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Chestnut-backed Owlet
The chestnut-backed owlet (''Glaucidium castanotum'') (often misspelled ''Glaucidium castanonotum''), is an owl which is endemic to Sri Lanka. This species is a part of the larger grouping of owls known as typical owls, Strigidae, which contains most of the smaller owl species. This species was formerly considered to be a subspecies of the jungle owlet. Description The chestnut-backed owlet is small and stocky, measuring in length. It resembles the jungle owlet in shape, size and appearance but the upperparts, scapulars and wing coverts are mainly chestnut brown, with darker barring. The underparts are white with blackish shaft-streaks.HENRY, GM 1971. A guide to the birds of Ceylon. Second edition. Oxford University Press, London. p. 200 The facial disc is mainly brown and the eyes are yellow. There is a white neckband. Sexes are similar in appearance, with no sexual dimorphism. Distribution and habitat The chestnut-backed owlet is a common resident bird in the wet zone f ... [...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] |
Insect
Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes and one pair of antennae. Their blood is not totally contained in vessels; some circulates in an open cavity known as the haemocoel. Insects are the most diverse group of animals; they include more than a million described species and represent more than half of all known living organisms. The total number of extant species is estimated at between six and ten million; In: potentially over 90% of the animal life forms on Earth are insects. Insects may be found in nearly all environments, although only a small number of species reside in the oceans, which are dominated by another arthropod group, crustaceans, which recent research has indicated insects are nested within. Nearly all insects hatch from eggs. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endemic Birds Of Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka is home to 34 endemic bird species. The total number of bird species recorded in the island is 492 of which 219 are breeding residents. BirdLife International recognize Sri Lanka as one of the world's Endemic Bird Areas (EBAs). The number of endemic species has changed many times over the years. This is largely due to " close taxonomic revisions". The number of endemic species has fluctuated from a minimum 20 to a maximum 47. From 1977 the number settled at around 21. The figure was increased to 23 with the addition of two species in 1990. Many authorities have accepted this figure since then. Wijesinghe published ''A checklist of the birds of Sri Lanka'' in 1994 which considered the addition of three more species, but this move did not receive widespread recognition because its rationale was not in keeping with rigorous taxonomic practice. Subsequent publications on the avifauna of Sri Lanka and the South Asia region have not listed these three as endemics. However, wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sinhala Language
Sinhala ( ; , ''siṁhala'', ), sometimes called Sinhalese (), is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken by the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka, who make up the largest ethnic group on the island, numbering about 16 million. Sinhala is also spoken as the first language by other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, totalling about 2 million people as of 2001. It is written using the Sinhala script, which is a Brahmic scripts, Brahmic script closely related to the Grantha script of South India. Sinhala is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka. Along with Pali, it played a major role in the development of Theravada, Theravada Buddhist literature. The early form of the Sinhala language, is attested as early as the 3rd century BCE. The language of these inscriptions with long vowels and aspirated consonants is a Prakrit similar to Magadhi, a regional associate of the Middle Indian Prakrits that has been used during the time of the Buddha. The closest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, and southeast of the Arabian Sea; it is separated from the Indian subcontinent by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait. Sri Lanka shares a maritime border with India and Maldives. Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte is its legislative capital, and Colombo is its largest city and financial centre. Sri Lanka has a population of around 22 million (2020) and is a multinational state, home to diverse cultures, languages, and ethnicities. The Sinhalese are the majority of the nation's population. The Tamils, who are a large minority group, have also played an influential role in the island's history. Other long established groups include the Moors, the Burghers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tree Hollow
A tree hollow or tree hole is a semi-enclosed cavity which has naturally formed in the trunk or branch of a tree. They are found mainly in old trees, whether living or not. Hollows form in many species of trees, and are a prominent feature of natural forests and woodlands, and act as a resource or habitat for a number of vertebrate and invertebrate animals. Hollows may form as the result of physiological stress from natural forces causing the excavating and exposure of the heartwood. Forces may include wind, fire, heat, lightning, rain, attack from insects (such as ants or beetles), bacteria, or fungi. Also, trees may self-prune, dropping lower branches as they reach maturity, exposing the area where the branch was attached. Many animals further develop the hollows using instruments such as their beak, teeth or claws. The size of hollows may depend on the age of the tree. For example, eucalypts develop hollows at all ages, but only from when the trees are 120 years old do they f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beetle
Beetles are insects that form the order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Endopterygota. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 described species, is the largest of all orders, constituting almost 40% of described insects and 25% of all known animal life-forms; new species are discovered frequently, with estimates suggesting that there are between 0.9 and 2.1 million total species. Found in almost every habitat except the sea and the polar regions, they interact with their ecosystems in several ways: beetles often feed on plants and fungi, break down animal and plant debris, and eat other invertebrates. Some species are serious agricultural pests, such as the Colorado potato beetle, while others such as Coccinellidae (ladybirds or ladybugs) eat aphids, scale insects, thrips, and other plant-sucking insects that damage crops. Beetles typically have a particularly hard e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diurnality
Diurnality is a form of plant and ethology, animal behavior characterized by activity during daytime, with a period of sleeping or other inactivity at night. The common adjective used for daytime activity is "diurnal". The timing of activity by an animal depends on a variety of environmental factors such as the temperature, the ability to gather food by sight, the risk of predation, and the time of year. Diurnality is a cycle of activity within a 24-hour period; cyclic activities called circadian rhythms are endogenous cycles not dependent on external cues or environmental factors except for a zeitgeber. Animals active during twilight are crepuscular, those active during the night are nocturnal and animals active at sporadic times during both night and day are cathemerality, cathemeral. Plants that open their flowers during the daytime are described as diurnal, while those that bloom during nighttime are nocturnal. The timing of flower opening is often related to the time at which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endemic (ecology)
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. For example, the Cape sugarbird is found exclusively in southwestern South Africa and is therefore said to be ''endemic'' to that particular part of the world. An endemic species can be also be referred to as an ''endemism'' or in scientific literature as an ''endemite''. For example '' Cytisus aeolicus'' is an endemite of the Italian flora. '' Adzharia renschi'' was once believed to be an endemite of the Caucasus, but it was later discovered to be a non-indigenous species from South America belonging to a different genus. The extreme opposite of an endemic species is one with a cosmopolitan distribution, having a global or widespread range. A rare alternative term for a species that is endemic is "precinctive", which applies to s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colombo
Colombo ( ; si, කොළඹ, translit=Koḷam̆ba, ; ta, கொழும்பு, translit=Koḻumpu, ) is the executive and judicial capital and largest city of Sri Lanka by population. According to the Brookings Institution, Colombo metropolitan area has a population of 5.6 million, and 752,993 in the Municipality. It is the financial centre of the island and a tourist destination. It is located on the west coast of the island and adjacent to the Greater Colombo area which includes Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, the legislative capital of Sri Lanka, and Dehiwala-Mount Lavinia. Colombo is often referred to as the capital since Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte is itself within the urban/suburban area of Colombo. It is also the administrative capital of the Western Province and the district capital of Colombo District. Colombo is a busy and vibrant city with a mixture of modern life, colonial buildings and monuments. Due to its large harbour and its strategic position along th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Vincent Legge
Colonel William Vincent Legge (2 September 1841 – 25 March 1918) was an Australian soldier and an ornithology, ornithologist who documented the birds of Sri Lanka. Legge's hawk-eagle is named after him as is Legge's flowerpecker and Legges Tor, the second highest peak in Tasmania. Biography Legge was born at Cullenswood, Tasmania, Cullenswood, Tasmania (then Van Diemen's Land). His father, Robert Vincent Legge had moved from Ireland to Tasmania in 1827 along with his sisters and was married to Eliza Graves (née de Lapenotierre). He was granted 1200 acres (486 ha) which he named "Cullenswood" after his home in Ireland. William was sent to study at Bath, Somerset, Bath after which he continued studies in France and Germany, picking up several languages before joining the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. In 1862 he was commissioned into the Royal Artillery, serving first in Bath, Somerset, Bath, England, and then in Melbourne for several years. From Melbourne his battery was tra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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