×

Reflections in Nature: Determining the sex of a bird isn’t as difficult as you may think

Recently while at rehab, several of us were looking out the window when six pigeons landed on the grass. Someone mentioned that pigeons are pretty birds, with their many colors. One man commented that the birds were four females and two males.

I asked how he could tell the sex but he never answered. Later, I checked online and found that even experts have issues when identifying the gender of a pigeon based on coloration alone. I also learned that male pigeons are larger, fluffier, with thicker necks, larger heads and heavier bills; while females will appear sleeker, thinner bills and eyes found higher on their heads compared to the males.

It is easier to tell the difference in the sex of many birds, such as the cardinals, due to their coloring. In other species it is difficult to identify the male from the female. Although starlings are colored quite similar, their bills will change color during the spring, and the difference in sex can be determined by their bills.

The female starlings will have light lemon yellow beaks, with pink bases whereas males have yellow bills with blue bases. It’s blue for a boy and pink for a girl.

Starlings are not the only birds that have a change in color of their bills. The bills of our robins also change from yellow in summer to a dark brown in winter. The reverse is true in both the bobolinks and house sparrows, in that their bills are black during the mating season and either a yellow or pale brown in the fall.

Most birds have bills that are black, however, I have learned that bills can be almost any color and in some birds, such as toucans, the bills are the most colorful part of their bodies. There are some birds that do not attain the full color of their brightly colored bills until they become sexually mature. In other birds, the brightly colored part of their bills fades and becomes darker after the breeding molt.

Our word bill comes from the Latin word rostrum, meaning an instrument or implement with which a bird scratches itself, enabling the bird to reach almost every part of its body to preen or clean its feathers. The Old English word for beak was bile.

The Old English word for our feathered-flying friends was fowl, and the word bird specifically referred to a young bird in the nest. Supposedly, its original meaning led to the speculation that it relates to breed and brood. The usual Old English form was brid; however, in time, the r and i became transposed.

As early as the 1300s, the word bird was used for girl adding to the confusion of the Old English word burde that also meant young woman.

A bird’s beak is used to collect nesting materials and in building a nest also, the bill is used as a weapon and in finding and breaking up food into sizes small enough to swallow. The bill serves as the bird’s hand and mouth. Sifting, sucking, cracking, crushing, spearing, tearing, picking, probing, building and fighting are ways that bills are used.

A bird’s beak, which is part of its skull, is covered with a tough layer of skin. Each species of bird has a bill adapted for its lifestyle. There are birds with beaks longer than their heads; birds with short bills; birds with wide bills and birds with bills curved either upward or downward.

The bill is in two parts: the upper and lower mandible, which are usually hard, however, in some birds, such as the woodcock, the bill is soft.

A duck has a wide bill, with tooth-like edges used for straining food from the water; a hummingbird has a long and slender straw-like bill that is used to suck nectar out of flowers; a seed eater has a short-thick bill that enables the bird to break open seeds and some birds have soft bills, with large mouths that allow for catching insects in mid-air.

In most birds the tip of the bill usually wears down with use, especially in birds that feed on the ground. The bill continuously grows, renewing itself toward the tip, however if the bill is injured and the upper and lower mandible do not line up, the bird will grow a malformed bill, causing a difficulty in eating, and the bird could eventually starve to death.

We humans are much like birds in that some species of birds never form in flocks, while others are always in a flock. Some people are happiest when in the company of others, belonging to many social and service groups; while others have only a few friends and are content to be alone.

Dale Palmer, a friend from Alba, has a huge collection of hammers. Each hammer is different in size and weight, and there is a hammer for almost every chore that man needs to do. In nature, the bird’s hammer can do multiple jobs and there are about ten basic types of hammers. Here again, we as humans have tried to copy nature but has not been able to come up with a hammer that will do every job.

Starting at $2.99/week.

Subscribe Today