Fowl language: Amazonian bird's mating call noisiest in world

White bellbird’s call reaches same volume as pneumatic drill during courtship ritual

A bird in the Amazon has shattered the record for the loudest call to be recorded, reaching the same volume as a pneumatic drill.

The white bellbird, which lives in the mountains of the north-eastern Amazon, was recorded at 125 decibels (dB), three times louder than the next bird in the pecking order, the screaming piha.

Mario Cohn-Haft, an ornithologist at the National Institute of Amazonian Research and the author of a paper published in the journal Current Biology, captured a male white bellbird specimen in the Brazilian state of Roraima in 2017.

It was about 30cm (12in) long from beak to tail, said Cohn-Haft. He dissected it in the field, removing the skin and some organs to prepare it to be added to his collection. Something caught his eye under the bird’s pure white feathers: a muscular, sculpted chest. “It had a six pack,” he said, with tissue five times thicker than that of most birds its size.

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SCIENTISTS IN THE AMAZON “SENTINEL” BIRDS WARN NEIGHBORS OF THE DANGER

Jan Hartman | May 25, 2018 | Science | No Comments

Experts have found that tropical forests some species of birds help others to avoid falling into the clutches of predators at settlement in less safe areas.

Usually birds of the same species flock together, but on Amazon reign other orders, and there can be dozens of varieties of birds of different colors and sizes. While such groups are quite stable. Scientists have long been trying to determine the reasons for this phenomenon, and biologists at the University of California in San Francisco succeeded.

Experts have determined that the unusual flocks of tropical forests have a special “sentinel”. Usually in the role of “guard” are the grey, shrubby esperito. They warn others of danger, for example, the appearance of hawks or falcons. Scientists have found that “sentinel” played an important role in the pack. After catching biologists more of their neighbors began to move in densely populated and safer areas.

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Scientists Discover Amazon’s Golden-Crowned Manakin To Be Rare Evolved Hybrids

27 December 2017, 6:15 am EST By Charmagne Nojas Tech Times

The golden-crowned manakin was found by scientists to be an “incredibly rare” hybrid after analyzing its DNA. What makes this bird from the Amazon Rainforest so special? ( Dysmorodrepanis | Wikimedia Commons )

After more than 50 years of studying the golden-crowned manakin, scientists have finally identified it to be an extremely rare hybrid that evolved to form its own distinct species.

Discovery of the golden-crowned manakin was made by Brazilian scientists Helmut Sick and Raimundo Costa in July 1957. They collected three adult males from a small tributary to the left of the upper Rio Cururu-ri located east of the Brazilian Amazon.

The holotype of the species is kept at the Museu Nacional Rio de Janeiro, while two specimens were sent to the American Museum of the National History and Museum für Naturkunde Alexander Humboldt.

Confusion Clouds Study Of Rare Amazon Bird Species

The golden-crowned manakin was formerly known as pipra. It was later changed to Lepidothrix vilasboasi, a name that pays tribute to the Villas-Boas brothers. The siblings were well-regarded activists known for their work with indigenous peoples of Brazil.

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People are worried that Amazon's drone tests are going to severely disrupt rare owls

Sam Shead

Aug. 8, 2016, 1:52 PM

A group of campaigners is concerned that Amazon drone tests will severely unsettle owls and other rare birds in the UK.

Amazon is quietly testing its 25kg delivery drones, which can fly at speeds of up to 50mph, at a historical site in the Cambridgeshire countryside, according to multiple reports.

The company's unmanned aerial vehicles are being flown over a 2,000-year-old road just outside Balsham, east of Cambridge, the BBC reported last week. The site — known as the Roman Road and Fleam Dyke trail — runs through an area that's home to a number of rare birds, according to The Mirror, including long-eared owls, turtle doves, buzzards, and hawks.

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Camera Traps Catch Rare Amazon Bird Following Peccaries

By Jeremy Hance, news.mongabay.com | April 26, 2015

Although a large, attractive bird found across Latin America, scientists know almost nothing about the rufous-vented ground cuckoo (Neomorphus geoffroyi). Renzo Piana, the director of science and research with the Amazon Conservation Association, described the bird as “rare,” “cryptic,” “mainly solitary,” and “mostly silent”—much of which explains why so little is known about it. But camera traps are helping to reveal more about this, and thousands of other little known species. 

Piana and colleagues recently documented never-before-seen behavior of the rufous-vented ground cuckoo on camera trap in the Peruvian Amazon. A series of photos shows the cuckoo boldly following a group of collared peccaries (Pecari tajacu). 

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Hidden in plain sight: Amazonian bird chick mimics toxic caterpillar to avoid being eaten

Date:

February 23, 2015

Source:

University of Chicago Press Journals

In a study published in the January 2015 issue of The American Naturalist, Gustavo A. Londoño, Duván Garcia, and Manuel Sánchez Martínez report a novel nesting strategy observed in a tropical lowland bird that inhabits an area with very high losses to nest predators.

How can tropical birds cope with the high rates of nest predation that are typical in most tropical habitats? Are there nesting strategies that allow tropical birds to escape predators such as birds, mammals, and snakes that regularly eat eggs and nestlings?

During the fall of 2012, while working on a long-term avian ecological study, the researchers discovered the second nest ever described for the cinereous mourner (Laniocera hypopyrra) at Pantiacolla Lodge in the upper Madre de Dios River in southeastern Peru. They observed that upon hatching, the chicks had downy feathers with long orange barbs with white tips, which was very different from any other nestling they had observed in the area. The peculiar downy feathers attracted their attention, but the nestling behavior provided a more important cue. While researchers were collecting morphological measurements, the nestling started moving its head very slowly from side to side in a way typical of many hairy caterpillars. While working in the area, the investigators found a poisonous caterpillar with similar size and hair coloration as the nestling. Therefore, the researchers suggest that this is an example of Batesian mimicry in which the nestling tricks predators into thinking that it is a toxic, spiny caterpillar rather than a highly edible nestling.

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Project Tracks Ospreys From N.H. To The Amazon

By EDITOR

Ospreys, also called sea hawks or fish eagles, are found all over the world. But when the temperature drops, the birds head for the tropics.

For juveniles, that first migration is a crucible that only 25 to 40 percent survive.

From the Here & Now Contributors Network, Sam Evans-Brown of New Hampshire Public Radio brings this story of a project that tracks ospreys to learn about the adventures they have between their departure in the fall and return in the spring.

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Has Amazon underestimated our feathered friends? Birds filmed attacking drone

Ah, the animal kingdom. Blood, sweat and tears are spilled in the name of territory – and when it comes to airspace it’s no different.

In what could be a bit of an annoyance for the logistics department at Amazon, a radio-controlled pilotless drone filmed itself being attacked by birds.

YouTube user Buddhanz1 uploaded the footage, telling viewers: ‘I must have annoyed a group of birds, they teamed up & started dive bombing my radio controlled phantom drone from all directions.

‘I think they knocked the battery connector loose as I lost control & had a rough landing.’

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Fifteen New Species of Amazonian Birds

Aug. 28, 2013 — An international team of researchers coordinated by ornithologist Bret Whitney of the LSU Museum of Natural Science, or LSUMNS, recently published 15 species of birds previously unknown to science. The formal description of these birds has been printed in a special volume of the "Handbook of the Birds of the World" series. Not since 1871 have so many new species of birds been introduced under a single cover.

"Birds are, far and away, the best-known group of vertebrates, so describing a large number of uncataloged species of birds in this day and age is unexpected, to say the least," said Whitney. "But what's so exciting about this presentation of 15 new species from the Amazon all at once is, first, highlighting how little we really know about species diversity in Amazonia, and second, showing how technological advances have given us new toolsets for discovering and comparing naturally occurring, cohesive ('monophyletic') populations with other, closely related populations."

Amazonia is home to far more species of birds -- approximately 1,300 -- and more species per unit area, than any other biome. Technological advances such as satellite imagery, digital recordings of vocalizations, DNA analysis and high-powered computation power have taken the age of discovery to the next level, and were key ingredients in the discovery of these new species. However, such discoveries still depend on exploration of remote areas of the Amazon rainforest, just as they did a century ago, and this sort of fieldwork has been carried out by the LSUMNS every year since the early 1960s.

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Amazonian Treasure Trove Yields 15 New Bird Species

· BY NADIA DRAKE

· 06.05.13

· 6:30 AM

The Amazon rainforest, a well-known epicenter of biodiversity, has offered up another trove of riches. The treasure takes the form of 15 newly described bird species. Some are tiny. One has a long, curved bill. Another is super fluffy. All live in the southern Amazon, an area known as the “arc of deforestation.”

It’s been 140 years since as many new Brazilian bird species were described at one time. In 1871, 40 new species were described by Austrian August von Pelzeln in Zur Ornithologie Brasiliens.

Discovered mostly within the last five years, in southern swaths of forest, many of the birds live near rivers. Eleven can only be found in Brazil; four of the species have also been seen in Peru and Bolivia. Most are Passeriformes, belonging to an order that includes ravens, sparrows, and finches.

They were spotted on various expeditions led by ornithologist Luis Silveira, of the University of Sao Paolo, and his students, as well as collaborators from three additional institutions. Together, they noticed that these strange new birds didn’t quite fit in.

“Describing new species is not a trivial task,” Silveira said. Many sang different songs, or had different genetic sequences than previously known birds. “We considered a bird as a new species when at least two of the three criteria — plumage, voice, and genetics — were consistently different from some previously known and closely related, already described species.”

Crooked beak woodcreeper

Silveira and his colleagues describe the species in a special volume of the Handbook of Birds of the World, which will be published in early summer. Here, we have photos of seven new species; others have only been illustrated.

More information, plus a map, can be found in this story published on the website G1, and this PDF (in Portuguese).

Participating institutions also include Institute Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazonia, Louisiana State University, and Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/06/new-amazonian-birds/?pid=7043a