Bird feats

Birds can be found all over the planet.

There are over 10,000 species of birds.

They are spectacularly diverse.

They vary in size, from an ostrich which can reach 9 feet in height,

to a humming bird which can fit comfortably in the palm of our hand.

They can have massive bill like the pelican or tiny like the weebills.

Some birds like the painted bunting in Texas, Gould's sunbird in South Asia,

and the Rainbow lorikeet in Australia, are gaudier than any flower.

Others come in infinite shades of plain brown.

Birds are diverse behaviourally.

Some are highly social and others are not.

Flamingo's gather in flocks of millions.

Parakeet build whole parakeet cities, out of sticks.

Dippers walk alone and under water, on the beds of mountain streams.

An Albatross may glide on its ten feet in span, 500 miles away from any other Albatross.

Roadrunners team up to kill rattlesnakes.

One bird distract the snake while others sneak up behind it.

Bee-eaters eat bees.

Leaf-tossers toss leaves.

Thick billed murres can dive underwater to a depth of 700 feet.

Peregrine falcons can dive through the air at 240 miles per hour.

A wren-like rush bird can spend its entire life, beside one acre pond.

A cerulean warbler may migrate from New Jersey to Peru, and find its way back,

to the same tree it nested the year before.

Cockatoos can solve puzzles that would challenge a chimpanzee.

Crows do aerial summersault.

Many birds like nightingales sing.

Chickadees have a complex language for communicating, -not only with each other-,

but also to every other bird in the neighbourhood.

Some lyrebirds in eastern Australia, sing a tune there ancestors may have learnt,

from a settler's flute a century ago.

Birds do what we all wish to do, that is to fly.

Eagles effortlessly ride thermals.

Humming birds can hover in mid air.

The flights path of birds bind the planet together, like hundred billion filaments,

tree to tree and continent to continent.

After breeding a European swift will stay aloft for merely a year, 

flying to sub-Saharan Africa and back,

eating, moulting and sleeping on the wing, without landing once.

An young albatross can spend 10 years roving the open ocean, 

before they first return to land to breed.

A bar tailed godwit has been tracked flying more than 7000 miles, 

from Alaska to New zealand .

A humming bird can burn one third its body weight, 

to cross the Gulf of Mexico.

One long live bird code named B95 for the tag on its leg,

has flown more miles than the distance from the Earth to the moon.

There is one critical activity that birds cannot do.

They cannot master the environment, like human beings have done.

Human beings are changing the planet, its surface, its climate and its ocean.

The future of most bird species depends on our commitment to preserve them.

Birds have been around for 150 million years more than we have been in the planet.

But now their fate lies in our hands.