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| Bird Trivia |
| Getting to the Heart of the Matter |
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| Generally speaking the smaller the bird, the bigger its heart in proportion to its body size. The heart of the tinamou, a large, sluggish forest fowl of South America, is just .21% of its body weight. |
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| A hummingbird, however, which has a ferocious metabolism and a circulatory system to match, has a heart that makes up 2.4 % of its mass - proportionally more than ten times greater than the tinamou's. The hummer's heart rate is also much faster. A blue-throated hummingbird, in active flight around its Southwestern habitat, has a pulse rate of nearly 1,200 beats per minute. A turkey';s heart barely exceeds 90. As a comparison here are a few other common species heart rates: |
| American crow - 342 |
Domestic turkey - 93 |
| American robin - 570 |
European starling - 460 |
| Black-capped chickadee - 500 |
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| (Taken from The Birder's Miscellany: A Fascinating Collection of Facts, Figures and Folklore from the World of Birds by Scott Weidensaul, Fireside Books, 1991.) |
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Where have all the Birdies Gone? |
| In ancient times, people had strange ideas about the seasonal appearance and disappearance of some birds. |
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Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, believed that birds didn’t go anywhere, but simply changed their identity with another species. For instance, he said that as summer approached, the European Robin become a European Redstart. This explained why the redstart appeared and the robin disappeared. |
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Some naturalists thought that only large birds could migrate across oceans. They believed that smaller birds hitchhiked on the backs of others. A belief that still persists with some people. |
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In 1703, an Englishman wrote that birds flew to the moon over a period of 60 days and then went into hibernation. |
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| More Bird Trivia |
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There are more birds per square foot outdoors in August than at any other time of the year in North America. |
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87% of all the individual birds in North America at any given time are blackbirds, grackles, starlings and cowbirds. |
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There is no blue pigment in a bluejay’s feathers. They are blue because tiny transparent particles in the feather bounce blue light at the on-looker while screening out other wavelengths of light. |
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Most incubating birds have a ‘brood patch’ where the feathers have been shed to allow warmth to pass directly from the bird to the eggs. |
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Adult cedar waxwings feed on small fruit and berries, but feed their nestlings nothing but insects. |
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