Birds overview
Birds are beautiful gift of nature to us. We human beings have respected birds for thousand of years as it is evident from drawings of birds on the walls of southern France, in Egyptian and American culture and biblical writings. We have also tried to reach the sky and experience soaring like birds, which starts from the early drawings of flying machines to Orville Wright’s first powered successful flight on 17 December 1903. Birds are basically derived from the archosaur lineage of ancient reptiles. Their similarities are so obvious that they are known as “glorified reptiles”. But according to Cladistic approach bird’s overview can be thought of as modern dinosaurs.
Scientifically birds are known as “Aves”, which is derived from a Latin word avis meaning bird. According to zoologist currently 9,100 species of living birds are present on earth. The basic characteristics relating birds to flight are, fore appendages modified as wings and feathers, acute senses, light hollow bones with numerous air spaces, their vertebral column modified for flight and high metabolic rate. Modern bird posses horny bill lacking teeth. One of the unique characteristic of birds is that their eyes are comparatively larger than their body size as compared to the other animals because they need plenty of long distance focusing. They posses double focusing mechanism.
If we take the bird’s overview according to the size, they range from the smallest thumb sized humming bird to the huge size ostrich, a bird which cannot fly because of its heavy weight, but keeps all other characteristics. They are egg laying animals and the number of eggs laid at a time varies from specie to specie. One of the catchiest living traits of birds is migration and navigation. Most birds’ migration is annual having nesting in northern and wintering grounds in south. They migrate because of climatic and physiological conditions. Some birds take long nonstop journeys so they may store 50% fats in their bodies, some take flexible approach and stop regularly to feed and rest.
God has blessed birds with different characteristics and beauties, like some birds as parrots, peacock have beautiful colors and sweet voices while others are ferocious and wild like eagle and vulture. Some are peace loving like penguin while others are very loving and innocent like swans and ducks. Even this beautiful creature can teach us lots of things in our daily life as it models its life properly, punctual and hard working which improves birds overview.
