My little 8-meg digital camera doesn't do the contours and subtle shadings of his/her feathers justice ... he was amazing to watch, even though he wasn't doing anything.
Update: "Bird Family Tree Gets Re-write"
June 26, 2008 -- A five-year project has revolutionized scientific thought on the evolution of birds and the results are so surprising that now even the textbooks will have to be rewritten, a study said Thursday.
"With this study, we learned two major things," said Sushma Reddy, lead author and a fellow at The Field Museum in Chicago, Ill.
"First, appearances can be deceiving. Birds that look or act similar are not necessarily related. Second, much of bird classification and conventional wisdom on the evolutionary relationships of birds is wrong."
The results of the largest ever study of bird genetics are so widespread that the names of dozens of birds will now have to be changed, says the study to be published in Science magazine.
