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Ceylon Frogmouth
The Sri Lanka frogmouth, Sri Lankan frogmouth or Ceylon frogmouth (''Batrachostomus moniliger'') is a small frogmouth found in the Western Ghats of south India and Sri Lanka. Related to the nightjars, it is nocturnal and is found in forest habitats. The plumage coloration resembles that of dried leaves and the bird roosts quietly on branches, making it difficult to see. Each has a favourite roost that it uses regularly unless disturbed. It has a distinctive call that is usually heard at dawn and dusk. The sexes differ slightly in plumage. Description This bird reaches in length. Like all frogmouths, this species has a wide and hooked bill with slit-like nostrils and the large head with eyes facing forward to provide a wide field of binocular vision. Compared to others of its genus it has small wings, which are distinguished by the wing coverts ending in black spots tipped with white. The male is gray-brown with fine barring and a spotted crown. Some males are browner and look ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Blyth
Edward Blyth (23 December 1810 – 27 December 1873) was an English zoologist who worked for most of his life in India as a curator of zoology at the museum of the Asiatic Society of India in Calcutta. Blyth was born in London in 1810. In 1841 he travelled to India to become the curator of the museum of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal. He set about updating the museum's catalogues, publishing a ''Catalogue of the Birds of the Asiatic Society'' in 1849. He was prevented from doing much fieldwork himself, but received and described bird specimens from A.O. Hume, Samuel Tickell, Robert Swinhoe and others. He remained as curator until 1862, when ill-health forced his return to England. His ''Natural History of the Cranes'' was published posthumously in 1881. Avian species bearing his name include Blyth's hornbill, Blyth's leaf warbler, Blyth's hawk-eagle, Blyth's olive bulbul, Blyth's parakeet, Blyth's frogmouth, Blyth's reed warbler, Blyth's rosefinch, Blyth's shrike-babbl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Camouflage
Camouflage is the use of any combination of materials, coloration, or illumination for concealment, either by making animals or objects hard to see, or by disguising them as something else. Examples include the leopard's spotted coat, the battledress of a modern soldier, and the leaf-mimic katydid's wings. A third approach, motion dazzle, confuses the observer with a conspicuous pattern, making the object visible but momentarily harder to locate, as well as making general aiming easier. The majority of camouflage methods aim for crypsis, often through a general resemblance to the background, high contrast disruptive coloration, eliminating shadow, and countershading. In the open ocean, where there is no background, the principal methods of camouflage are transparency, silvering, and countershading, while the ability to produce light is among other things used for counter-illumination on the undersides of cephalopods such as squid. Some animals, such as chameleons and o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Birds Of Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka is a tropical island situated close to the southern tip of India. The bird life of Sri Lanka is very rich for its size and 524 species have been recorded. In addition to the many resident birds, a considerable number of bird migration, migratory species winter in the country to escape their northern breeding grounds. 34 species are confirmed as endemic (ecology), endemic. The other resident species are also found in the nearby Indian mainland, but over 80 have developed distinct Sri Lankan races. Some of these races are very different in their plumage characteristics from the related forms in India. 26 species are globally threatened. Bird distribution in Sri Lanka is largely determined by its climatic zones. The dry zone is largest of the three, covering more than half of the island, with a prolonged dry and hot period and only one monsoon (the north east monsoon from October to January). The wet zone, with two monsoons, is in the south western quarter of the island, w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Birds Of South India
This list of birds of South India includes bird from India south approximately of the Narmada River. Rollapadu in Andhra Pradesh, Nagarhole National Park) and Bandipur National Park in Karnataka; Rajamalai (Eravikulam National Park) and Periyar National Park in Kerala; Mudumalai National Park, Udhagamandalam, Indira Gandhi Wildlife Sanctuary in Anamalai, Vedanthangal and Point Calimere Wildlife and Bird Sanctuary in Kodikkarai, Tamil Nadu are notable bird watching locations in South India. Francolins and spurfowls *Painted francolin, ''Francolinus pictus'' *Grey francolin, ''Francolinus pondicerianus'' *Red spurfowl, ''Galloperdix spadicea'' *Painted spurfowl, ''Galloperdix lunulata'' Quails and buttonquails *Blue-breasted quail, ''Coturnix chinensis'' * Common quail, ''Coturnix coturnix'' * Rain quail, ''Coturnix coromandelica'' *Jungle bush quail, ''Perdicula asiatica'' *Rock bush quail, ''Perdicula argoondah'' *Painted bush quail, ''Perdicula erythrorhyncha'' *Small butt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Batrachostomus
''Batrachostomus'' is a genus of frogmouths. The generic name is a direct translation from the Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ... for 'frogmouth'; / 'frog' and / 'mouth'. References Bird genera {{Bird-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thattekad Bird Sanctuary
The Thattekkad Bird Sanctuary, covering an area of barely 25 km2, and located about 12 km from Kothamangalam (Kerala state, India), was the first bird sanctuary in Kerala. Salim Ali, one of the best known ornithologists, described this sanctuary as ''the richest bird habitat on peninsular India.'' Thattekkad literally means flat forest, and the region is a deciduous but generally moist low-land forest surrounding the Periyar River, the longest river in Kerala. Species The Thattekkad Bird Sanctuary has a rich and varied birdlife. Several species of birds, both forest birds as well as water birds, visit the sanctuaries; notable ones include the following: The Indian pitta, which visits the sanctuary during winter and spends almost six months here. *Orange-headed thrush * Large-billed leaf-warbler *Jerdon's nightjar *Indian cuckoo *Oriental darter *Cormorants *Whiskered terns *Collared scops owl * Ceylon frogmouth *Grey-fronted green pigeon *Yellow-browed bulbuls The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lichen
A lichen ( , ) is a composite organism that arises from algae or cyanobacteria living among filaments of multiple fungi species in a mutualistic relationship.Introduction to Lichens – An Alliance between Kingdoms . University of California Museum of Paleontology. Lichens have properties different from those of their component organisms. They come in many colors, sizes, and forms and are sometimes plant-like, but are not s. They may have tiny, leafless branches (); flat leaf-like structures ( |
Down Feather
The down of birds is a layer of fine feathers found under the tougher exterior feathers. Very young birds are clad only in down. Powder down is a specialized type of down found only in a few groups of birds. Down is a fine thermal insulator and padding, used in goods such as jackets, bedding (duvets and featherbeds), pillows and sleeping bags. The discovery of feathers trapped in ancient amber suggests that some species of dinosaur may have possessed down-like feathers. Description and etymology The word ''down'' comes from the Old Norse word ''dúnn'', which had the same meaning as its modern equivalent. The down feather is considered to be the most "straightforward" of all feather types. It has a short or vestigial rachis (shaft), few barbs, and barbules that lack hooks. There are three types of down: natal down, body down and powder down. Natal down is the layer of down feathers that cover most birds at some point in their early development. Precocial nestlings are alre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plantation
A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The crops that are grown include cotton, coffee, tea, cocoa, sugar cane, opium, sisal, oil seeds, oil palms, fruits, rubber trees and forest trees. Protectionist policies and natural comparative advantage have sometimes contributed to determining where plantations are located. In modern use the term is usually taken to refer only to large-scale estates, but in earlier periods, before about 1800, it was the usual term for a farm of any size in the southern parts of British North America, with, as Noah Webster noted, "farm" becoming the usual term from about Maryland northwards. It was used in most British colonies, but very rarely in the United Kingdom itself in this sense. There, as also in America, it was used mainly for tree plantations, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frogmouth
The frogmouths are a group of nocturnal birds related to owlet-nightjars, swifts, and hummingbirds. Species in the group are distributed in the Indomalayan and Australasian realms. Biology They are named for their large flattened hooked bill and huge frog-like gape, which they use to capture insects. The three ''Podargus'' species are large frogmouths restricted to Australia and New Guinea, that have massive flat broad bills. They are known to take larger prey such as small vertebrates (frogs, mice, etc.), which are sometimes beaten against a stone before swallowing. The ten ''Batrachostomus'' frogmouths are found in tropical Asia. They have smaller, more rounded bills and are predominantly insectivorous. Both ''Podargus'' and ''Batrachostomus'' have bristles around the base of the bill, and ''Batrachostomus'' has other, longer bristles which may exist to protect the eyes from insect prey. In April 2007, a new species of frogmouth was described from the Solomon Islands and placed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mithan Lal Roonwal
Mithan Lal Roonwal (18 September 1908 – 22 July 1990) was an Indian zoologist and director of the Zoological Survey of India. Roonwal studied a range of taxa from termites to mammals. His landmark works were on the biology of termites and a monograph on the primates of South Asia. He was the first to note geographic patterns in the shape in which gray langurs (treated in his time as a single species) carried their tails. He described many new species during his career at the Zoological Survey of India. Roonwal was born in Jodhpur where he received his early education at Sir Pratap School, Sardar School and Darbar High Schools. He then studied at Lucknow where he obtained a Bachelors (1929) and a Master of Science in 1930. He began work at the Locust Research Institute in 1931 at Lyallpur and went to Cambridge where he worked on the embryology of ''Schistocerca gregaria'' under the guidance of Augustus Daniel Imms and obtained a Ph.D. in 1935. He was a demonstrator at Cambridge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Binocular Vision
In biology, binocular vision is a type of vision in which an animal has two eyes capable of facing the same direction to perceive a single three-dimensional image of its surroundings. Binocular vision does not typically refer to vision where an animal has eyes on opposite sides of its head and shares no field of view between them, like in some animals. Neurological researcher Manfred Fahle has stated six specific advantages of having two eyes rather than just one: #It gives a creature a "spare eye" in case one is damaged. #It gives a wider field of view. For example, humans have a maximum horizontal field of view of approximately 190 degrees with two eyes, approximately 120 degrees of which makes up the binocular field of view (seen by both eyes) flanked by two uniocular fields (seen by only one eye) of approximately 40 degrees. #It can give stereopsis in which binocular disparity (or parallax) provided by the two eyes' different positions on the head gives precise depth per ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
