Fun facts about birds
1. At 3 inches long, the Calliope Hummingbird is North America's smallest bird.2. At 40 pounds or more, the Trumpeter Swan is North America's heaviest bird.
3. At 9 feet, the American White Pelican has the longest wingspan of any regularly occurring North
American bird. However, the Wandering Albatross (common in the far southern oceans, and seen once off the coast of California) has a wingspan that can reach 11 feet.
4. The Greater Roadrunner, a member of the cuckoo family, can run at speeds of up to 15 miles per hour.
5. The Peregrine Falcon is usually considered North America's fastest bird. It regularly attains speeds of 40-60 mph and has been clocked in steep dives at 175 mph.
6. The Bar-headed Goose may be the highest-flying migrant. These geese have been seen flying over the Himalaya at an elevation of 28,000 feet.
7. Some migrating sandpipers have been clocked at speeds greater than 100 miles per hour.
8. Some migrating birds cross tremendous distances. Most impressive is the Arctic Tern, which flies 22,000 miles round-trip between the Antarctic Ocean and the Arctic Ocean each year.
9. At 25 inches long, the Red-throated Loon is North America's smallest loon.
10. The Pied-billed Grebe, the most widespread grebe in the New World, is found from southern Canada
to Argentina.
11. The Horned Grebe is known as the Slavonian Grebe in Eurasia.
12. The Marbled Murrelet nests high in trees in old-growth forests.
13. Only 6 inches long, no bigger than a sparrow, the Least Auklet is the tiniest auk.
14. The Brant is the most northerly nesting goose species in North America. It breeds throughout Canada's high Arctic islands.
15. Because of its whitish crown, the American Wigeon used to be called the "baldpate."
16. Only 12 inches long, Audubon's Shearwater is the smallest shearwater regularly occurring off the coast of North America.
17. The White-tailed Tropicbird is the national bird of Bermuda.
18. Brown Pelicans dive headfirst from as high as 60 feet above the water in order to catch fish.
19. At 19 to 23 inches long, the Caspian Tern is the largest North American tern.
20. Only 11 to 14 inches long, the Least Bittern is the smallest heron in the world.
21. The Reddish Egret is the North American heron most associated with saltwater habitats.
22. The Yellow-crowned Night-Heron is also known as the "crab-eater." This species was introduced to
Bermuda in a successful attempt to bring land crabs under control there.
23. The Wood Stork is the only native stork in North America.
24. The Snowy Plover is known as the Kentish Plover in Europe.
25. In the northern spruce bogs where it breeds, rather than nesting on the wet ground, the Solitary Sandpiper lays its eggs in old songbird nests high up in trees.
26. The Bristle-thighed Curlew is the only shorebird that undergoes a flightless molt.
27. A nest of the Red Knot was first discovered during Admiral Peary's expedition to the North Pole in
1909.
28. The American Woodcock, related to the shorebirds, is usually found in forests and eats earthworms.
29. Benjamin Franklin thought the Wild Turkey was the best choice for the national bird.
30. The Crane Hawk, seen once in Texas, sometimes hangs upside down in trees.
31. Harris's Hawks often hunt cooperatively.
32. The Turkey Vulture and the Zone-tailed Hawk can be mistaken for each other when seen soaring at a
distance.
33. At 20 to 25 inches long, the Gyrfalcon is the largest falcon in the world. It can be seen in the lower forty-eight states only in winter.
34. The sparrow-sized Elf Owl, only 5 to 6 inches long, found in the southwestern deserts, is the smallest owl in the world.
35. The Eared Trogon, not the more common Elegant Trogon, is our closest relative to the quetzals.
36. The Greater Pewee's easily recognized call, sounding like "Ho-say, ma-re-ah," gives it the common name "Jose Maria" in Mexico.
37. The Gray Flycatcher regularly winters farther north than any other Empidonax flycatcher. In winter it can be found in southern California and Arizona, as well as south of the border.
38. A Sprague's Pipit singing over the prairies along the upper Missouri River inspired Audubon to call it the "Missouri skylark."
39. The Island Scrub-Jay, formerly a subspecies of the Scrub Jay, can be found only on Santa Cruz Island off the coast of California.
40. At 22 to 27 inches long, the Common Raven is the largest songbird, though it can only croak.
41. The American Dipper, though classified as a songbird, is truly a waterbird. It feeds by walking along the bottom of mountain streams in search of insect larvae.
42. The unique Wrentit is neither wren nor tit, but may be related to the babblers of the Old World.
43. The hooked bill of the shrikes is a clue that they are predatory birds and have a similar diet to hawks.
44. The Loggerhead Shrike's habit of storing uneaten prey impaled on thorns or the barbs of fence wires has given it the nickname "butcherbird."
45. The Mourning Dove may raise up to six broods per year, more than any other native North American
bird.
46. The voice of the European Common Cuckoo, which is not a breeding North American species, is the model for the sound of a cuckoo clock.
47. People thought the Yellow-billed Cuckoo's croaking call, often heard on hot, humid afternoons, sounded like a call for rain and thus nicknamed it the "rain crow." was new to science, but the ancient Hopi Indian name for the Common Poorwill means "the sleeping one."
49. The Rufous Hummingbird nests into Alaska.
50. The Chipping Sparrow was the most common city sparrow in the nineteenth century.
51. The Bohemian Waxwing's name reflects its unconventional lifestyle
52. There are more sightings in the East of the Black-throated Gray Warbler than of any other western warbler.
53. The Grace's Warbler is named after Elliott Coues's sister.
54. Though most of its feeding is done within 30 feet of the surface, the Long-tailed Duck is supposedly able to dive to 200 feet, deeper than any other duck.
55. Birds are not the only animals that are capable of flight.
Flight is not a characteristic restricted to birds. Bats, which are mammals, fly with great agility and insects, which are arthropods, were fluttering through the air several million years before birds took to the wing.
56. There are 9,865 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.
57. 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.
58. The egg of the hummingbird is the world's smallest bird's egg; the egg of the ostrich, the world's largest.
59. The now-extinct elephant bird of Madagascar laid an egg that weighed 27 pounds.
60. 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.
61. Penguins, ostriches, and dodo birds are all birds that do not fly.
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