Way to Wisdom: Interesting facts about birds

I have gone through couple of links when I was searching for interesting facts about birds. I thought it would be nice to summarize my readings regarding birds. In this post, I would like to discuss different kinds of them, how do they fly and how they talk.

What is bird?

Bird is a class of vertebrates. They are warm-blooded and lay eggs. Their bodies are covered with feathers and they have wings, the function of which is usually flight. Their bones are hollow. This makes them lighter and allows many of them to fly.

Because birds keep a high body temperature, they use lots of energy. So, they need to eat a lot of food compared with their weight.

How many different kinds of birds are there?

As we know there are several types of them. As per the sources there are over 10,000 species of birds in the world. About 925 have been seen in the U.S. and Canada. About 1,000 have been seen in Europe. By far the largest concentration of bird species are found in South America. Over 3,200 species have been seen there. In Colombia, Bolivia and Peru the species count for each country tops 1,700.

Here are some very general figures for the species count for each continent:

3,200 South America
2,900 Asia
2,300 Africa
2,000 North America (from Panama north + Caribbean)
1,700 Australia + surrounding islands
1,000 Europe
65 Antarctica

Counting subspecies there are about 30000 different types.

How do they fly?

Immediately one can get this interesting question. If a bird is just gliding (or "soaring"), that is, not flapping its wings, it flies in pretty much the same way that an airplane flies. The wings push air down, so by Newton's third law the air must push them up. Partly, the push comes from the angle the wings are held at and partly from the curvature of the wings. The air travels faster above the bird's wing than it does below, and this makes the pressure lower above the wing.

Birds are more complicated than that, and so are airplanes. Some energy source is required to overcome the unavoidable drag of pushing through the air, to lift the bird or airplane up to flying height, and to give the bird or airplane kinetic energy. Airplanes use propellers or jet engines. Birds use strong muscles in their breasts to flap their wings. In addition, bird wings are hinged, while airplane wings are rigid and fixed. The bird uses its strong muscles to push its wings downwards, pushing air downwards, generating lift, and, if the wings are angled properly, also thrust. The big problem then becomes not pushing air back upwards when the bird moves its wings up for the return stroke.

This is accomplished with the hinged wings. On the down stroke, the wing is fully extended, offering its full surface area for pushing air downwards. On the upstroke, the wing folds up, presenting less area. It is a lot like rowing with oars. The oar pushes the water behind the boat on the power stroke, but must be removed from the water and, ideally, turned 90 degrees so it does not push air or water forwards on the return stroke.

Birds have a lot of adaptations for flight. Their bones are hollow and light, but strong, They have light feathers which catch the air. They can fold up their wings when they are not in use. Their lungs are extra efficient at extracting oxygen from the air (we huff and puff when running, and flying is much harder!). They eat huge amounts of high-energy food, relative to their body weight.

To get a very descriptive knowledge about bird and its aerodynamics click here.

How do parrots talk?

To get a better knowledge about the science of bird vocalization click here.

Types of Talking Parrots