PetLover

 

The plain-looking Cinereous Mourner can’t compete for birders’ binoculars in Brazil, Peru and other Amazon rainforest countries with Scarlet Macaws, Spangled Cotingas and Razor-billed Curassows. Yet, scientists are intrigued by the mourner’s flamboyantly feathered chicks.

 

Green bee eaters. According to WIKI they are super smart birds:
"A study suggested that green bee-eaters may be capable of interpreting the behaviour of human observers. They showed an ability to predict whether a human at a particular location would be capable of spotting the nest entrance and then behaved appropriately to avoid giving away the nest location. The ability to look at a situation from another's point of view was previously believed to be possessed only by primate"

pea hen and chicks

Motherly love runs deep, no matter what species

THERE is nothing as powerful as a mother's love . And Nothing as healing as a Child's soul ..!!  

 

Peacock Birds or Peafowl are 2 Asiatic & 1 African species of flying bird in the genus Pavo of the pheasant family, Phasianidae, best known for the male's extravagant eye-spotted tail covert feathers, which it displays as part of courtship.
The male is called a #PEACOCK , the female a #PEAHEN , and the offspring #PEA_CHICKS .

Peachicks can be between yellow and a tawny colour with darker brown patches or light tan and ivory, also referred to as "dirty white". Peacocks.

honey creeper

  This little male red-legged  honey creeper

 

A commonly repeated, yet false, belief about the various honeycreeper species is that some of them lay black eggs.^[1] This idea was first made known in the scientific community with the 1899 publication of Nehrkorn's egg catalog; Nehrkorn's claim was cited in ornithological literature for many years without verification, but by the 1940s it was established that none of the members of Cyanerpes lay such eggs.

The typical honeycreeper is a small bird in the tanager family. They are found in the tropical New World from Mexico south to Brazil.

Mother Affection in wild

mother affection in wild

  With plenty of people making last ditch efforts to buy a card or flowers this Mother's Day it is clear we can learn a lot from the animal kingdom.

Because while we rush around to make last minute plans these pictures show the heartwarming closeness between animal mums and their loved ones.

'In the wild each animal must fight to survive, but mothers have to think about their precious young as well as themselves.Despite the pressure they are under, like the hard-pressed mothers they are, they still find quality time for their young.

'These pictures show that no matter how hard things are even in the perilous animal kingdom, families still make the effort to bond together.
'In fact it is these very bonds that can make the difference between life and death and allow each species to continue to survive down the generations.

 

Bird Of Paradise
Passeriformes. The majority of species are found in New Guinea and its satellites, with a few in the Maluku Islands and eastern Australia. The family has 41 species in 14 genera.^[1] The members of this family are perhaps best known for the plumage of the males of the sexually dimorphic species (the majority), in particular the highly elongated and elaborate feathers extending from the beak, wings, tail or head. For the most part they are confined to dense rainforest habitat. The diet of all species is dominated by fruit and to a lesser extent arthropods. The birds-of-paradise have a variety of breeding systems, ranging from monogamy to lek-type polygamy.

Outer beauty pleases the EYE

Outer beauty pleases the EYE

Nicobar Pigeon

 The Nicobar Pigeon is one of the most beautiful of the many species of pigeons or doves and is the only living member of the genus Caloenus. It can easily be distinguished by its glistening mane-like neck hackles and sharply contrasting white tail coverts and tail. Females are smaller in size than males with shorter neck hackles and brown under parts.It is a large pigeon, measuring 40 cm (15.75 inches) in length. The head is grey, like the upper neck plumage, which turns into green and copper hackles. The tail is very short and pure white. The rest of its plumage is metallic green. The cere of the dark bill forms a small blackish knob; the strong legs and feet are dull red.

Major Mitchell's cockatoo Bird 
 Major Mitchell females and males are almost identical. The males are usually bigger. The female has a broader yellow stripe on the crest and develop a red eye when mature.Like the galah, this species has not lost the ability to deposit diluted pigments dyes in its body plumage, although it does not produce melanin coloration anymore, resulting in a lighter bird overall compared to the galah. Indeed, disregarding the crest, Major Mitchell's cockatoo looks almost like a near-leucistic version of that species (see also "External links" below).In contrast to those of the galah, populations of the Major Mitchell's cockatoo have declined rather than increased as a result of man-made changes to the arid interior of Australia. Where galahs readily occupy cleared and part-cleared land, Major Mitchell's cockatoo requires extensive woodlands, particularly favouring Callitris, Allocasuarina and Eucalyptus.

Grey Peacock-Pheasant

It is a large pheasant, up to 76 cm long and greyish brown with finely spotted green eyespots, an elongated bushy crest, bare pink or yellow facial skin, white throat, and grey iris,bill and legs. The sexes are rather similar, but the female is smaller, darker and less ornamented than the male. The young resemble the female.
The grey peacock-pheasant is distributed in lowland and hill forests of Northeast India and Southeast Asia, but excluding most of Indochina as well as the entire Malayan Peninsula. The diet consists mainly of seeds, termites, fruits and invertebrates.  

Waterfalls  Lakes Plitvice, Croatia (National Park)
Is among the 20 most beautiful lakes in the world to 17th place. The park covers an area of 33,000 hectares and includes 16 lakes in succession, connected by waterfalls.Plitvice is the oldest national park in Southeast Europa.All'interno the park there are also many caves of which only a small part is agibile.I lakes are formed by two rivers: the White River and the Black River, which flow in the river Korana. The waters of these rivers are rich in calcareous salts (mostly calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate), from the dissolution of carbonate rocks forming the geological structure of sito.Questi salts are precipitated by vegetation, forming layers of travertine , a sedimentary rock recently. Over time, these deposits forming real natural dams that act as barriers to water, growing by about a centimeter per year. At one point the water pressure breaks these natural levees, opening new paths in the ground. The beauty of the National Park Plitvice, Croatia, is increased in the second round of the New Seven Wonders of Nature.

               BIRDS OF BRAZIL

 Brazil has one of the richest bird diversities in the world. The avifauna of Brazil include a total of 1,901 species, of which 270 are endemic. About 60% of the bird species recorded for all of South America. These numbers are still increasing, almost every year, due to new occurrences or new species being described. About 10% of the bird species found in Brazil are, nonetheless, threatened.

          Green Bee-Eater

 Like other bee-eaters, this species is a richly coloured, slender bird. It is about 9 inches (16–18 cm) long with about 2 inches made up by the elongated central tail-feathers. The sexes are not visually distinguishable. The entire plumage is bright green and tinged with blue especially on the chin and throat. The crown and upper back are tinged with golden rufous. The flight feathers are rufous washed with green and tipped with blackish.

  The Pink-necked Green Pigeon

It is a species of bird in the Columbidae family. It is found in Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests, subtropical or tropical mangrove forests, and subtropical or tropical moist montane forests.

White-breasted Waterhen

 (Amourornis phoenicurus)

Amazing Animal Finds of 2014

Puppy-Sized Spider Romps in Rainforest

Tarzan’s Chameleon.

This Parson’s Chameleon grows up to 27 inches long, the size of a cat. It’s one of several rare chameleons in the protected areas, including one known as Tarzan’s Chameleon.

This year the animal kingdom did not disappoint -- giving people yet more reasons to marvel at nature's stunning diversity. Here we revisit some of the amazing creatures DNews covered this year.
For starters, how about a spider the size of a puppy? Headlines flew around the globe this fall when word came that entomologist Piotr Naskrecki had encountered something he had seen only three times in 10 to 15 years: the South American Goliath birdeater (Theraphosa blondi) -- the world's largest spider, according to Guinness World Records.
Its legs can reach up to 1 foot (30 centimeters) and it can weight up to 6 ounces (170 grams). And with a body the size of a large fist, the spider can look like the stuff of nightmares.
The "puppy" spider isn't lethal to humans, luckily for Naskrecki. He snapped this picture, one that must have given nightmares to arachnophobes far and wide.
Puppy-Sized Spider Romps in Rainforest
(SARATHY)

Pet can make you happy

Pet Care Can Help Children Manage Type 1 Diabetes

Older children with Type 1 diabetes often want to manage the illness themselves, but they can run into problems if they take multiple daily insulin injections but don’t check their glucose and take insulin before each meal and before bed. Would it help, a Dallas physician wondered, if she gave patients a pet they had to feed twice a day — and they developed a habit of checking their glucose at the same time?

Dr. Olga T. Gupta, an assistant professor at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, recruited 29 patients, ages 10 to 17, with Type 1 diabetes. Sixteen got a fishbowl; a $5 gift card to buy a betta, or Siamese fighting, fish; and instructions to feed the fish in the morning and at night. They were also given instructions to check their blood glucose at the same time. Once a week, they were to change the fishbowl water and review their glucose logs with a parent.

The other patients did not get a fish but were promised a gift card later. The findings were published in Diabetes Educator in June.

After three months, the fish owners had slightly improved glucose control, as indicated by lower hemoglobin A1C values, while those without a fish had worsened.

Children in that age group tend to see an increase in A1C values over time, Dr. Gupta said, “so to bring that down even a small amount is a pretty big triumph.”