White-throated Sparrow
The white-throated sparrow (''Zonotrichia albicollis'') is a passerine bird of the New World sparrow family Passerellidae. Etymology The genus name ''Zonotrichia'' is from Ancient Greek (, ) and (, ). The specific ''albicollis'' is from Latin (), and (). Description The white-throated sparrow is a passerine bird of the New World sparrow family Passerellidae. It measures in length with a wingspan of . Typical weight is , with an average of . Among standard measurements, the wing chord is , the tail is , the bill is and the tarsus is . They are similar in appearance to the white-crowned sparrow, but with white throat markings and yellow lores. There are two adult plumage variations known as the tan-striped and white-striped forms. On the white-striped form the crown is black with a white central stripe. The supercilium is white as well. The auriculars are gray with the upper edge forming a black eye line. On the tan form, the crown is dark brown with a tan central s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cap Tourmente National Wildlife Area
The Cap Tourmente National Wildlife Area is a National Wildlife Area (NWA) located on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River in the Capitale-Nationale, National Provincial Capital Region of Quebec, established on 28 April 1978. It is one of the critical habitats for the greater snow goose during migration. Flocks of tens of thousands of these birds stop over to feed on the bullrushes in the spring and fall. The tidal marsh was recognized as a wetland of international significance per the Ramsar Convention in 1981, the first North American site to receive that distinction. File:CapTourmenteOieBlanche.JPG, Snow goose File:Spizelloides arborea CT5.jpg, American tree sparrow (Spizelloides arborea) Location Cap Tourmente is 50 km from Quebec City, and sits on the St. Lawrence River. The park is part of Saint-Joachim, Quebec, Saint-Joachim municipality. The location of the park sits at an intersection of Appalachian Mountains, Canadian Shield, the St. Lawrence Lowlands. Beca ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Rufous
Rufous () is a color that may be described as reddish-brown or brownish-red, as of rust or oxidised iron. The first recorded use of ''rufous'' as a color name in English was in 1782. However, the color is also recorded earlier in 1527 as a diagnostic urine color. The word "rufous" is derived from the Latin ''rufus'', meaning "red", and is used as an adjective in the names of many animals—especially birds—to describe the color of their skin, fur, or plumage. See also * List of colours: N–Z *Lists of colours These are the lists of colors; * List of colors: A–F * List of colors: G–M * List of colors: N–Z * List of colors (compact) * List of colors by shade * List of color palettes * List of Crayola crayon colors * List of RAL colors * List of X ... * References {{Shades of brown Bird colours Shades of brown Shades of red ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chickadee
The chickadees are a group of North American birds in the tit family included in the genus ''Poecile''. Species found in North America are referred to as chickadees, while other species in the genus are called tits. They are small-sized birds overall, usually having the crown of the head and throat patch distinctly darker than the body. They are at least 6 to 14 centimeters (2.4 to 5.5 inches) in size. Their name reputedly comes from the fact that their calls make a distinctive "chick-a-dee-dee-dee", though their normal call is actually "fee-bee," and the "chick-a-dee-dee-dee" call is an alarm call. The number of "dees" depends on the predator. The chickadee (specifically the black-capped chickadee ''Poecile atricapillus'', formerly ''Parus atricapillus'') is the official bird for the US states of Massachusetts and Maine, the Canadian province of New Brunswick, and the city of Calgary, Alberta. One holarctic species is referred to by a different name in each part of its ran ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Song Sparrow
The song sparrow (''Melospiza melodia'') is a medium-sized New World sparrow. Among the native sparrows in North America, it is easily one of the most abundant, variable and adaptable species. Description Adult song sparrows have brown upperparts with dark streaks on the back and are white underneath with dark streaking and a dark brown spot in the middle of the breast. They have a brown cap and a long brown rounded tail. Their face is gray with a brown streak through each eye. They are highly variable in size across numerous subspecies (for subspecies details, see below). The body length ranges from and wingspan can range from . Body mass ranges from . The average of all races is but the widespread nominate subspecies (''M. m. melodia'') weighs only about on average. The maximum lifespan in the wild is 11.3 years. The eggs of the song sparrow are brown with greenish-white spots. Females lay three to five eggs per clutch, with an average incubation time of 13–15 days befor ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dark-eyed Junco
The dark-eyed junco (''Junco hyemalis'') is a species of junco, a group of small, grayish New World sparrows. This bird is common across much of temperate North America and in summer ranges far into the Arctic. It is a very variable species, much like the related fox sparrow (''Passerella iliaca''), and its systematics are still not completely untangled. Taxonomy The dark-eyed junco was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in his landmark 1758 10th edition of ''Systema Naturae'' as ''Fringilla hyemalis''. The description consisted merely of the laconic remark "''F ingillanigra, ventre albo.'' ("A black 'finch' with white belly") and a statement that it came from America. Linnaeus based his description on the "Snow-Bird" that Mark Catesby had described and illustrated in his ''The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands''. The Bill of this Bird is white: The Breast and Belly white. All the rest of the Body black; but in some places dusky, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Northern Cardinal
The northern cardinal (''Cardinalis cardinalis'') is a bird in the genus ''Cardinalis''; it is also known colloquially as the redbird, common cardinal, red cardinal, or just cardinal (which was its name prior to 1985). It can be found in southeastern Canada, through the eastern United States from Maine to Minnesota to Texas, New Mexico, southern Arizona, southern California, and south through Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala. It is also an introduced species in a few locations such as Bermuda and Hawaii. Its habitat includes woodlands, gardens, shrublands, and wetlands. The northern cardinal is a mid-sized songbird with a body length of . It has a distinctive crest on the head and a mask on the face which is black in the male and gray in the female. The male is a vibrant red, while the female is a reddish olive color. The northern cardinal is mainly granivorous, but also feeds on insects and fruit. The male behaves territorially, marking out his territory with song. During courtshi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. Comprising the westernmost peninsulas of Eurasia, it shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with both Africa and Asia. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south and Asia to the east. Europe is commonly considered to be Boundaries between the continents of Earth#Asia and Europe, separated from Asia by the drainage divide, watershed of the Ural Mountains, the Ural (river), Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Greater Caucasus, the Black Sea and the waterways of the Turkish Straits. "Europe" (pp. 68–69); "Asia" (pp. 90–91): "A commonly accepted division between Asia and E ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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]   |
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Bird Migration
Bird migration is the regular seasonal movement, often north and south along a flyway, between breeding and wintering grounds. Many species of bird migrate. Migration carries high costs in predation and mortality, including from hunting by humans, and is driven primarily by the availability of food. It occurs mainly in the northern hemisphere, where birds are funneled onto specific routes by natural barriers such as the Mediterranean Sea or the Caribbean Sea. Migration of species such as storks, turtle doves, and swallows was recorded as many as 3,000 years ago by Ancient Greek authors, including Homer and Aristotle, and in the Book of Job. More recently, Johannes Leche began recording dates of arrivals of spring migrants in Finland in 1749, and modern scientific studies have used techniques including bird ringing and satellite tracking to trace migrants. Threats to migratory birds have grown with habitat destruction, especially of stopover and wintering sites, as wel ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Disassortative Mating
Disassortative mating (also known as negative assortative mating or heterogamy) is a mating pattern in which individuals with dissimilar phenotypes mate with one another more frequently than would be expected under random mating. Disassortative mating reduces the mean genetic similarities within the population and produces a greater number of heterozygotes. The pattern is character specific, but does not affect allele frequencies. This nonrandom mating pattern will result in deviation from the Hardy-Weinberg principle (which states that genotype frequencies in a population will remain constant from generation to generation in the absence of other evolutionary influences, such as "mate choice" in this case). Disassortative mating is different from outbreeding, which refers to mating patterns in relation to genotypes rather than phenotypes. Due to homotypic preference (bias toward the same type), assortative mating occurs more frequently then disassortative mating. This is due to th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sex-determination System
A sex-determination system is a biological system that determines the development of sexual characteristics in an organism. Most organisms that create their offspring using sexual reproduction have two sexes. In some species there are hermaphrodites. There are also some species that are only one sex due to parthenogenesis, the act of a female reproducing without fertilization. In some species, sex determination is genetic: males and females have different alleles or even different genes that specify their sexual morphology. In animals this is often accompanied by chromosomal differences, generally through combinations of XY, ZW, XO, ZO chromosomes, or haplodiploidy. The sexual differentiation is generally triggered by a main gene (a "sex locus"), with a multitude of other genes following in a domino effect. In other cases, sex of a fetus is determined by environmental variables (such as temperature). The details of some sex-determination systems are not yet fully underst ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Supergene
A supergene is a chromosomal region encompassing multiple neighboring genes that are inherited together because of close genetic linkage, i.e. much less recombination than would normally be expected. This mode of inheritance can be due to genomic rearrangements between supergene variants. A supergene region can contain few, functionally related genes that clearly contribute to a shared phenotype. Phenotypes encoded by supergenes Supergenes have cis-effects due to multiple loci (which may be within a gene, or within a single gene's regulatory region), and tight linkage. They are classically polymorphic, whereby different supergene variants code for different phenotypes. Classic supergenes include many sex chromosomes, the ''Primula'' heterostyly locus, which controls "pin" and " thrum" types, and the locus controlling Batesian mimetic polymorphism in ''Papilio memnon'' butterflies. Recently discovered supergenes are responsible complex phenotypes including color-morphs in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |