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Zino's Petrel
Zino's petrel (''Pterodroma madeira'') or the freira, is a species of small seabird in the gadfly petrel genus, endemic to the island of Madeira. This long-winged petrel has a grey back and wings, with a dark "W" marking across the wings, and a grey upper tail. The undersides of the wings are blackish apart from a triangle of white at the front edge near the body, and the belly is white with grey flanks. It is very similar in appearance to the slightly larger Fea's petrel, and separating these two Macaronesian species at sea is very challenging. It was formerly considered to be a subspecies of the soft-plumaged petrel, ''P. mollis'', but they are not closely related, and Zino's was raised to the status of a species because of differences in morphology, calls, breeding behaviour and mitochondrial DNA. It is Europe's most endangered seabird, with breeding areas restricted to a few ledges high in the central mountains of Madeira. Zino's petrel nests in burrows which are visited only ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gregory Mathews
Gregory Macalister Mathews Order of the British Empire, CBE FRSE FZS FLS (10 September 1876 – 27 March 1949) was an Australian-born amateur ornithologist who spent most of his later life in England. Life He was born in Biamble, New South Wales, Biamble in New South Wales the son of Robert H. Mathews. He was educated at The King's School, Parramatta. Mathews made his fortune in mining shares, and moved to England in 1902. In 1910 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were William Eagle Clarke, Ramsay Heatley Traquair, John Alexander Harvie-Brown and William Evans (naturalist), William Evans. Ornithology Mathews was a controversial figure in Australian ornithology. He was responsible for bringing trinomial nomenclature into local taxonomy, however he was regarded as an extreme splitter. He recognised large numbers of subspecies on scant evidence and few notes. The extinct Lord Howe Pigeon was described by Mathews in 1915, using a painting as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Desertas Islands
The Desertas Islands ( pt, Ilhas Desertas, , "Deserted Islands") are a small archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, part of the larger Portuguese Madeira Archipelago. The archipelago is located off the coast of Morocco. Deserta Grande Island is located about southeast of the eastern tip of Madeira Island, Ponta de São Lourenço. Geography The archipelago of the Desertas Islands is a chain of three long and narrow islands that stretch over a north/south distance of . The Desertas Islands, from north to south with approximate area figures, are: Administration Administratively, the islands are part of the Municipality of Santa Cruz in Madeira, and in the Santa Cruz civil parish. The islands are a designated Portuguese nature reserve. A licence is needed to land there. Natural history Though near the main island of Madeira, where the islands can often be seen on the horizon, the geology of the Ilhas Desertas is starkly different. The high, long, and rocky islands of the group ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Before Present
Before Present (BP) years, or "years before present", is a time scale used mainly in archaeology, geology and other scientific disciplines to specify when events occurred relative to the origin of practical radiocarbon dating in the 1950s. Because the "present" time changes, standard practice is to use 1 January 1950 as the commencement date (epoch) of the age scale. The abbreviation "BP" has been interpreted retrospectively as "Before Physics", which refers to the time before nuclear weapons testing artificially altered the proportion of the carbon isotopes in the atmosphere, which scientists must now account for. In a convention that is not always observed, many sources restrict the use of BP dates to those produced with radiocarbon dating; the alternative notation RCYBP stands for the explicit "radio carbon years before present". Usage The BP scale is sometimes used for dates established by means other than radiocarbon dating, such as stratigraphy. This usage differs from t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Curral Das Freiras
Curral das Freiras ("Pen of the Nuns") is a civil parish in the municipality of Câmara de Lobos in the Portuguese archipelago of Madeira. The population in 2011 was 2,001, in an area of 25.03 km². It is situated in the mountainous interior of the island. Being one of the more distant locations from the municipal seat of Câmara de Lobos, it is geographically isolated from other communities by the cliffs and peaks surrounding its central valley. A tunnel southwards in the direction of Funchal now offers safe access to the valley. History 
Initially, during its early settlement access to ...
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Paul Alexander Zino
Paul Alexander Zino (9 February 1916 – 3 March 2004) was a British businessman and ornithologist after whom Zino's petrel (''Pterodroma madeira'') is named. Zino was born in Madeira to a British family of land dealers and was educated in England at St. Edmund's College, Ware, and studied languages at Christ's College, Cambridge. In 1963, he took part in an expedition to the Savage Islands and was shocked to see the annual slaughter of shearwaters by fishermen. He then bought out all hunting rights to the islands to prevent hunting. Returning in 1967, Zino built a house, employing fishing folk who had been put out of hunting business, and began studying the breeding biology of Cory's shearwaters (''Calonectris borealis''). A coup in Portugal in 1974 encouraged the local fishermen to go on a rampage and destroy all the birds and Zino's research station. This vandalism prompted the government to take up protection of the birds and led to the inclusion of the islands in the M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ornithology
Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the "methodological study and consequent knowledge of birds with all that relates to them." Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and the aesthetic appeal of birds. It has also been an area with a large contribution made by amateurs in terms of time, resources, and financial support. Studies on birds have helped develop key concepts in biology including evolution, behaviour and ecology such as the definition of species, the process of speciation, instinct, learning, ecological niches, guilds, island biogeography, phylogeography, and conservation. While early ornithology was principally concerned with descriptions and distributions of species, ornithologists today seek answers to very specific questions, often using birds as models to test hypotheses or predictions based on theories. Most modern biological theories apply across life forms, and the number of scientists w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernst Johann Schmitz
Ernst Johann Schmitz (18 May 1845 – 3 December 1922) was a German naturalist, ornithologist, entomologist and Roman Catholic priest who settled in Madeira in the late 1870s, serving as vice chancellor of the Funchal Seminary from 1891 to 1898, and again from 1902 to 1908, becoming a naturalised Portuguese citizen. From 1898 to 1902 he worked in Belgium. In 1908 he moved to Palestine to manage the Hospice of St Paul in Jerusalem until 1914, subsequently working in similar positions in Tabgha, Damascus and finally Haifa where he died. Schmitz is known for his extensive natural history studies, both on the island of Madeira, where he described the Madeiran wood pigeon and Zino's petrel as well as studying the local ant Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of 22 ...s, and in P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louse
Louse ( : lice) is the common name for any member of the clade Phthiraptera, which contains nearly 5,000 species of wingless parasitic insects. Phthiraptera has variously been recognized as an order, infraorder, or a parvorder, as a result of developments in phylogenetic research. Lice are obligate parasites, living externally on warm-blooded hosts which include every species of bird and mammal, except for monotremes, pangolins, and bats. Lice are vectors of diseases such as typhus. Chewing lice live among the hairs or feathers of their host and feed on skin and debris, while sucking lice pierce the host's skin and feed on blood and other secretions. They usually spend their whole life on a single host, cementing their eggs, called nits, to hairs or feathers. The eggs hatch into nymphs, which moult three times before becoming fully grown, a process that takes about four weeks. Genetic evidence indicates that lice are a highly modified lineage of Psocoptera (now called Ps ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louse
Louse ( : lice) is the common name for any member of the clade Phthiraptera, which contains nearly 5,000 species of wingless parasitic insects. Phthiraptera has variously been recognized as an order, infraorder, or a parvorder, as a result of developments in phylogenetic research. Lice are obligate parasites, living externally on warm-blooded hosts which include every species of bird and mammal, except for monotremes, pangolins, and bats. Lice are vectors of diseases such as typhus. Chewing lice live among the hairs or feathers of their host and feed on skin and debris, while sucking lice pierce the host's skin and feed on blood and other secretions. They usually spend their whole life on a single host, cementing their eggs, called nits, to hairs or feathers. The eggs hatch into nymphs, which moult three times before becoming fully grown, a process that takes about four weeks. Genetic evidence indicates that lice are a highly modified lineage of Psocoptera (now called Ps ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Early Pleistocene
The Early Pleistocene is an unofficial sub-epoch in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, being the earliest division of the Pleistocene Epoch within the ongoing Quaternary Period. It is currently estimated to span the time between 2.580 ± 0.005 Ma (million years ago) and 0.773 ± 0.005 Ma. The term Early Pleistocene applies to both the Gelasian Age (to 1.800 ± 0.005 Ma) and the Calabrian Age. While the Gelasian and the Calabrian have officially been defined by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) to effectively constitute the Early Pleistocene, the succeeding Chibanian and Tarantian ages have yet to be ratified. These proposed ages are unofficially termed the Middle Pleistocene and Late Pleistocene The Late Pleistocene is an unofficial Age (geology), age in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, also known as Upper Pleistocene from a Stratigraphy, stratigraphic perspective. It is intended to be the fourth div ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Association Of European Rarities Committees
The Association of European Rarities Committees is a co-ordinating and liaison body for the bird rarities committees of Europe and other nearby countries. It was created in 1993 at a meeting of European rarities committees on the German island of Heligoland. The association's aims are as follows: * Encourage the founding of a national rarities committee in every European country * Provide help for national committees when requested to do so * Prepare and maintain a European bird list * Organize meetings of delegates of the national committees at approximately two-year intervals to maintain personal contact, information exchange and co-operation For a list of AERC members, see List of the member committees of the Association of European Rarities Committees {{Short description, none The following is a list of the European rarities committees and equivalent bodies which comprise the membership of the Association of European Rarities Committees (AERC): * The Avifaunistische Kommis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ibis (journal)
''Ibis'' (formerly ''The Ibis''), subtitled ''the International Journal of Avian Science'', is the peer-reviewed scientific journal of the British Ornithologists' Union. It was established in 1859. Topics covered include ecology, conservation, behaviour, palaeontology, and taxonomy of birds. The editor-in-chief is Dominic J. McCafferty (University of Glasgow). The journal is published by Wiley-Blackwell in print and online. It is available free on the internet for institutions in the developing world through the OARE scheme (Online Access to Research in the Environment). History In 1858 the British Ornithologists' Union (BOU) was formed. It was the first organization, devoted solely to the study of birds. One year later members of the BOU founded a (Quarterly) "Magazine of General Ornithology," entitled ''The Ibis''. Series and editors * Series 1 was published from 1859 to 1864, in six volumes and 24 issues. The first editor was Philip Lutley Sclater (1829–1913).Sep. ixv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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