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Spiny Babbler
The spiny babbler (''Turdoides nipalensis''; ne, काँडे भ्याकुर) is a species of bird in the family Leiothrichidae. Found only in the Middle Hills of Nepal, it can for example be seen around the Kathmandu valley, specifically around the Godavari and Phulchoki area close to the city of Lalitpur. Also known locally as the ''Kande Bhyakur'', literally translated "thorny bird". It was first scientifically described by Brian Houghton Hodgson in the mid-19th century, then never seen again and even feared extinct until famously rediscovered by Sidney Dillon Ripley, an American ornithologist, in the late 1940s. It is predominantly a shy bird but can be seen in the early breeding season when the males sing out in the open. It lives in dense scrubs and mounts branches of bushes and small trees to sing. It is threatened by the clearance of scrub for agriculture and expansion of urban areas. References *Collar, N. J. & Robson, C. 2007. Family Timaliidae ( Spiny B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shivapuri Nagarjun National Park
Shivapuri Nagarjun National Park is the ninth national park in Nepal and was established in 2002. It is located in the country's mid-hills on the northern fringe of the Kathmandu Valley and named after Shivapuri Peak of altitude. It covers an area of in the districts of Kathmandu, Nuwakot and Sindhupalchowk, adjoining 23 Village Development Committees. In the west, the protected area extends to the Dhading District. History The area has always been an important water catchment area, supplying the Kathmandu Valley with several hundred thousands cubic liter of water daily. In 1976, the area was established as a protected watershed and wildlife reserve. In 2002, it was gazetted as Shivapuri National Park, initially covering . It was extended by the Nagarjun Forest Reserve covering in 2009. The park includes some historical and religious sites, and a popular hiking route for local people and tourists. Climate The park is located in a transition zone between subtropical and temp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brian Houghton Hodgson
Brian Houghton Hodgson (1 February 1800 or more likely 1801 – 23 May 1894) was a pioneer naturalist and ethnologist working in India and Nepal where he was a British Resident. He described numerous species of birds and mammals from the Himalayas, and several birds were named after him by others such as Edward Blyth. He was a scholar of Newar Buddhism and wrote extensively on a range of topics relating to linguistics and religion. He was an opponent of the British proposal to introduce English as the official medium of instruction in Indian schools. Early life Hodgson was the second of seven children of Brian Hodgson (1766–1858) and his wife Catherine (1776–1851), and was born at Lower Beech, Prestbury, Cheshire. His father lost money in a bad bank investment and had to sell their home at Lower Beech. A great-aunt married to Beilby Porteus, the Bishop of London, helped them but the financial difficulties were great. Hodgson's father worked as a warden of the Martello towe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bird
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the bee hummingbird to the ostrich. There are about ten thousand living species, more than half of which are passerine, or "perching" birds. Birds have whose development varies according to species; the only known groups without wings are the extinct moa and elephant birds. Wings, which are modified forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in some birds, including ratites, penguins, and diverse endemic island species. The digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have further evolved for swimming. B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leiothrichidae
The laughingthrushes are a family, Leiothrichidae, of Old World passerine birds. They are diverse in size and coloration. These are birds of tropical areas, with the greatest variety in Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. The entire family used to be included in the Old World babbler family Timaliidae. Characteristics They are small to medium-sized birds. They have strong legs, and many are quite terrestrial. They typically have generalised bills, similar to those of a thrush. Most have predominantly brown plumage, with minimal difference between the sexes, but many more brightly coloured species also exist. This group is not strongly migratory, and most species have short rounded wings, and a weak flight. They live in lightly wooded or scrubland environments, ranging from swamp to near-desert. They are primarily insectivorous, although many will also take berries, and the larger species will even eat small lizards and other vertebrates. Taxonomy The family Leiothr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Middle Hills Of Nepal
Nepal measures about along its Himalayan axis by across. It has an area of . Nepal is landlocked by China's Tibet Autonomous Region to the north and India on other three sides. West Bengal's narrow ''Siliguri Corridor'' separate Nepal and Bangladesh. To the east are Bhutan and India. Landform regions For a country of its size, Nepal has tremendous geographic diversity. It rises from as low as elevation in the tropical Terai—the northern rim of the Gangetic Plain, through beyond the perpetual snow line to 90 peaks over including Earth's highest ( Mount Everest or ''Sagarmatha''). In addition to the continuum from tropical warmth to cold comparable to polar regions, average annual precipitation varies from as little as in its narrow proportion of the rainshadow north of the Himalayas to as much as on windward slopes, the maximum mainly resting on the magnitude of the South Asian monsoon. Forming south-to-north transects, Nepal can be divided into three belts: Terai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kathmandu
, pushpin_map = Nepal Bagmati Province#Nepal#Asia , coordinates = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = , subdivision_type1 = Province , subdivision_name1 = Bagmati Province , subdivision_type2 = District , subdivision_name2 = Kathmandu , established_title = , founder = Manjushri , parts_type = No. of Wards , parts = 32 , seat_type = , seat = , government_footnotes = , government_type = Mayor–council government , governing_body = Kathmandu Metropolitan Government, , leader_title = Mayor , leader_name = Balendra Shah ( Ind.) , leader_title1 = Deputy mayor , leader_name1 = Sunita Dangol (UML) , leader_title2 = Executive Officer , leader_name2 = Basanta Adhikari , unit_pref ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lalitpur, Nepal
Lalitpur Metropolitan City, historically Patan ( sa, पाटन ''Pāṭana'', Nepal bhasa : '' Yela'', ), is the fourth most populous city of Nepal after Kathmandu, Pokhara and Bharatpur, and it is located in the south-central part of Kathmandu Valley, a new metropolitan city of Nepal. Lalitpur is also known as Manigal. It is best known for its rich cultural heritage, particularly its tradition of arts and crafts. It is city renowned for its festival and feast, fine ancient art, and the making of metallic, wood and stone carved statues. At the time of the 2011 Nepal census it had a population of 226,728 in 54,748 individual households. The city received extensive damage from an earthquake on 25 April 2015. Geography Lalitpur is on the elevated tract of land in Kathmandu Valley on the south side of the Bagmati River, which separates it from the city of Kathmandu on the northern and western side. The Karmanasa Khola acts as the boundary on the eastern side. It was dev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sidney Dillon Ripley
Sidney Dillon Ripley II (September 20, 1913 – March 12, 2001) was an American ornithologist and wildlife conservationist. He served as secretary of the Smithsonian Institution for 20 years, from 1964 to 1984, leading the institution through its period of greatest growth and expansion. For his leadership at the Smithsonian, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan in 1985. Biography Early life Ripley was born in New York City, after a brother, Louis, was born in 1906 in Litchfield, Connecticut. His mother was Constance Baillie Rose of Scottish descent while his father was Louis Arthur Dillon Ripley, a wealthy real estate agent who drove around in an 1898 Renault Voiturette. Both his paternal grandparents, Julia and Josiah Dwight Ripley, died before he was born but he connected to them was through Cora Dillon Wyckoff. Great Aunt Cora and her husband, Dr. Peter Wyckoff, often hosted young Ripley at their Park Avenue apartment. Cora's and Julia's f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Handbook Of The Birds Of The World
The ''Handbook of the Birds of the World'' (HBW) is a multi-volume series produced by the Spanish publishing house Lynx Edicions in partnership with BirdLife International. It is the first handbook to cover every known living species of bird. The series was edited by Josep del Hoyo, Andrew Elliott, Jordi Sargatal and David A. Christie. All 16 volumes have been published. For the first time an animal class will have all the species illustrated and treated in detail in a single work. This has not been done before for any other group in the animal kingdom. Material in each volume is grouped first by family, with an introductory article on each family; this is followed by individual species accounts (taxonomy, subspecies and distribution, descriptive notes, habitat, food and feeding, breeding, movements, status and conservation, bibliography). In addition, all volumes except the first and second contain an essay on a particular ornithological theme. More than 200 renowned speci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
EBird
eBird is an online database of bird observations providing scientists, researchers and amateur naturalists with real-time data about bird distribution and abundance. Originally restricted to sightings from the Western Hemisphere, the project expanded to include New Zealand in 2008, and again expanded to cover the whole world in June 2010. eBird has been described as an ambitious example of enlisting amateurs to gather data on biodiversity for use in science. eBird is an example of crowdsourcing, and has been hailed as an example of democratizing science, treating citizens as scientists, allowing the public to access and use their own data and the collective data generated by others. History and purpose Launched in 2002 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology at Cornell University and the National Audubon Society, eBird gathers basic data on bird abundance and distribution at a variety of spatial and temporal scales. It was mainly inspired by the ÉPOQ database, created by Jacque ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Avibase
Avibase is an online taxonomic database that organizes bird taxonomic and distribution data globally. At its core, the database relies on the notion of taxonomic concepts. rather than taxonomic names (see also for the rationale of using taxonomic concepts). Avibase incorporates and organizes taxonomic data from the main avian taxonomic publishers (''The Clements Checklist of Birds of the World'', ''Handbook of the Birds of the World'', BirdLife International, IOC Checklist and the ''Howard and Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World'') and other regional sources (e.g. all editions of the '' American Ornithological Society Checklist of North American Birds'' since 1886). Taxonomic concepts in over 230 different taxonomic sources have been mapped and cross-referenced to Avibase concepts. The website also offers checklists for more than 20,000 geographic regions of the world, species pages with taxonomic information and synonyms, and tools for observers to maintain thei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turdoides
''Turdoides'' is a genus of passerine birds in the laughingthrush family Leiothrichidae. The species are distributed across Africa and southern Asia and are typically fairly large, long-tailed birds which forage in noisy groups. The majority of species have drab brown or grey-brown plumage. Several species that were included in ''Turdoides'' in the past have been reassigned to ''Argya'' following a 2018 study that found multiple clades. The genus ''Turdoides'' was introduced in 1826 by the German physician Philipp Jakob Cretzschmar specifically for the white-headed babbler. The name combines the thrush genus ''Turdus'' with the Ancient Greek ''-oidēs'' meaning "resembling". Species The genus contains the following 19 species: * Brown babbler, ''Turdoides plebejus'' * Bare-cheeked babbler, ''Turdoides gymnogenys'' * Arrow-marked babbler, ''Turdoides jardineii'' * Scaly babbler, ''Turdoides squamulata'' * White-rumped babbler, ''Turdoides leucopygia'' * White-headed babbl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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