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Afghan Snowfinch
The Afghan snowfinch (''Pyrgilauda theresae'') or the Afghan ground-sparrow, bar-tailed snowfinch, Meinertzhagen's snowfinch, or Theresa's snowfinch, is a passerine bird of the sparrow family Passeridae, endemic to the northern parts of the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan. There are no major threats to the species despite its restricted range, so it is assessed as least concern on the IUCN Red List. This species is mostly a seed-eater, supplementing its diet with some insects. It builds its nest in the burrows or hollows of ground-dwelling rodents, lined with hair or feathers. Taxonomy and systematics This species was first scientifically recorded relatively late, by Richard Meinertzhagen on a 1937 expedition with Salim Ali. Meinertzhagen formally described the species in ''Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club'' paper later that year, and gave it the binomial name ''Montifringilla theresae''. He reported that he collected the type specimen of the species in the Shi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Meinertzhagen
Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, CBE, DSO (3 March 1878 – 17 June 1967) was a British soldier, intelligence officer, and ornithologist. He had a decorated military career spanning Africa and the Middle East. He was credited with creating and executing the Haversack Ruse in October 1917, during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign of the First World War, but his participation in this matter has since been refuted. While early biographies lionized Meinertzhagen as a master of military strategy and espionage, later works such as ''The Meinertzhagen Mystery'' present him as a fraud for fabricating stories of his feats and speculated he murdered his wife (in addition to extra-judicial killings while in the colonial service). The discovery of stolen museum bird specimens resubmitted as original discoveries has raised serious doubts on the veracity of many of his ornithological records. Background and youth Meinertzhagen was born into a wealthy, socially connected British family. His f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kabul
Kabul (; ps, , ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into 22 municipal districts. According to late 2022 estimates, the population of Kabul was 13.5 million people. In contemporary times, the city has served as Afghanistan's political, cultural, and economical centre, and rapid urbanisation has made Kabul the 75th-largest city in the world and the country's primate city. The modern-day city of Kabul is located high up in a narrow valley between the Hindu Kush, and is bounded by the Kabul River. At an elevation of , it is one of the highest capital cities in the world. Kabul is said to be over 3,500 years old, mentioned since at least the time of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Located at a crossroads in Asia—roughly halfway between Istanbul, Turkey, in the west and Hanoi, Vietnam, in the east—it is situated in a stra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vagrancy (biology)
Vagrancy is a phenomenon in biology whereby an individual animal (usually a bird) appears well outside its normal range (biology), range; they are known as vagrants. The term accidental is sometimes also used. There are a number of poorly understood factors which might cause an animal to become a vagrant, including internal causes such as navigatory errors (endogenous vagrancy) and external causes such as severe weather (exogenous vagrancy). Vagrancy events may lead to colonisation and eventually to speciation. Birds In the Northern Hemisphere, adult birds (possibly inexperienced younger adults) of many species are known to continue past their normal breeding range during their spring migration and end up in areas further north (such birds are termed spring overshoots). In autumn, some young birds, instead of heading to their usual wintering grounds, take "incorrect" courses and migrate through areas which are not on their normal migration path. For example, Siberian passeri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Badghis Province
Bādghīs (Dari: ) is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan, located in the northwest of the country, on the border with Turkmenistan. It is considered to be one of the country's most underdeveloped provinces, with the highest poverty rate. The capital is Qala e Naw, while the most populous city and the district are Bala Murghab. The ruins of the medieval city of Marw al-Rudh, the historical capital of the medieval region of Gharjistan, are located in the province near the modern city of Bala Murghab. Geography Badghis Province is located in the isolated hills of northwestern Afghanistan and shares its borders with Herat, Ghor, and Faryab provinces as well as Turkmenistan Turkmenistan ( or ; tk, Türkmenistan / Түркменистан, ) is a country located in Central Asia, bordered by Kazakhstan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, east and northeast, Afghanistan to the southeast, Iran to the sout .... The province has a total area of 20,591 km2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unai Pass
The Unai Pass or Onai Pass is a mountain pass on the western side of the Paghman Mountains in Jalrez District, Maidan Wardak Province, Afghanistan. It is of strategical importance due to its geographical location to the southwest of Kabul. The Sarchashma River flows through the pass, which is the upstream part of the Kabul River. The Maidan River, a tributary of the Kabul/Sarchashma rises at the pass at an altitude of about . Due to its importance, the pass has a long history of being involved in conflict in Afghanistan. In 1929, Muhammad Mir Fath (1901-1964) was one of three Hazara commanders who defeated the forces of Habibullah Kalakani at the pass between March and September of that year. The ''mujahedin'' took the Unai Pass in the spring of 1979 during the war against the Soviet-backed Afghan communist regime, and Jalrez district was one of the earliest districts to be taken. In 1983, the Hazara Al-Nasr group attacked the Harakat Islami Islamic Movement of Afghanist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deh Sabz District
Deh Sabz District, also romanized Dih Sabz District, (the name translating to 'Green Village') is situated northeast of Kabul city in Afghanistan. It has a population of 100,136 people (2002 UNHCR estimate). About 70% are Pashtuns and 30% are Tajiks. Deh Sabz borders Shakardara and Mir Bacha Kot districts to the west, Kalakan and Qarabagh districts to the north-west, Parvan Province to the north and east, Surobi to the southeast and Bagrami and Kabul districts to the south. The headquarters of Deh Sabz is the village of Tarakhel, situated in the south-western part of the district. The Kabul River flows through the district in its southern end and the main highway (Kabul-Jalalabad) passes along it. Most of its people live in villages. Many houses were destroyed during the Soviet war in Afghanistan The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Desert Finch
The desert finch (''Rhodospiza obsoleta''), sometimes called Lichtenstein's desert finch, is a large brown true finch found in southern Eurasia. Its taxonomy is confused, and it has formerly been placed in ''Fringilla'', '' Bucanetes'', ''Carduelis'' and ''Rhodopechys''. It has an average wingspan of . It has a stout black bill, black and white remiges and rectrices, and a slash of rosy-pink on each wing. The female is more dull in color than the male, but other than that the adult sexes are similar in color pattern. The bird is indeed a desert resident in areas where water is readily available, but it can also be found in low mountains and foothills, and in cultivated valleys. It feeds on seeds and the occasional insect. Nesting occurs in trees in the spring, often in fruit trees in orchards, and the female lays and incubates 4 to 6 pale green, lightly speckled eggs. This species does not migrate except locally. The desert finch congregates near rural and remote human settlem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
White-winged Snowfinch
The white-winged snowfinch (''Montifringilla nivalis''), or snowfinch, is a small passerine bird. Despite its name, it is a sparrow rather than a true finch. Taxonomy In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the white-winged snowfinch in his ''Ornithologie'' based on a specimen but without specifying where it had been collected. He used the French name and the Latin ''Fringilla nivalis''. The two stars (**) at the start of the section indicates that Brisson based his description on the examination of a specimen. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his ''Systema Naturae'' for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson. One of these was the white-winged snowfinch. Linnaeus included a brief description, used the bi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monophyletic
In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic groups are typically characterised by shared derived characteristics ( synapomorphies), which distinguish organisms in the clade from other organisms. An equivalent term is holophyly. The word "mono-phyly" means "one-tribe" in Greek. Monophyly is contrasted with paraphyly and polyphyly as shown in the second diagram. A ''paraphyletic group'' consists of all of the descendants of a common ancestor minus one or more monophyletic groups. A '' polyphyletic group'' is characterized by convergent features or habits of scientific interest (for example, night-active primates, fruit trees, aquatic insects). The features by which a polyphyletic group is differentiated from others are not inherited from a common ancestor. These definitions have tak ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Forktail (journal)
''Forktail'' is the annual peer-reviewed journal of the Oriental Bird Club. It is the principal ornithological journal dedicated to the Oriental region, and publishes manuscripts in English, treating any aspect of its ornithology (e.g. distribution, biology, conservation, ecology, taxonomy and evolution). Forktail's geographic scope is bounded by the Indus River to the west, the Russian Far East, Korean Peninsula, Japan, and Lydekker’s Line (i.e. the eastern boundary of Wallacea) to the east, and the Chagos Archipelago, Lesser Sundas, Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands to the south. As of 2020, Professor Frank E. Rheindt is its Managing Editor, assisted by Dr Yong Ding Li. Each issue is A4 in size, with an emerald green cover. Important papers published in ''Forktail'' include descriptions of three new bird species, the Bukidnon woodcock in 2001, the Calayan rail in 2004, and the Cambodian tailorbird in 2013. The Oriental Bird Club also publishes another peri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blanford's Snowfinch
Blanford's snowfinch (''Pyrgilauda blanfordi'') or the plain-backed snowfinch, is a species of bird in the sparrow family. It is found in China, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. Its natural habitat is temperate grassland. The species epithet and common name commemorate the English zoologist William Thomas Blanford. References * Blanford's snowfinch Birds of the Himalayas Blanford's snowfinch Blanford's snowfinch Blanford's snowfinch (''Pyrgilauda blanfordi'') or the plain-backed snowfinch, is a species of bird in the sparrow family. It is found in China, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. Its natural habitat is temperate grassland. The species epithet and co ... Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{Passeridae-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Montifringilla
''Montifringilla'' is a genus of passerine birds in the sparrow family Passeridae. It is one of three genera containing the snowfinches. As the English and scientific names suggest, these are high-altitude species, found in the mountain ranges of southern Eurasia, from the Pyrenees east to the Himalayas, Tibet and western China. Description Snowfinches are stocky sparrows in length, with strong conical bills. They have pale brown upperparts, white underparts and extensive white panels in the wings, which transform them in flight. Adults may have black markings on the chin or around the eyes. Sexes are usually very similar, although the male white-winged snowfinch has a distinctive grey head. Young birds are a drabber version of the adult., , They have simple repetitive songs, given from a rock or during the elaborate circling display flight. The call is a simple ''chip'' or similar. Ecology Most snowfinches breed above altitudes of , but the white-winged snowfinch can occur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
