28 facts of birds for your 28th birthday!!

1. There are over 9,500 species of birds in the world. Scientists typically group them into 30 categories. Birds are the most widespread of all animals around the world.^j
2. Characteristics that are unique to birds are 1) feathers, 2) bills, and 3) a furcula (fused collarbone, or “wishbone”).^h
3. Approximately 2/3 of all the bird species are found in tropical rain forests.^b
4. Hoatzin chicks have two claws on each wing. When they climb out of the nest, they use their claws to hold on to mangrove trees. They lose their claws once they mature, but they remain poor flyers.^e
To make them more lightweight, most birds do not have urinary bladders
5. Many birds consume 1/5 of their body weight in food every day to get the energy they need to fly.^j
6. The longest feathers ever seen were on a chicken in Japan. Its tail feathers measured 34.7 feet (10.59 m) long.^j
7. To make them more lightweight, most birds do not have bladders to store urine. Rather than producing liquid urine to get rid of wastes, they produce a white, pasty substance. However, while an ostrich does not have a bladder like a mammalian bladder, it is unique among birds because it does have a complete separation of feces and urine.^b
8. A bird’s lungs are much more complicated and efficient and take up more space than those of mammals, such as humans. A human’s lungs compose about 1/20 of its body, but a bird’s takes up 1/5.^h
9. The Australian pelican has the longest bill of any bird in the world. It is nearly 2 feet (0.5 m) in length. The sword-billed hummingbird, with its 3.9-inch (10 cm) bill, is the only bird with a bill that’s longer than its body.^e
10. The song of a European wren is made of more than 700 different notes a minute and can be heard 1,650 feet (500 m) away.^b
Owls can't move their eyes, so they swivel their heads instead
11. Owls cannot swivel their eyes. Instead they move their heads completely around to see straight behind them. They live on every continent except Antarctica. Soft fringes on their wings make their flight essentially silent.^b
12. In the continental U.S. alone, between 1.4 billion and 3.7 billion birds are killed by cats annually.ⁱ
13. Famous birds include Ba in Egyptian mythology, Bar Juchne in the Talmud, The Cu Bird in Mexican folklore, the Firebird in Native American mythologies, Harpies in Greek mythology, the Phoenix in Egyptian mythology, Quetzalcoatl in Aztec mythology, and the Raven in Native American religions.^j
14. Famous birds in literature include the Albatross in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Archimedes in The Once and Future King, Chicken Little, Chanticleer in Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale, Fawkes and Hedwig in Harry Potter, Mother Goose, the Raven in Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven,” Owl in Winnie the Pooh, Thorondor (the king of eagles) in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and The Ugly Duckling.^j
15. Famous birds in cartoons, comics, and films include Big Bird in Sesame Street, Buzz Buzzard in Woody Woodpecker, Disney’s Darkwing Duck, Footloops cereal’s Toucan Sam, Woodstock in the Peanuts comic strip, Woody Woodpecker, and Iago in Aladdin.^j
16. The bird with the most feathers is the whistling swan, with up to 25,000 feathers. Hummingbirds, on the other hand, are so small that they have fewer than 1,000.^b
17. The only bird with nostrils at the end of its beak is the kiwi. This placement helps it sniff for food, such as worms and insects on the ground. It often snorts to clear its nostrils.^e
18. Unlike most birds that sing, a woodpecker will drum its beak against a tree. Other woodpeckers can identify which bird it is by the sound of the drumming.^e
The African gray parrot is one of the most intelligent birds in the world
19. The most talkative bird in the world is the African gray parrot. One parrot could say over 800 words. Most species of parrots can learn only 50.^b
20. Many birds, such as starlings, sing notes too high for humans to hear.^h
21. Flamingos pair for a lifetime. Some stay with their mates for 50 years or more.^h
22. The chicks of large bird species often take the longest to hatch. Emu chicks, for example, take 60 days to hatch. Small songbirds take just 2 weeks.^h
23. A green woodpecker can eat as many as 2,000 ants per day.^j
24. The Japanese crested ibis is one of the rarest birds in the world. Probably fewer than 50 crested ibises are alive today.^b
25. The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska polluted approximately 1,180 miles of coastline and killed up to 100,000 seabirds.^b
26. Falconry was developed more than 4,000 years ago in eastern and central Asia. Birds were used because they could kill animals beyond the range of a hunter’s weapon. Genghis Khan reportedly had 10,000 falconers.^j
27. Coalminers often used canaries to detect poisonous levels of carbon monoxide gas. Miners knew that if the canary passed out, they were in danger, too. The phrase “Canary in a Coalmine” derives from this history.^j
28. The marsh warbler can mimic more than 80 different birds. Other renowned mimics include mockingbirds and lyrebirds.^b