European Goldfinch
The European goldfinch or simply the goldfinch (''Carduelis carduelis'') is a small passerine bird in the finch family that is native to Europe, North Africa and western and central Asia. It has been introduced to other areas, including Australia, New Zealand and Uruguay. The breeding male has a red face with black markings around the eyes, and a black-and-white head. The back and flanks are buff or chestnut brown. The black wings have a broad yellow bar. The tail is black and the rump is white. Males and females are very similar, but females have a slightly smaller red area on the face. The goldfinch is often depicted in Italian Renaissance paintings of the Madonna and Child. Taxonomy The European goldfinch was one of the birds described and illustrated by Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner in his '' Historiae animalium'' of 1555. The first formal description was by Carl Linnaeus in the 10th edition of his ''Systema Naturae'' published in 1758. He introduced the binomial name, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Wigan
Wigan ( ) is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, on the River Douglas, Lancashire, River Douglas. The town is midway between the two cities of Manchester, to the south-east, and Liverpool, to the south-west. Bolton lies to the north-east and Warrington to the south. It is the largest settlement in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan and is its administrative centre. The town has a population of 107,732 and the wider borough of 330,713. Wigan was formerly within the Historic counties of England, historic county of Lancashire. Wigan was in the territory of the Brigantes, an ancient Celtic tribe that ruled much of what is now northern England. The Brigantes were subjugated in the Roman conquest of Britain and the Roman settlement of ''Coccium'' was established where Wigan lies. Wigan was incorporated as a Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough in 1246, following the issue of a charter by Henry III of England, King Henry III of England. At the end of the Middle ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Specific Name (zoology)
In zoological nomenclature, the specific name (also specific epithet or species epithet) is the second part (the second name) within the scientific name of a species (a binomen). The first part of the name of a species is the name of the genus or the generic name. The rules and regulations governing the giving of a new species name are explained in the article species description. For example, the scientific name for humans is ''Homo sapiens'', which is the species name, consisting of two names: ''Homo'' is the " generic name" (the name of the genus) and ''sapiens'' is the "specific name". Historically, ''specific name'' referred to the combination of what are now called the generic and specific names. Carl Linnaeus, who formalized binomial nomenclature, made explicit distinctions between specific, generic, and trivial names. The generic name was that of the genus, the first in the binomial, the trivial name was the second name in the binomial, and the specific the proper term for ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Canary Islands
The Canary Islands (; es, Canarias, ), also known informally as the Canaries, are a Spanish autonomous community and archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, in Macaronesia. At their closest point to the African mainland, they are west of Morocco. They are the southernmost of the autonomous communities of Spain. The islands have a population of 2.2 million people and they are the most populous special territory of the European Union. The seven main islands are (from largest to smallest in area) Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, La Palma, La Gomera, and El Hierro. The archipelago includes many smaller islands and islets, including La Graciosa, Alegranza, Isla de Lobos, Montaña Clara, Roque del Oeste, and Roque del Este. It also includes a number of rocks, including those of Salmor, Fasnia, Bonanza, Garachico, and Anaga. In ancient times, the island chain was often referred to as "the Fortunate Isles". The Canary Islands are the southernmost region of Spain, and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Macaronesia
Macaronesia (Portuguese: ''Macaronésia,'' Spanish: ''Macaronesia'') is a collection of four volcanic archipelagos in the North Atlantic, off the coasts of Africa and Europe. Each archipelago is made up of a number of List of islands in the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic oceanic islands, which are formed by seamounts on the ocean floor whose peaks have risen above the ocean's surface. Some of the Macaronesian islands belong to Portugal, some belong to Spain, and the rest belong to Cape Verde. Politically, the islands belonging to Portugal and Spain are part of the European Union. Geologically, Macaronesia is part of the African Plate, African tectonic plate. Some of its islands – the Azores – are situated along the edge of that plate at the point where it abuts the Eurasian Plate, Eurasian and North American Plate, North American plates. In one biogeography, biogeographical system, the Cape Verde archipelago is in the Afrotropical realm while the other three archipelagos are in t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Viktor Von Tschusi Zu Schmidhoffen
Viktor von Tschusi zu Schmidhoffen (28 December 1847 – 5 March 1924) was an Austrian ornithologist. Biography Tschusi was born on 28 December 1847 in the Smíchov district of Prague. His father was a former officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army from a noble family of Tyrol, and Tschusi held the title of Reichsritter. Tschusi's father, and his mother Josephine, inspired an early interest in natural history. Tschusi attended gymnasium school at a Jesuit college at Kalksburg, near Vienna. He began his scientific studies under a private tutor when his family moved to Krems an der Donau, and to Schloss Arntsdorf after his father's death when he was 17. Tschusi learned to prepare bird specimens from a preparator at the Imperial Natural History Museum, and became skilled at collecting and preparing bird specimens. From 1868 to 1870, he travelled extensively in Austria, Bohemia, northern Italy, northern Germany, and Heligoland, meeting other ornithologists and visiting important bird col ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Anton Reichenow
Anton Reichenow (1 August 1847 in Charlottenburg – 6 July 1941 in Hamburg) was a German ornithologist and herpetologist. Reichenow was the son-in-law of Jean Cabanis, and worked at the Natural History Museum of Berlin from 1874 to 1921. He was an expert on African birds, making a collecting expedition to West Africa in 1872 and 1873, and writing ''Die Vögel Afrikas'' (1900–05). He was also an expert on parrots, describing all species then known in his book ''Vogelbilder aus Fernen Zonen: Abbildungen und Beschreibungen der Papageien'' (illustrated by Gustav Mützel, 1839–1893). He also wrote ''Die Vögel der Bismarckinseln'' (1899). He was editor of the ''Journal für Ornithologie'' from 1894 to 1921. A number of birds are named after him, including Reichenow's woodpecker and Reichenow's firefinch. His son Eduard Reichenow was a famous protozoologist. Reichenow is known for his classification of birds into six groups, described as "shortwings, swimmers, stiltbirds, skinb ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hans Edmund Wolters
Hans Edmund Wolters (11 February 1915 – 22 December 1991) was a German ornithologist from Duisburg. In 1960, he became an associate member of the Alexander Koenig Zoological Research Institute and Museum in Bonn. He became head of the museum's Department of Ornithology in 1973. He was one of the first European ornithologists to use a cladistic Cladistics (; ) is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups (" clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is typically shared derived char ... classification. This is reflected in his main work ''Die Vogelarten der Erde'' (The Bird Taxa of the World). References 1915 births 1991 deaths German ornithologists People from Duisburg People from the Rhine Province 20th-century German zoologists {{ornithologist-stub ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ernst Hartert
Ernst Johann Otto Hartert (29 October 1859 – 11 November 1933) was a widely published German ornithologist. Life and career Hartert was born in Hamburg, Germany on 29 October 1859. In July 1891, he married the illustrator Claudia Bernadine Elisabeth Hartert in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, with whom he had a son named Joachim Karl (Charles) Hartert, (1893–1916), who was killed as an English soldier on the Somme. Together with his wife, he was the first to describe the blue-tailed Buffon hummingbird subspecies (''Chalybura buffonii intermedia'' Hartert, E & Hartert, C, 1894). The article ''On a collection of Humming Birds from Ecuador and Mexico'' appears to be their only joint publication. Hartert was employed by Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild as ornithological curator of Rothshild's private Natural History Museum at Tring, in England from 1892 to 1929. Hartert published the quarterly museum periodical ''Novitates Zoologicae'' (1894–39) with Rothschild, and the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nikolai Zarudny
Nikolai Alekseyvich Zarudny (russian: Николай Алексеевич Зарудный; rus, Николай Алексеевич Зарудный, r=Nikolay Alekseevich Zarudny. His name has been transliterated a number of other ways; especially with ''Sarudny'' or ''Sarudney'' in older works. 13 September 1859 – 17 March 1919) was a Ukrainian-Russian explorer and zoologist who studied the flora and fauna of Central Asia. He was born in Gryakovo, Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire). He wrote his first ornithology book in 1896 and made five expeditions in the Caspian region between 1884 and 1892. He led other expeditions to Persia supported by the Russian Geographical Society and the Zoological Museum of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He collected nearly 3,140 specimens of birds and 50,000 insects. After the Russian Revolution, his collection was nationalized by the Bolsheviks and moved to the museum at the University of Tashkent. For his ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Intergrade
In zoology, intergradation is the way in which two distinct subspecies are connected via areas where populations are found that have the characteristics of both. There are two types of intergradation: primary and secondary intergradation. Primary intergradation This occurs in cases where two subspecies are connected via one or more intermediate populations, each of which is in turn intermediate to its adjacent populations and exhibits more or less the same amount of variability as any other population within the species. Adjacent populations and subspecies are subject to cline intergradation, and in these situations it is usually taken for granted that the clines are causally related (by natural selection) to environmental gradients.Mayr E, Ashlock PD (1991). ''Principles of Systematic Zoology''. Second edition. McGraw-Hill. . Secondary intergradation When contact between a geographically isolated subspecies is reestablished with the main body of the species or with another i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Subspecies
In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all species have subspecies, but for those that do there must be at least two. Subspecies is abbreviated subsp. or ssp. and the singular and plural forms are the same ("the subspecies is" or "the subspecies are"). In zoology, under the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, the subspecies is the only taxonomic rank below that of species that can receive a name. In botany and mycology, under the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants, other infraspecific ranks, such as variety, may be named. In bacteriology and virology, under standard bacterial nomenclature and virus nomenclature, there are recommendations but not strict requirements for recognizing other important infraspecific ranks. A taxonomist decides whether ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Cook's Tale
Geoffrey Chaucer presumably never finished "The Cook's Tale" and it breaks off after 58 lines, although some scholars argue that Chaucer deliberately left the tale unfinished. The story starts telling of an apprentice named Perkyn (a.k.a. Perkin) who is fond of drinking and dancing. Perkyn is released by his master and moves in with a friend who also loves to drink, and whose wife is a '' shopkeeper'' whose real occupation is that of a prostitute. The tale continues the general downward trend of the preceding tales—the Knight's, the Miller's and the Reeve's tale—into ever-more-seedy stories. Its length makes finding a source impossible, but it is thought by some scholars to be a retelling of contemporary events, with a Roger Knight de Ware being mentioned in several manuscripts of the time. In 25 of '' The Canterbury Tales'' MSS (notably Harley MS 7334 and Corpus Christi 198) the Cook's unfinished tale is followed by the anonymous Tale of Gamelyn, and it has been suggeste ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |