Curated playlist
Birds described in 1758
- ChickenChickens were apparently first kept for fighting, not for food. Eggs and meat came later.
- MallardThe deep quack people imitate as a duck sound belongs to the female mallard.
- Common quailEating a common quail can sometimes put you in the hospital. If it ate certain plants, its flesh can turn toxic.
- Eurasian eagle-owlAn owl once stopped a Finland-Belgium football match for six minutes.
- Canada gooseThe largest wild goose ever recorded was a male Canada goose. It weighed 10.9 kilograms and had a wingspan of 2.24 metres. That bird came from the giant subspecies, whose males rarely exceed 8 kilograms. This documentary follows a bird…
- Golden eagleThe golden eagle spends most of the day sitting still. In Idaho, adult males perched for an average of 78% of the day.
- Common ravenA piece of meat hangs from a perch on a length of string. Five common ravens were given this puzzle in an experiment on insight and problem-solving. Four of them solved it. To do so, a bird had to stand on the perch, pull the string up a…
- House sparrowThe house sparrow, a bird about 16 cm long, has been recorded breeding in an English coal mine 640 m below ground. It has also been seen feeding at night on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Few wild animals turn up in…
- European turtle doveThe European turtle dove has lost 93% of its United Kingdom numbers since 1994. Its purr once stood for devoted love.
- Blue jayThe blue jay, Cyanocitta cristata, produced a surprise in 2023. Near San Antonio, Texas, a hybrid of a male blue jay and a female green jay was found and photographed. The green jay is Cyanocorax luxuosus. The offspring was given the…
- OspreyThe osprey, Pandion haliaetus, eats almost nothing except fish. Fish account for 99 percent of its diet. Older names capture the habit: sea hawk, river hawk and fish hawk. This large daytime bird of prey lives on every continent except…
- Great aukThe great auk, a flightless seabird of the North Atlantic, lost its last confirmed pair on the 3rd of June 1844. The two birds were on Eldey, a rocky island off the coast of Iceland. They were incubating an egg, so their deaths also ended…
- DodoThe dodo, Raphus cucullatus, was a flightless bird found nowhere on Earth except Mauritius, an island east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Today it stands as a shorthand for extinction and obsolescence. Millions of readers first met it…