Latest Flightless birds Stories
A 6-foot-tall South American bird, a rhea, destroyed several gardens in the English county of Worcestershire after escaping from a farm, the bird's owner says. Sharon Gould, who owns the large rhea bird, said the animal escaped Gouldise Poultry farm by scaling a 3-foot-high fence and soon was on a 7-hour spree of destruction in the area, The Daily Telegraph said Monday. We think he got spooked by a dog and jumped out of his pen and made off across the fields, Gould said of the recent escape...
U.S. researchers say Antarctica's emperor penguins could be extinct in parts of the region by the end of the 21st century. Biologists with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution say mathematical models suggest climate change and the resulting loss of sea ice could shrink the large penguin colony in Terre Adelie from 3,000 down to 400 breading pairs before the end of this century. Researchers said sea ice serves as a platform for penguins and as a grazing ground for krill, tiny crustaceans...
Immortalized by the blockbuster 2005 movie "March of the Penguins," the emperor penguin is in grave danger of becoming extinct before the end of the century, say Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers.Founded on predictions of melting sea ice from climate change numbers, the penguins will most likely see their figures dive by 95% by 2100. The five researchers, including WHOI biologists Stephanie Jenouvrier and Hal Caswell, took mathematical models to calculate the outcome the...
Keepers at a British zoo said a resident penguin with a fear of water has become a hit with curious park visitors.Staff at Blackbrook Zoological Park in Leek, England, said 11-year-old Kentucky the Humbolt penguin developed a phobia of water because he was born a runt and had problems with losing feathers too quickly, making the water too cold for his comfort, The Sun reported Thursday.It's a bit too cold for him in the water, so he spends all his time on the rocks just walking around, said...
Environmentalists say the British government is not doing enough to prevent the extinction of northern rockhopper penguins. The birds are vanishing from the British territory of St. Helena in the South Atlantic at a rate of 100 birds every day. The Times of London said about 2 million northern rockhopper penguins have disappeared from Tristan da Cunha and Gough Island over the past five decades. Ornithologists say they don't know why the birds are disappearing so quickly. The newspaper said...
A new Australian study finds that the removal of cats in 2000 caused "catastrophic" damage to Macquarie Island, a World Heritage Site that lies roughly halfway between Australia and Antarctica. The cats, which had served as a check on rabbits, were eradicated because they were also eating seabirds. Since then, rabbit numbers have risen sharply, and the animals have devastated the flora to the extent that the changes can even be seen from space.The Australian government now plans...
A spokeswoman for SeaWorld in San Diego said 30 penguins have been born at the park since early November. Spokeswoman Kelly Terry said the busy breeding season saw the births of seven macaroni penguins, six gentoo and 17 Adelies, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Thursday. Terry said some of the newborn birds are being raised by their parents in the Penguin Encounter exhibit at SeaWorld, while keepers are raising others by hand in a nursery.
A Rhode Island animal sanctuary said animal control officers are searching for an escaped emu that officials believe may have wandered into Massachusetts. Pamela Hood, 41, the emu's owner at the Foster, R.I., sanctuary, said the large flightless bird escaped along with his mate and their baby three weeks ago, but the female and youngster eventually returned on their own, WCVB-TV, Boston, reported Thursday. Hood said Elmer the Emu has evaded all capture attempts, despite being shot with three...
The Canadian owner of two escaped and mischievous emus in rural southwestern Ontario is hoping the big birds will return home as temperatures get colder.Big Bird 1 and 2, a male and female, jumped fences weeks ago at the farm of Sandy Soulliere outside Harrow, 25 miles southeast of Windsor, the Windsor Star reported.The female was recaptured but escaped again by jumping the fence, Soulliere said.She acquired the Australian three-toed flightless birds in September to save them from being...
Scientists have reported the discovery of a rare species of penguin that has been extinct for 500 years.The Waitaha penguin first arrived on the islands of New Zealand around 1250. However, when Polynesian settlers entered New Zealand, the penguins became extinct by 1500 due to hunting.Tests on the older bones "lead us to describe a new penguin species that became extinct only a few hundred years ago," the team reported in a paper in the biological research journal Proceedings of...
Latest Flightless birds Reference Libraries
Tristan da Cunha is an archipelago of five islands within the southern Atlantic Ocean, the biggest of which is the island of Tristan da Cunha itself and the second-biggest, the isolated bird haven Gough Island. It creates a portion of a wider territory named Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha which incorporates Saint Helena and Ascension Island. The main island, Tristan da Cunha, is fairly mountainous; the only flat area is the location of the capital, Edinburgh of the Seven...
The Antarctic Silverfish, (Pleuragramma antarcticum), is a member of the Notothenioidei family of fish. It is widely distributed around the Antarctic, but has largely disappeared from the western side of the northern Antarctic Peninsula based on 2010 research funded by the National Science Foundation. It is also found throughout the Southern Ocean. It grows to an average size of 6 inches, but has been known to reach lengths of up to 10 inches. It is usually pink with a silver tint, and...
The Tasmanian Native-hen (Gallinula mortierii) is a flightless rail, one of twelve species of birds common to the Australian island of Tasmania. Other common names include Narkie, Native-hen, and Waterhen. Locally, the bird is often referred to as a 'turbo chook'. This species was originally described in 1840 as Tribonyx mortierii. The name mortierii is in honor of Barthélemy Charles Joseph Dumortier. The Tasmanian Native-hen is a stocky flightless bird, typically between 17 and 20...
The Snowy Sheathbill (Chionis alba) also known as the Pale-faced Sheathbill, is a species of bird that is mostly terrestrial (ground dwelling). It is Antarctica's only permanently land-based bird species. It occurs in Antarctica, the Scotia Arc, the South Orkneys and South Georgia. The extreme southern populations migrate northward in the winter. The adult is about 15 to 16 inches long with a wingspan of 30 to 31.5 inches. It is pure white except for its bill and pink warty face. Its...
The Rhea is a large flightless bird native to South America. American Rheas live in grassland, savanna, scrub forest, chaparral, and even desert, but prefer areas with at least some tall vegetation. Darwin's Rhea lives in areas of open scrub in the grasslands of Patagonia and on the Andean plateau. It is classified as endangered throughout its range. The Common Rhea, Rhea americana, is not only the largest species of rhea, but also the largest bird in the Americas. Adults weigh up to 66...
