The word bird has been derived from the Latin verb "Biden", or "to fly". There are a number of subspecies of birds, but all of these have a common ancestor with one. Birds belong to the class order Amnivore and are also known as the most widespread orders Odonates. They are nocturnal and include some species such as vultures, eagles, and storks.
The term avian refers to any domestic or wild bird species.
Bird is also given several different names by many people. It is known almost everywhere, including at its home, nature reserves, and zoos.
In general, we can divide bird species into five main groups:
Archaeoindris,
Archaeosauris,
Archomorphycids,
Thracians,
Thragnacid,
Heteroptera,
Chordata.
While there are only a few genera in each group, their traits and characteristics differ from each other. These groups play an important role in the development of biodiversity because they are involved in food making, ecological processes, migration, and breeding patterns.
For instance, Archaeosauris is the largest family in the second most widespread order Odonates, it is adapted to large-scale migrations and live in cold habitats where birds are extremely vulnerable to predators. Another order of birds – Archaeodiscoits - has very small numbers, and they live mostly in dry and cool places. Chordata is found mainly in Europe and North America. Their diversity in many forms is caused by geographic and climatic constraints. Chordata is divided into two broad families: Spinybirds and Sculpeckers. The first one - Spinebirds - includes around 75% of the birds of this kind, they breed mainly along with forests and meadows. On the other hand, Sceulipedes belong mainly to chorals and are adapted for flight.
Bird’s wings: two sets of wing muscles per limb
As bird’s wings have evolved over thousands of years they become smaller and thinner. We have noticed that some bird species have lost the ability to lift themselves up, and therefore cannot fly. So they need to be able to use their feet and sometimes must walk backward. As a result, they usually need to get down low to the ground, to get their feet and grab what they want without falling down. Some birds are unable to fly at night. This allows them to sleep much longer, and some even sleep during the day. When a nest is destroyed it leaves a wide trail of nests behind it. Most often these nests are not built by nature. Only about 6% of nests are made by humans. Because of the increasing urbanization in cities, we can observe large numbers of nesting birds in the middle of all abandoned buildings, or under bridges. At first glance, we might think that this phenomenon means that nest-making is a completely new phenomenon. But in reality, millions of nests have already been created, which was not present 100 years ago. And then came artificial nest-building and nest-destroying machines. Many nest makers in urban areas don’t really care about the consequences of nest destruction. It needs water, and if they lose this source of water, so they can still keep the nest, but what they lose is a lot of possible eggs. Thus nest-making becomes dangerous and unnatural.
Bird feeding tree
Bird feeding trees are used by some birds, not for nesting or feeding. Here you find hundreds of seedlings, about 50-60 years old. These nest trees provide good conditions for the rearing of young birds to learn how they behave in real life. Young birds can look for food among plants. During winter migration birds and sometimes other birds will fly into a tree and start looking for seeds and other organisms in the roots of the plant. Later they can dig for worms and other invertebrates, and can find their way out. Then when spring arrives, they go into the nest trees to feed and they will then leave the nest trees for winter, where they can go back to nest building. By doing so, birds can protect the nest trees and maintain the balance in ecosystems. And the bird that makes the nest tree can enjoy all the benefits of being a nest maker as well as a bird lover, if they don’t make too many nests and nest their way back to other parts of the site they can have a clean nest, lots of eggs to hatch in the future.
The biggest challenge in the creation of birds is the increase in the human population. People need fresh food, so birds eat dead bugs and fruit to survive. With the disappearance of forests, many birds were left stranded and starving. One example is the sparrowhawk from Canada, which needs a big amount of energy to move, so its legs are constantly active. Once its body is stuck, it can hardly move at all. Another situation that happened here is the kittiwake species of the teddy bear was once prey to rats. Today the bear spends most of its time sleeping. To survive, bears need to move around a lot. Due to the development of industrial agriculture, many plants which were once abundant are now going extinct. All this means that birds breeding in countries like Australia is significantly reduced. Birds that nest here face extinction.
Therefore,
The question of why we need birds?
Why should we preserve their habitat?
Why create new colonies in order to fill the last empty territories?
Is our desire to control nature, to save the world that not only harms its inhabitants but also threatens its environment, justified?
Yes, we need these wonderful creatures to stay healthy in order to reproduce. That’s the truth of evolution. Evolution is natural selection, it favors the better-suited species and it was the same thing before, during the Stone Age, or before the Industrial Revolution. Our ancestors used to be poor hunters who could barely hunt insects. Nowadays we have better technology and weapons, so we can hunt bigger mammals, but it is difficult for us to protect ourselves against all kinds of diseases. Such species are becoming extinct now.
The size of birds
With the increasing number of birds in your garden it’s obvious that the average size of birds is getting larger, but the bigger they get they are the bigger problem this creates. According to this report, the smallest birds were just 1/3 the weight of their size in the 17th century. After centuries scientists stopped measuring the size and started considering birds of a single species as “birds of the same kind”. But scientists still count only six different types of birds as belonging to the genus Puffin. If we’re talking about the current scientific knowledge, there just isn’t enough information about individual birds to describe their sizes. Scientists have estimated that the female Beaded Footed Goose and her mate White-Tailed Eagle can grow to the equivalent width of the males of both species. Unfortunately, it also appears that it’s fairly hard to tell the exact size of the male Beaded Footed Goose and its mate. What scientists do know is that the adult male Beaded Footed Goose can reach the maximum length of 2.5 m and the male-female pair can reach the maximum height of 8 m. Beaded Footed Goose is considered a medium-sized goose, while the white Tailed Eagle is a huge goose, its approximate size of 7.6 m. Also, scientists have estimated the heights and weights of bumbaccines to be nearly 20 cm shorter than previously estimated and they also believe that the bird’s overall weight may have dropped by more than half due to global warming.
Birds can be seen flying high above the sky
We’ve already heard it said that birds fly high above the sky. However, you might be thinking: birds fly high above the sky just to escape from their tiny houses?
Well, it turns out that birds can fly long distances to gather food and forage, but not in terms of flying in the air. Instead of using the sky as an actual barrier between them and the outside world, birds can use the space between their nests to fly through it, which increases their chances of survival. Even though living in the city you can spot several birds flying in the far distance, they don't see a single bird in total size.
Birds flying up in the stratosphere
In comparison to birds flying near the ground, it is still not clear why birds can fly in the air. Scientists don’t know yet whether birds fly to survive the heat of winter or because they need to be far away from the scorching sun to have sufficient photosynthesis. Experts claim that birds don't always fly even in the summertime, because birds want to avoid attracting animals that could compete and destroy their nests. They simply want to enjoy themselves in the morning as soon as possible and they don’t mind spending a couple minutes flying by themselves. So there are probably three reasons for doing so. First, birds often do what humans call a landing fling. A bird that lands, spins its head and rolls its eyes skyward, looks back towards the sun, lifts it up in mid-air and repeats it a few times before landing. The second reason is actually more simple, birds don’t like to impress animals and they prefer to try to catch fish instead. Flapping back and forth above the sun, taking off feathers, and looking for bugs would be very annoying for birds and they simply don’t enjoy catching fish. The last one is quite weird - birds fly high to avoid getting hit by rocks or stones.