I thought it would be fun to explore some trivia most of us do not know about birds in general. For instance, did you know the Sword Billed Hummingbird’s bill is longer than its body?
There are over 9300 species of birds in the world and 2/3 of these species live in the tropical rain forests. So unless you visit the rain forest, there are 2/3 of the species of birds you will never see in person in their actual habitat.
Birds do not have bladders and do not store urine. That white paste they drop isn’t bird poo like we’ve always thought, it is urine. They let it go instead of storing it in order to get rid of the extra weight.
Between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds are killed by domestic cats each year in just the United States.
Most birds sing, but the woodpecker actually drums its beak to make noise. It is not always drumming its beak to make a hole in something. Starlings actually sing some notes too high for human beings to hear. The European wren sings up to 700 notes in under a minute and can be heard from over 1600 feet away.
The ostrich has the heaviest egg of all birds, weighing in at 3 pounds. This is not the biggest egg. The biggest egg is that of the Kiwi. This egg is 5 inches long and weighs 1 pound. The heaviest bird of prey is the Andean Condor. This bird weighs up to 27 pounds.
About 75% of wild birds only live up to a year. But their offspring return to the same nesting grounds. The Flamingo can live up to 85 years or more and mate for a lifetime. The Wandering Albatross is able to live up to 80 years.
A group of crows is called a murder or a congress. A group of owls is called a parliament, wisdom, or study. And a group of flamingos is called a flamboyance.
The Bald Eagle builds the largest nest of all the birds, measuring approximately 9 feet across. The largest Eagle nest found measured 10 feet across and weighed nearly 3 tons.
The reason birds sense that winter is coming is by a change in their hormones. These hormones cause the birds to put on fat. They also can sense the changes in the amount of daylight and notice that it is time to migrate if they are migrating birds. Birds send cooler blood to the feet and the blood returns back to the main part of the body warm again. This helps the bird to stay warmer when it is standing on colder ground, snow, or ice.
Vultures have stomach acid so strong they are able to digest a carcass that has been infected with anthrax or any other disease, for that matter. Vultures play an important role in the earth’s ecosystem.
Only birds have feathers. The feathers of birds are what help them to fly and protect birds from the elements.
Whichever bird or birds you watch or like, there are many interesting and unknown facts you might be able to learn, if you dig a little deeper into the history. Some scientists believe birds evolved from dinosaurs. While that may or may not be true, it is true the wings actually have 3 fingers imbedded in their edges. Try to learn more about the creatures who fly overhead. I hope you learned some fun facts from this article today!
