Tuesday, February 15, 2011

The Black-bellied Whistling Duck

The Black-bellied Whistling Duck stands about 20-22 inches in height, is easily domesticated and lays from 12- 16 white eggs in a hollow a tree, a nesting bow or on the ground.
The Black-bellied Whistling Ducks breed in Arizona, but they live mostly in Texas.
They feed in shallow water on tubers and other water vegetation.
Unlike most ducks, the Black-bellied Whistling Ducks are nocturnal. They feed and sleep during the day.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

The Three Kingfishers.

There are three different kinds of Kingfishers. The Ringed, the Green, and the Belted Kingfishers.
The Ringed and the Belted are the same size; thirteen inches but the Green is eight inches.
The belted lays five to eight eggs, the Ringed lays five to seven and the Green lays four to six, but they all lay their eggs in holes they have burrowed into the sand.

(These are all pictures of the Belted Kingfisher.)

The Ringed and the Green Kingfishers lives in the Southern most tip of Texas, but the Belted lives all over the USA including Alaska and then up into most of Canada.
The Green and the Ringed Kingfishers eat mostly fish but the Belted eats crab, crayfish, salamanders, lizards, mice and insects. The Kingfisher tosses it's catch in to the air so that it will go straight down it's throat.
And those are the Kingfishers.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Fairy Tern

O goody! Thanks to my wonderful dad, I have lots of pictures of the Fairy Tern!

The Fairy Tern is a small delicate tropical bird and is related somehow to the gulls. I think they are by far the prettiest of the Terns. The Tern eats insects and even some small fish.
Their strangest habit is how they lay their eggs. For some odd reason, GOD gave them the longing to lay their egg in the most precarious spot they can find. It can on the edge of a cliff or balance in the fork of a tree.
When the chick hatches, it has claws on its feet to grab on to where it is sitting. It needs these because it is most likely that the chick is on the edge of a cliff!
I think it amazing how God gives each creature different features which help it to survive where it lives.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Tawny Frogmouth

This is really not a picture of a owl, but of the Tawny Frogmouth.
There are many different kinds of Frogmouths, and they live in the southern part of Asia, China and Australia.
Frogmouths sleep during the day and hunt insects at night.
They have awesome camouflage. The Frogmouth blends in to the tree that it is sitting on when it puts it's feathers down.
The Tawny Frogmouth get's it's name from it's big mouth that looks like a frog's mouth. The inside of it's mouth is a yellowish color, and it uses it to scoop up insects.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Hummingbirds

(I'm not really sure what kind of Hummingbird this is.)

The Hummingbird is a really cool little bird. It can do a lot of stuff other birds can't, like fly in all directions and hover. Its wings can beat up to 200 times a second. That is really fast.
For most birds the male and female stay together to raise the babies, not so with Hummingbirds. The male usually has several mates all over the place.
Each mother lays up to 2 white eggs the size of jelly beans in a cup like nest.
Pretty cool!
I don't know how many different kinds of Hummingbirds there are, so I'll have to see.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Eggs

When you crack a egg, you usually see a bubble like thing at one end. This contains air for the chick inside when it is ready to breath air.
How does the chick get the pocket open when it needs the air? Well GOD gave it a thing called a EGG TOOTH. When the chick is ready to hatch and needs air it will squirms around, and its sharp little tooth pokes the air bag allowing the chick to breathe.
Then it's ready to come out, it just keeps chipping away at the egg until it breaks forth.