However, the extensive statistical and objective analysis of the new research shows that the more complex a bird's repertoire, the better they are at singing in time, rhythmically interacting with other birds much more skillfully than those who know fewer songs. The butcherbirds "balance their performance to keep it in a sweet spot between boredom and confusion," said Ofer Tchernichovski, professor at City University of New York (CUNY). "Pied butcherbirds, not unlike jazz musicians, play around with their tunes, balancing repetition and variation," said Constance Scharff, who directs the animal behaviour laboratory at the Free...

Read More........→October 15, 2016

URI scientists believe birds can teach us about healthy eating

© Flickr.com/jinterwas/ cc-by-2.0 Want to know what kinds of foods prevent disease? Then watch what migratory birds eat during their stopovers on Block Island. Two University of Rhode Island scientists believe that birds choose certain berries because they offer protection against oxidative stress that occurs during long flights. Oxidative stress can lead to inflammation and a variety of diseases in birds and humans. The team's preliminary findings show that birds stopping over on Block Island favor the arrow-wood berry, which contains more anti-oxidants and pigments than the 11 other island berries studied by the researchers. Navindra Seeram, assistant professor of pharmacy and head of the Bioactive Botanical Research Laboratory at URI, and Scott McWilliams, URI professor of wildlife ecology and physiology, have teamed up to research migratory birds' eating habits and how their diets might be used to understand the role of berries rich in anti-oxidants in human health. Research has shown a diet rich in anti-oxidants can help prevent cancer and other serious illnesses. Seeram reported the findings today at the American Chemical Society's 239th national meeting in San Francisco. (Seeram will be interviewed about this on NPR's Science Friday, March 26.) ''We're suggesting that birds choose deeply colored berry fruits in...

Read More........→September 19, 2015

Animals have personalities too…..

An individual's personality can have a big effect on their life. Some people are outgoing and gregarious while others find novel situations stressful which can be detrimental to their health and wellbeing. Increasingly, scientists are discovering that animals are no different. A new study led by Dr Kathryn Arnold, of the Environment Department at the University of York has added important experimental evidence showing that animal personalities are reflected in their oxidative stress profiles. The research is published in the Journal of Experimental Biology. Dr Arnold teamed up with graduate student Katherine Herborn, at the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine at the University of Glasgow, to classify the personalities of 22 greenfinches. They tested each bird's reactions to a novel situation by adding a brightly coloured cookie-cutter to each greenfinch's food bowl, and timing how long it took for the birds to pluck up courage to approach the  food. The researchers found that the boldes birds took only a few seconds to overcome their fear while more timid birds took up to 30 minutes to approach their meal. Dr Arnold and Katherine Herborn also measured the greenfinches' motivation to explore by attaching an intriguing object to the birds' perches and timing how long it took them to land next...

Read More........→January 08, 2015

How do Birds get their Color?

.. A Lilac-breasted Roller shows off Birds have captivated us for time eternal, not only because of their ability to fly, but also because of the color they add to our lives. Ok, let me be clear that I’m not suggesting that ALL birds are colorful. Birds like Plain Chachalacas and Grey Catbirds hardly evoke images of stunning beauty. But a vast number of species DO exhibit dazzling displays of color. And these displays are not always what they might seem. Have you ever wondered why grackles look iridescent blue in good light and black in bad light? Or why the colorful gorgets of male hummingbirds appear and then disappear without warning? This is because color in birds is not a simple thing. But rather it is a complex concoction of some very specific recipes. There are two main ingredients that are essential in the making of color. The first is pigment and the second is keratin. And the ways in which these two fundamental ingredients are added to the color cooking pot are what produces the final colors that we see. Pigments are relatively simple color makers. There are three main pigments that give feathers their colors. The first pigment is called melanin and it produces black or dark brown coloration. Melanin is also very strong and is thus often reserved for the flight feathers. White feathers...

Read More........→September 26, 2014