My Science School

Flamingos are wading birds that are easily recognised by their long, stilt-like legs, and striking pink feathers. The bright pink colour comes from beta carotene, a red-orange pigment that's found in the algae and the shrimp that flamingos eat in their wetland environment. This flame-like appearance also gave them their name. In Portuguese and Spanish flamengo means flame-coloured. The genus name Phoenicopterus comes from the Greek word phoinikopteros, which means, "blood red-feathered".

To feed, flamingos tramp the shallows, head down and bill underwater, stirring up organic matter with their webbed feet. They eat various types of food, including diatoms, algae, blue-green algae, and invertebrates such as minute mollusks and crustaceans. While the head swings from side to side, food is strained from the muddy water with small comblike structures inside the bill. The bird’s pink colour comes from its food, which contains carotenoid pigments. The diet of flamingos kept in zoos is sometimes supplemented with food colouring to keep their plumage from fading.

Flamingos constitute the family Phoenicopteridae, which is the only family in the order Phoenicopteriformes. They are sometimes classified in the order Ciconiiformes (herons and storks) but also show similarities to anseriforms (ducks and geese), charadriiforms (shorebirds), and pelecaniforms (pelicans and cormorants).

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Cormorants are large water birds that live in coastal areas or near lakes and rivers, and are usually black, brown, or greyish. Cormorant comes from two Latin words: corvus meaning crow and marinus meaning marine. So, cormorant is another way of saying sea-crow. It may have had its origin in Cornish mythology. In the Comish tale of Jack the Giant Killer, Cormoran is a sea giant. Though cormorants have little in common with crows except for their black plumage, the birds were erroneously thought to be related to ravens till the 16th Century.

Cormorants inhabit seacoasts, lakes, and some rivers. The nest may be made of seaweed and guano on a cliff or of sticks in a bush or tree. The two to four chalky eggs, pale blue when fresh, hatch in three to five weeks, and the young mature in the third year.

Cormorants have a long hook-tipped bill, patches of bare skin on the face, and a small gular sac (throat pouch). The largest and most widespread species is the common, or great, cormorant, Phalacrocorax carbo; white-cheeked, and up to 100 cm (40 inches) long, it breeds from eastern Canada to Iceland, across Eurasia to Australia and New Zealand, and in parts of Africa. It and the slightly smaller Japanese cormorant, P. capillatus, are the species trained for fishing. The most important guano producers are the Peruvian cormorant, or guanay, P. bougainvillii, and the Cape cormorant, P. capensis, of coastal southern Africa.

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The Bee Hummingbird or Helena hummingbird (Mellisuga helenae) is the world's smallest bird measuring 24 inches long and weighing 1.98 gms. It is close in size to a large bee and hence its name. The female builds a nest barely an inch across, and her egg measures 0.275 inches long, making it the smallest egg laid by any bird. In flight, the Bee Hummingbird's tiny wings beat 80 times a second, and during a courtship flight, up to 200 times per second!

The male has a green pileum and bright red throat, iridescent gorget with elongated lateral plumes, bluish upper parts, and the rest of the underparts mostly greyish white. Compared to other small hummingbirds, which often have a slender appearance, the bee hummingbird looks rounded and plump.

Female bee hummingbirds are bluish green with a pale gray underside. The tips of their tail feathers have white spots. During the mating season, males have a reddish to pink head, chin, and throat. The female lays only two eggs at a time, each about the size of a coffee bean.

The brilliant, iridescent colors of the bee hummingbird's feathers make the bird seem like a tiny jewel. The iridescence is not always noticeable, but depends on the viewing angle. The bird's slender, pointed bill is adapted for probing deep into flowers. The bee hummingbird feeds mainly on nectar, by moving its tongue rapidly in and out of its mouth. In the process of feeding, the bird picks up pollen on its bill and head. When it flies from flower to flower, it transfers the pollen. In this way, it plays an important role in plant reproduction. In one day, the bee hummingbird may visit 1,500 flowers.

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Cassowary is a member of a group of large, flightless birds called ratites, found in New Guinea and northeastern parts of Australia.

Its body is covered in black feathers. It has a blue head and neck. The upper parts of the legs are grey. It has a helmet-like crest (casque) on the head. The casque prevents skull injuries during fights.

It has an excellent eyesight and sense of hearing. It is good at swimming. Its diet includes fruit, seeds, shoots, fungi, small invertebrates and insects.

Normally, it is a shy and reclusive bird, but it becomes aggressive when threatened and strike back with powerful head-butts and pecks. Its powerful kick and razor-sharp claws have been known to break bones and cause fatal injury.

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Puffin is a seabird found in the North Pacific and Atlantic oceans. It has black or black and white plumage and a large beak, which changes colour. In winter, it is grey, and in spring, the breeding season, it turns orange to attract mate.

It feed primarily on small fish by diving in the water. It uses its webbed feet as a rudder and can dive down up to 60 metres under water!

It is a great flyer too, speeding through the air at up to 88km an hour. It flaps its wings up to 400 times a minute!

They breed in colonies on coasts and islands. Both the parents incubate the egg and feed the chick.

When starting a puffin family, our feathered friends dig out a burrow using their sharp claws and beak, usually in a grassy bank or rocky crevice. At the back of their burrow home, they build a nest lined with feathers and grass where the female lays her egg. Both parents take it in turn to incubate the egg for the next 36-45 days before the baby “puffling” hatches!

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There are more than 180 species of woodpeckers worldwide. It lives in a range of habitats, including forests, woodlands and even urban settings.

It gets its name from how it forages for food – It taps on tree trunks to catch insect prey living in cracks in the bark.

It has a tough, pointed beak which it uses to chip barks on trees, and find insects. Did you know some of them tap on trunks around 8,000 to 12,000 times per day?

Some of them drum on trees to communicate to their folks and to engage in courtship.

The most common plumage colors for all woodpeckers are black, white, red and yellow. A few species also have orange, green, brown, maroon and gold in their coloration. Brighter colors are usually flashy patches, typically on the head, neck or back where they will be easily seen.

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A bird of paradise is a member of the family Paradisaeidae found in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Australia. They are known for their striking colours and bright plumage.

Depending on the species, the colours may be yellow, blue, scarlet, or green.

Males often sport vibrant elongated feathers, which are known as wires or streamers. Some even have enormous head plumes or other distinctive ornaments.

Most males perform complex courtship displays to attract potential female mates.

It eats fruits, insects and sometimes frogs and reptiles.

The 42 species of birds of paradise look very different from each other, and they also also sound very different from each other. But researchers are only beginning to investigate their calls in detail. The sounds they make run the gamut from basic squawks, to seemingly mechanical noises, to melodious whistles, to sounds that don’t involve their voices at all.

Birds of paradise tend to be solitary birds and only come together to mate.

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Recently, the Chinese government disclosed that a 41-year-old man had contracted what might be the world's first human case of H10N3 strain of bird flu. It was quick to add that the risk of large-scale spread was, however, low.

In a world already reeling under the misery caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the news was met with trepidation.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said that while the source of the patient's exposure to the H10N3 virus was not known, there are no other cases of human-to-human transmission among the local population yet.

H10N3 is a rare virus that usually affects poultry. There is a whole bunch of avian influenza viruses that have an impact on birds, and can be serious in people, such as the H7N9 strain that claimed almost 300 lives in China during the winter of 2016-2017. According to the WHO, there had been only rare instances of person-to person spread of the H7N9 virus.

Experts say that cases like the new H10N3 infection occur occasionally in China, which has huge populations of both farmed and wild birds of many species, and that with growing surveillance of avian influenza in the human population, more infections with bird flu viruses are being picked up.

In February this year, Russia reported the first human infection with the H5N8 virus that caused huge damage to poultry farms across Europe, Russia and East Asia last winter. News emerged that seven people infected with the virus were asymptomatic.

As long as avian influenza viruses circulate in poultry, sporadic infection of avian influenza in humans is not surprising. It is a vivid reminder that the threat of an influenza pandemic is persistent.

Though the H10N3 strain is not a common virus, flu viruses can mutate rapidly and mix with other strains circulating on farms or among migratory birds. This leads to "reassortment", meaning they could make genetic changes that pose a transmission threat to humans.

The genetic sequence of the virus that infected the patient has not been released by China. Scientists are keen to know how easily H10N3 can infect human cells to determine if it could become a greater risk. They are still waiting for details.

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