Notes|Bird Day

一本小书，用一天 24 小时讲 24 种不同时段活动的鸟儿，每次读一两篇很是轻松愉快。有些内容挺有趣，认真写了前几篇的笔记之后感觉这工作量和翻译一遍也差不多了于是很快开始偷懒，但写都写了，和部分摘抄一起在这里存个档吧。

虽然有插图但全是黑白的，看着很像木刻版画或者钢笔画，不是我喜欢的画风。

Midnight Barn Owl

午夜出没，有不对称的耳朵（我一直以为所有猫头鹰耳朵都是位置不对称的但并不是，只有那些高度依赖听觉捕食的才这样），除了本身敏锐的听力，耳朵高度的不对称可以帮助它们绘制出对猎物位置的三维定位。

在除了南极洲的所有大陆分布，能够在完全黑暗的环境中觅食。

看着大只但重量只和一只鸽子相当。

1AM Little Spotted Kiwi

仅存于新西兰某个岛的一种夜行性鸟儿。不会飞，和鸵鸟属于同一支远古亲缘。至于它们的另一种近亲，同样曾在这座岛屿游荡过的巨型恐鸟（体型有鸵鸟两倍大），自从人类到来就飞速灭绝了。

Little spotted kiwi 视力很差，近乎blind。靠 nostrils at the tip of their beaks 灵敏的嗅觉来发现食物。

在所有鸟类中，它们有着相对自身体型最大比例的蛋，重量最多可达到雌鸟体重的1/4，每次只产一到两枚卵。雄鸟负责孵化，时间长达两个月。

2AM Oilbird

分布在南美洲雨林中，是唯一一种仅以果实为生的夜行性鸟类，尤其偏爱 palm、 laurel 的果实，以及野生牛油果。

作为夜行性鸟类，有非常敏锐的视觉系统（看来像上面的 little spotted kiwi 那样近乎半瞎的终究是少数）。相对于眼睛来说，它们的瞳仁异乎寻常地大，以收集尽可能多的光线——这一特征会更接近于深海鱼而非鸟类。

由于食物多是悬挂在树上，oilbird 有着柔软的羽毛和长长的翅膀，这让它们可以缓慢地飞行，在多果的枝头前盘旋悬停。这种飞行方式也有助于它们进出长长的用于筑巢的洞穴。

它们也是屈指可数的可以使用回声定位的鸟类。不过不像蝙蝠或海豚那样使用超声波，oilbird 发出的是人耳也可以识别的连续的咔嗒声。依赖这样的定位系统，它们在完全黑暗中也能够穿过洞穴找到自己的巢和幼鸟。

用粪便筑巢——这是它们排泄物的另一种用途——并将巢建在流水上方，这为巢提供了额外的保护，以防捕食者进入洞穴系统。（读到这儿突然想到鲸背月色里有一段类似经历的描述，进入了一个臭气熏天的有大量鸟类粪便的洞穴，回去一翻果然是 oilbird，但真是毫不意外又把鸟类名字翻错了。oilbird 是油鸱，不是油鸟！这书应该说物种名根本就没几个对的，当时我粗粗一挑就给它找出来几十处错，太无语了。）

oilbird 因为叫声刺耳，因此它们的另一个俗名 diablotin 在法语里的意思是小恶魔。

它们的幼鸟很肥硕，富于脂肪，以至于幼鸟甚至比成鸟还重。当人类首次在洞穴里遇见这些幼鸟时，发现可以把它们煮了得到丰富的油脂用来烹饪和照明——这就是英文名 oilbird 的由来。

4AM   Common Nightingale (Eurasia)

When we meet this melodious nightingale, he has just returned to Berlin, Germany, after a three-thousand-mile journey from sub-Saharan Africa, across both vast desert and the Mediterranean Sea. What a trip for a small bird about the size of a house sparrow. When migrating nocturnally, this species uses both the stars above and Earth’s magnetic field to orient itself north in the spring and south in the fall.

Singing some two hundred different tunes or “phrases” on average, a single male nightingale uses its vocal prowess to both woo and warn.

体型娇小却能迁徙超过三千英里。有超过 200 种歌唱曲调。

（但其实我会对 nightingale 多留意是因为一首非常有名的歌叫 A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square，它出现在 Good Omens 的最后一集，是众多 CP 粉力争他俩是爱情的证据之一😂。 ）

5AM   Brown-Headed Cowbird (North America)

Unlike 99 percent of all birds, cowbirds are “brood parasitic”: they lay their eggs in the nests of other species.

We humans have what is called “episodic memory,” a clear ability to keep track of where, when, and what occurs at a given time. Female cowbirds routinely engage in such mental time travel too. To accomplish this cognitive feat, female cowbirds have evolved an enlarged hippocampus, the brain region that is responsible for spatial memory. Male cowbirds do not have particularly large hippocampi—perhaps because they do not need to search and remember where host nests are located. Species related to cowbirds that build their own nests and incubate their own eggs, such as common grackles and red-winged blackbirds, also do not have these enlarged brain centers.

Cowbird，巢寄生鸟儿，会提前侦察附近的鸟巢并且起个大早把自己的卵产在这些寄养家庭的巢里。

7AM   Bee Hummingbird (Caribbean)

This bird must visit up to 1,500 such flowers to find enough food in the course of a day’s foraging. Some hummingbird species, especially those living at high elevation sites where temperatures fall dramatically at sunset, save energy overnight by dropping their own temperatures to ambient levels and going into a nocturnal torpor. In this slumber, their heart rate and metabolism nearly come to a halt.

Hummingbirds have one of the highest heart rates among all animals—over one thousand heartbeats, accompanied by over two hundred breaths, per minute. Imagine those statistics as part of a human’s visit to a nurses’ station! (The average human has rates of fewer than one hundred beats and twenty breaths per minute.) In turn, bee hummingbirds and their relatives also need a high number of wingbeats to stay aloft—about eighty beats per second to hover in front of a nectar-rich flower—but males can elevate these wingbeat rates to well over one hundred per minute when showing off for a female, buzzing and singing to her to catch her interest.

8AM   American Robin (North America)

robins are one of more than 250 species that host cowbird eggs. Unlike over 90 percent of these hosts, robins are robust egg rejecters—grabbing and tossing out the cowbird’s beige and speckled eggs. This is no surprise since the cowbird eggs are so remarkably different from the robin’s own immaculate turquoise-blue eggs. Still, even with this distinctness, the robin hosts typically take anywhere between an hour to a day to find and reject the foreign egg.

Without eggs, there are no hatchlings, and without hatchlings, there are no fledglings, juveniles, or next generations.

是上面的 cowbird 会巢寄生的 250 多种鸟类之一，但它们有能力识别 cowbird 的卵并且把这些寄生蛋扔出去。

9AM   Eclectus Parrot (Australasia)

Multiple males feed the female, and they often mate with her as well. It is common for two males to look after the female and her offspring at any given nesting cavity.

When nest cavities are prone to flooding, female eclectus parrots are known to kill the younger (and often male) hatchling in their nest to improve the chances of the older (often female) nestmate. This infanticide might seem surprising: why lay two eggs but kill one? If food and access to safety are limited, raising a sole chick successfully can be a more fruitful strategy than watching both chicks perish in the rising waters of a nest hole.

10AM   Indian Peafowl (Asia, Introduced Worldwide)

Contributing to the mystery is the pattern that few scientists have studied these birds in their original territories, their “natural ranges.” What we know from watching them in their introduced habitats and sites is that brother peacocks band together, displaying their stunning trains in the vicinity of each other as if cooperating to attract interested females to their proximity—no matter who gets to mate with them. This may seem altruistic, but it offers advantages from an evolutionary perspective. Genetically speaking, it might be best to have children yourself. But if you are to remain childless, it is still better for your brother to have children than for a complete stranger to do so. Evolutionary biologists call this type of reproductive gain “indirect fitness,” and it seems to explain why, for example, we as humans tend to give more and larger gifts to family members more closely related to us.

Another mystery is the peacock’s puzzling train. First note that this is not the bird’s tail but instead a collection of extra-long back feathers supported by sturdy, brown tail feathers. Sometimes a peacock’s train can stand over six feet tall around the male’s back. It is full of deep blue and green hues. Again, there is beauty beyond what our human eyes can see, including richness of color in the UV ranges. This is in part the result of tiny nanostructures present in the barbules of the of the so-called eyes of the peacock’s train. Yet, here’s the enigma: the peahen (much like humans) does not see in UV light! Nor do the peacocks or the main predators of peafowl. It seems a waste of a show!

严格来说，雄孔雀的“尾巴”并不是尾羽而是背羽，这些长长的、绚烂的羽毛是从它们的背上延伸出的。另一个让人惊讶的事实是，虽然雄孔雀的羽毛有如此多彩的结构色，可雌孔雀其实是识别不出的！这算什么？媚眼抛给了瞎子看？

11AM   Common Pochard (Eurasia)

In turn, ducks take to sleeping whenever they can, including during the brightest parts of daytime.

As we see, a duck can also sleep during the day. The most dangerous part of sleep is the inability to sense and alter one’s behavior in response to potentially harmful components of the environment: predators, parasites, competitors, or even the shoreline. As a response, ducks have developed a special type of slumber called “unihemispheric sleep,” in which one side of the brain is asleep while the other is awake and observing the environment. Half-brain sleep patterns are often accompanied by what scientists call “eye-peeks.” Such peeks are quick, not more than ten seconds, allowing the other eye and half of the brain half to fully engage in resting mode.

Looking at the winking birds, we might expect that the bigger the flock, the fewer the peeks. Why bother peeking when someone else is on the lookout? It is actually the opposite! The more neighbors a duck has, the more time it spends peeking during each bout of observation. Perhaps the ducks are quite sensitive to bumping into neighbors. A crowded patch of water means more peeks.

Noon   Ocellated Antbird (Central America)

Despite their name, antbirds do not have an appetite for ants. Instead, these birds are ant followers; they can be reliably found near an army ant swarm off to attack or retreating from their daily foraging expedition.

叫 antbird 并不是因为它们吃蚂蚁，而是它们会跟随蚂蚁的“行军”路线吃沿路被惊起的其他动物。

1PM   Secretary Bird (Africa)

Look at its three-foot-tall frame, its long tarsus (or foot bone), lean body, long neck, elaborate face pattern, and crown. Its costume is reminiscent of a nineteenth-century European clerk’s outfit, after which this bird’s Latin genus (Sagittarius) is named.

Together with caracaras of the tropical Americas, secretary birds are just one of a handful of hawk relatives that pursue their prey on foot rather than on the wing.

因为羽色和欧洲 19 世纪的 clerk 制服类似而得名。是少有的和 caracara 一样更多依靠脚而非翅膀来捕食（而且它们的捕猎对象可是蛇！）。 Caracara 是另一本我想看的书 A Most Remarkable Creature 的主角，这提醒我又有多少东西还没读……

（不管是这个名字、羽色、还是能够吃蛇的凶悍本领都让我想起 Kingsman 里的 Gazelle 。）

4PM   Common Cuckoo (Eurasia)

Whatever the reason, most birds lay eggs that are recently fertilized and undeveloped. One exception to this rule is the common cuckoo.

Unlike the cowbird, the cuckoo keeps her egg in her oviduct to be incubated for an extra day before she lays it in the nest of another species, replacing one of the host species’ eggs. Why should cuckoo eggs be “preincubated” before laying? Preincubation gives the cuckoo chick a chance to hatch earlier. This early start spells doom for the host’s clutch and brood, as the young cuckoo is a vicious killing machine. Within two to four days of hatching, while still naked and blind, the cuckoo chick pushes all the other eggs and chicks from the nest, often while helpless foster parents watch.

Cowbirds lay eggs that are proportional to the female parasite’s size. Not so for the cuckoos, which lay especially small eggs relative to their own body size. This is part of the deception—the cuckoo’s egg is similar to the foster parents’ in size and appearance, if not contents!

大杜鹃！也就是布谷鸟。也是大名鼎鼎的巢寄生鸟儿了。

6PM (Sunset)   Standard-Winged Nightjar (Africa)

“Standard-wing” might seem a misnomer since we see two long flight feathers, one trailing each of the wings.

Longer than its own body length, these special feathers come with a long, barbless shaft and a dark patterned feathery patch toward the tip.

The risk involved with this air show is high because it makes the showy male vulnerable to attack, so it must be important in attracting a mate. These feathers make the males more conspicuous during its otherwise well-camouflaged rest in daylight, too. Perhaps because of this, males do not help incubate the eggs during the day, only at night. Still, comparatively, these males appear to be better parents than the peacock and male kākāpō, who refuse to engage in any paternal duties at all!

夜鹰，从背上有两条延伸而出的像旗帜一样比它们自己身体还长的装饰羽。这个名字还让我一下子想起宫泽贤治《夜鹰之星》的封面，原来我早就（在纸上）见过这种鸟儿呀。

8PM   Bat Hawk (Africa and Asia)

In addition to having larger than standard raptorial eyes, bat hawks also sport the widest and largest bill gape; they are able to open their mouths wider than any other hawk (relative to their skull size, of course).

no matter the location or adaptation, these hawks are bat hunting specialists, restricting their feeding behaviors to about an hour before and after the emergence of the swarms from the bat caves.

Even the breeding season of the bat hawk is timed and coordinated with their prey mammals. During incubation, the male of the pair must feed both the incubating female and himself. He does this by chasing slowly moving and poorly maneuvering pregnant female bats. In turn, the fledgling hawks will benefit from growing at the same time as the bat pups; as novice fliers, the juvenile bats make easier meals.

不管是在 bat hawk 的哪个分布地，它们的活动时间都是跟着当地的蝙蝠种群走的呢，在蝙蝠出洞前后几小时守在它们的洞穴口。而且它们的繁殖时间也和蝙蝠群一致——因为那时雌鸟会无法捕猎，雄鸟需要养活一家子，而这时蝙蝠恰好也会有怀孕的蝙蝠和刚出生的小蝙蝠，会更易于捕捉。

书后给出的拓展阅读清单：

• Ornithology. By Frank B. Gill and Richard O. Prum. W. H. Freeman and Company. 2019.
• The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think. By Jennifer Ackerman. Penguin Press. 2020.
• The Book of Eggs. By Mark E. Hauber. University of Chicago Press. 2014.
• The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us. By Richard O. Prum. Doubleday. 2017.
• Understanding Bird Behavior: An Illustrated Guide to What Birds Do and Why. By Wenfei Tong. Princeton University Press. 2020.

The Bird Way 和前阵子我读的 What an Owl knows 是同一个作者，她的书写得细致但是又有趣味，阅读体验很愉快。Understanding Bird Behavior 我读了中文版，不推荐，虽然确实收录了许多新的研究结果，但写得很无趣，和 What an Owl Knows 对比立刻就看出写作水平的差距（详见 2024十月读书记录 ）。