Fascinating feathered friends

It is a great joy to watch these beautiful and graceful creatures. They always appear so busy flying here and there, hopping, running about, chirping, singing and slashing in water. We all love them! Without little feathered friends, the world would be a dull place, wouldn’t it?

Some interesting birds

Hoopoe: the hoopoe is a pale brown bird with black and white stripes on its back, wings and tail. It has a large crest on its head, which opens and shuts like a fan. The hoopoe has a long curved bill with which it digs into the ground for food. The mother hoopoe lays five or six eggs. She never leaves her nest while the eggs are being hatched.

Cuckoo: Cuckoo some cuckoos build their own nests and bring up their young ones. But the common cuckoo which lives in parts of Europe and Asia is a parasite. The cuckoo hen lays one of her own eggs in another bird’s nest and removes one o the original eggs. On hatching, the cuckoo chick tries to get all the food from the hard working parents who bring it up.

Humming birds: these birds fly at an extraordinary speed. They are the world’s tiniest birds. The smallest humming birds are about five and a half centimeters long from the tip of the beak to the end of the tail.

Kingfisher: it is a small beautifully colored bird. It is blue green with deep rust under parts. Sometimes it catches a fish as long as itself and manages to swallow it. It dives straight into the water from above. Most kingfishers are found in central and eastern Asia and Africa.

Woodpecker: the golden backed woodpecker is very pretty bird. It is pale yellow and black in front. Its sides are spotted black and white and its back is a lovely golden yellow with black markings. It lives among trees where it digs for insects. It makes a deep hole in a tree for a nest. The largest species of Europe is the black woodpecker, as big as a crow. Other varieties are the lesser spotted (as big as a sparrow), the great spotted and the green woodpeckers.