all ornithology stories

Eggs, nests make colorful bedfellows at HMNH

50443248 — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 11:00:00 -0400

Large and small, plain and colored, splotched and dotted, eggs from the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology’s vast collection are on display at the Harvard Museum of Natural History in a new exhibition of eggs and nests.

The nests, like the eggs, come in all shapes and sizes. Unlike eggs, which have the same basic plan, nests vary greatly in complexity, from the simple dirt mounds of reptiles to the elaborate creations of Africa’s weaver birds to no nests at all.

Indonesia's strategies to fight bird flu run afoul of reality

50443248 — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:50:11 -0400

If Indonesia is able to execute a comprehensive bird flu plan written by the government, it will take great strides toward controlling the outbreak in the sprawling island nation, a visiting professor who has studied the region said Friday (March 9).

Unfortunately, there's little chance of that happening.

"There's a level of rhetoric and a level of reality and an increasing gap between rhetoric and reality," said James Fox, visiting professor of Australian studies in Harvard's Anthropology Department.

Fox, visiting Harvard from Australian National University, delivered a grim assessment of the spread of bird flu throughout Indonesia, "The Course of Avian Flu in Indonesia: Implications and Possibilities," as part of the Asia Center's ongoing Modern Asia Series.

Big brains better for birds

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 14:50:32 -0400

As you might guess, big-brained birds survive better in the wild than those less cerebral for their size. Scientists guessed that too, but they had to prove it to themselves.

"The supposition that large brains are associated with reduced death rates has not been tested in any group of animals," notes Tamás Székely, a visiting fellow at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology and Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.

Big brains have their disadvantages, biologists admit. They exact a high cost from their owners in the form of development time and upkeep demands. Evolution would eliminate them if they did not provide benefits to offset that cost. The benefit is obvious when you see a large-brained red-tail hawk capture a small-brained pigeon for its lunch.

Ivory-billed woodpecker: Ornithology's holy grail

50443248 — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 12:38:38 -0400

Tim Gallagher and Bobby Harrison almost flopped into the mud of Arkansas' Bayou de View in their haste to get out of the canoe. They crashed through the undergrowth after the flashing black and white bird that was threatening to vanish among the huge cypresses.
After dashing across the soggy ground, through brambles, and over fallen logs, the bird finally disappeared. Gallagher stood stunned. Harrison fell down on a log, overcome by emotion.

"I saw an ivory-bill!" he said.

After a half-century of apparent extinction, in February 2004 the ivory-billed woodpecker came back to life.

Study: Predatory dinosaurs had birdlike pulmonary system

50443248 — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 16:24:29 -0400

What could the fierce dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex and a modern songbird such as the sparrow possibly have in common? Their pulmonary systems may have been more similar than scientists previously thought, according to new research from Harvard University and Ohio University.

Birth of new brain cells induced in birds

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:08:23 -0400

Stem cells that are naturally present in the brains of finches were induced to replace lost cells and restore the birds' ability to sing their distinctive song. "Our results represent the restoration of a brain circuit involved in a complex learned behavior," says Jeffrey Macklis, associate professor of neurology in the Division of Neuroscience at Harvard Medical School. "It is a step toward doing the same thing in mammals." Mammals include humans, and Macklis sees the future possibility of using such approaches to treat damage done by spinal cord injuries, strokes, and degenerative conditions such as Huntington's and Alzheimer's diseases. Even keeping normal brain cells healthy, and thus slowing aging, is not out of the question.