Boys are Catching the birds

Mountains are a rugged and ancient feature of the northeastern landscape, yet mountain ecosystems are among the most sensitive indicators of environmental change. High-elevation habitats are often more susceptible than lowlands to the effects of climate change, atmospheric pollution, and adverse land use practices. Since they are simultaneously durable and fragile, mountains constitute a symbol of our strength and a gauge of our vulnerability.
Some birds, especially crows and parrots, are among the most intelligent animals. Several bird species make and use tools. Many social species pass on knowledge across generations, a form of culture. Many species annually migrate great distances. Birds are social. They communicate with visual signals, calls, and bird songs. They have social behaviours such as cooperative breeding and hunting, flocking, and mobbing of predators.
Most bird species are socially monogamous, usually for one breeding season at a time, sometimes for years, but rarely for life. Other species are polygynous (one male with many females) or, rarely, polyandrous (one female with many males). Birds produce offspring by laying eggs which are fertilised by sexual reproduction. They are often laid in a nest and incubated by the parents. Most birds have an extended period of parental care after hatching. Some birds, such as hens, lay eggs even when not fertilised, though unfertilised eggs do not produce offspring.
Grey birds include most pigeons and doves, cranes, storks and herons. Grey birds are often rock-living birds like pigeons, or birds that sit on dead tree trunks looking like a broken branch. Water birds like herons often have a pale grey colour which makes it harder for a fish to notice that the bird is standing, looking down for something to catch. Water birds, no matter what colour they are on top, are often white underneath, so that when a fish looks up, the bird looks like part of the sky.Show more

Black birds include crows, ravens and male blackbirds. Some birds that are dark colours spend quite a lot of time on the ground, hopping around in the shadows under bushes. Among these birds are the male blackbird and the Satin Bowerbird which is not black but very dark blue. Crows and ravens often perch high on bare trees in the winter, where their black shape against the sky looks like the dark bare branches.
The first large, diverse lineage of short-tailed avialans to evolve were the enantiornithes, or "opposite birds", so named because the construction of their shoulder bones was in reverse to that of modern birds. Enantiornithes occupied a wide array of ecological niches, from sand-probing shorebirds and fish-eaters to tree-dwelling forms and seed-eaters.