Wherever people live in Australia, magpies tend to be found there, too. These very familiar birds are one of our most loved and admired wild birds. Yet, during the breeding season, many magpies become extremely aggressive toward people, sometimes causing serious injury or distress, especially to children. The fact that this is a very common, well loved yet sometimes dangerous neighbor makes solving the magpie-human conflict very complicated. This book provides, for the first time, a comprehensive guide to everything that is known about this bird, why it attacks, and what we can do about it.
"All level 5 Readers contain pre-reading activities to set the purpose for reading and post-reading activities to assist in comprehension and vocabulary development."--Back cover.
The Australian magpie is one of our nation’s most popular and iconic birds. It is loved for its impressive vocal abilities, propensity to play, excellent parenting and willingness to form enduring friendships with people. Written by award-winning author Gisela Kaplan, a leading authority on animal behaviour and Australian birds, this second edition of Australian Magpie is a thoroughly updated and substantially expanded account of the behaviour of these birds. With new chapters on classification, cognition and caring for young, it reveals the extraordinary capabilities of the magpie, including its complex social behaviour. The author, who has devoted more than 20 years to studying and interacting with magpies, brings together the latest research on the magpie’s biology and behaviour, along with information on the origin of magpies, their development and health not published previously. This fascinating book has a wide appeal to bird lovers, amateur ornithologists and naturalists, as well as those with a scientific or professional interest in avian behaviour and ecology and those interested in the importance of native birds to the environment.
Whether you’re looking to hit the open road, scream down the side of a mountain, or simply take the kids out for a ride, Cycling For Dummies, UK Edition, covers all your needs. Topics include choosing the right bike and accessories, staying safe — around town and on the trails — training to improve speed and endurance, making adjustments and repairs, and much more (including answering the basic questions you may be too embarrassed to ask in your local shop). Cycling For Dummies, UK Edition is the perfect place to start when you want to take up this great sport.
Birds are among the most extensively studied of all animal groups. Hundreds of academic journals and thousands of scientists are devoted to bird research, while amateur enthusiasts (called birdwatchers or, more commonly, birders) probably number in the millions. Birds are categorised as a biological class, Aves. The earliest known species of this class is Archaeopteryx lithographica, from the Late Jurassic period. According to the most recent consensus, Aves and a sister group, the order Crocodilia, together form a group of unnamed rank, the Archosauria. Phylogenetically, Aves is usually defined as all descendants of the most recent common ancestor of modern birds (or of a specific modern bird species like Passer domesticus), and Archaeopteryx. Modern phylogenies place birds in the dinosaur clade Theropoda. Modern birds are divided into two superorders, the Paleognathae (mostly flightless birds like ostriches), and the wildly diverse Neognathae, containing all other birds.
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Genius of Birds, a radical investigation into the bird way of being, and the recent scientific research that is dramatically shifting our understanding of birds -- how they live and how they think. “There is the mammal way and there is the bird way.” But the bird way is much more than a unique pattern of brain wiring, and lately, scientists have taken a new look at bird behaviors they have, for years, dismissed as anomalies or mysteries –– What they are finding is upending the traditional view of how birds conduct their lives, how they communicate, forage, court, breed, survive. They are also revealing the remarkable intelligence underlying these activities, abilities we once considered uniquely our own: deception, manipulation, cheating, kidnapping, infanticide, but also ingenious communication between species, cooperation, collaboration, altruism, culture, and play. Some of these extraordinary behaviors are biological conundrums that seem to push the edges of, well, birdness: a mother bird that kills her own infant sons, and another that selflessly tends to the young of other birds as if they were her own; a bird that collaborates in an extraordinary way with one species—ours—but parasitizes another in gruesome fashion; birds that give gifts and birds that steal; birds that dance or drum, that paint their creations or paint themselves; birds that build walls of sound to keep out intruders and birds that summon playmates with a special call—and may hold the secret to our own penchant for playfulness and the evolution of laughter. Drawing on personal observations, the latest science, and her bird-related travel around the world, from the tropical rainforests of eastern Australia and the remote woodlands of northern Japan, to the rolling hills of lower Austria and the islands of Alaska’s Kachemak Bay, Jennifer Ackerman shows there is clearly no single bird way of being. In every respect, in plumage, form, song, flight, lifestyle, niche, and behavior, birds vary. It is what we love about them. As E.O Wilson once said, when you have seen one bird, you have not seen them all.
The true story of the Last Legs Comedy Tour, four stand-up comedians cycling around Australia raising money for cancer research. "" Can't believe you're still alive. It was as funny as it was feral. One adventure after another - the way life should be!""
A Watership Down of a tale for junior readers based around New Zealand's native bird, the tui. Sil: adolescent tui and rising star. His startling song compositions arouse admiration and jealousy among his age-mates as he prepares for the annual competitions. Bron: fearless, daredevil flier, a tomboy who tells it like it is. She's Sil's best friend but Sil can see that handsome Tor is luring her away. Tor, Bek, Jeb, Pip, Mem, Bel: the very existence of the whole tui clan who sing in the dawn, hang off flax bushes, build nests and play aerial games of 'floop' is under threat. Magpies: an outcast gang beginning a campaign of devastation and annihilation in the valley. Across the harbour at the competitions, Sil stuns his audience with his singing but, blinded by pride, he makes a fatal mistake. Can he rise from disgrace to help the tuis strike back?
Examining globally invasive alien birds, the first part of this book provides an account of 32 global avian invasive species (as listed by the Invasive Species Specialist Group, ISSG). It acts as a one stop reference volume; it assesses current invasive status for each bird species, including details of physical description, diet, introduction and invasion pathways, breeding behaviour, natural habitat. It also looks at the environmental impact of each species, as well as current and future control methods. Full colour photographs assist with species identification and global distribution maps give a visual representation of the current known distributions of these species. The second part of the book discusses the biogeographical aspects of avian invasions, highlighting current and emerging invasive species across different regions of the world. The third section considers the impact of invasive species on native communities, problems associated with invasive bird management and the use of citizen science in the study of invasive birds.
