Birds - what can you tell by looking closely at them?

[Newt]

It is usually possible to look closely at an animal and make guesses based on physical structure and movement about where it might live, dietary habits, and other lifestyle characteristics.

 

I think birds are even easier since many of them seem particularly well put together to live as they do. Never sure if form followed function or the other way around but in any event, birds seem well built for how they live. Herons, for example, have those nice, long legs with very little blood supply so they can stand in water and not get chilled. Eyes placed to efficiently scan the water for small fish. Beak well adapted for snatching up those same little fish.

 

Since we have been discussing birds and feeding and so on, I thought it might be fun to show you a bird that probably isn't familiar to you but that is very well designed to live as it does and see how well you can guess where it lives, how it feeds, what it's princpal diet might be, and any other things that occur. Please make guesses based on what you see here without 'cheating' and digging up up from the internet.

 

American Woodcock (Scolopax minor) which is a great game bird, much beloved of hunters.

 

The bird

 

skull & beak details

 

I will add in a couple things you couldn't tell from pictures: the beak has vibration sensors (note the bone structure again) and 'taste buds' or whatever birdy analog there is but they can taste with the beak.

[Tony U]

Newt

It is very similar to our native Woodcock, Scolopax Rusticola not often seen due to its crepuscular activities by common enough.

[Newt]

Very possible Tony. Any guesses on diet, choice of dwelling, etc? Also, what advantage to them when they make that whistling sound if they fly off quickly? What advantage to the eye placement?

 

[ 04. March 2005, 11:52 PM: Message edited by: Newt ]

[ayjay]

Here's one I made earlier.

 

[Tony U]

Breeds in moist woodland decidous or mixed with evergreen, we have got quite a bit of that, interspersed wit glades rides or fields. Likes wet soil Favourite food worms, insects etc. anything it can pobe out with its bill from the earth.

My mate is a Falconer and reckons these are as hard a quarry as you can get.

[Newt]

I was interested to find out that not only can they 'feel' when worms are crawling around and locate them, they can also 'taste' the worm slime and follow that.

 

More signs of great adaptation to the ground dwelling:

 

 

 

Eyes nice and high and widely spaced so they can watch for preds all around them even when head-down searching for worms.

 

The huge skull cavities seem well placed to give a very short nerve pathway from eye to brain and should allow for quick reaction to what they see moving around.

 

I imagine the sound they make when they burst off the ground in flight is to startle preds. I know it makes me flinch and often makes my first shot a clean miss.

[SteveH]

Newt, perhaps the bird makes good use of the doppler effect too, by calling attention to where the sound comes from as the bird is making rapid progress elsewhere?

 

SteveH

[Vagabond]

British woodcock quite common around here (Ashdown Forest) - can be seen "roding" (thats flying in wide circles around the treetops at dusk - a display flight) in late spring/early summer.

 

Hard to see otherwise - cryptic camouflage and all that.

 

Have only seen one American woodcock - practically stood on one whilst walking through some woods northwest of Boston Mass.

[Alan Stubbs]

This is a little confusing Newt...

 

The bird apparently feeds on worms by foraging around forest floors - it's bill is well adapted for it, yet has the typical build of a wader(shorebird).... There is something of the sandpiper about it's overall physique.

 

I'd be a little surprised if these birds weren't like our own snipe and woodcock and found frequenting short grass meadows and salt marsh.

[Snatcher]

Nice feathers Newt,I could find a use for those!