Kiwi

Kiwi

The Kiwi Bird doesn’t fly and that is one distinction from it and other types of birds. They are about the size of a chicken. There are 5 species of them that have been recognized. They range in size based on location and species but they are about 18 inches tall and weigh about 7 pounds. This particular bird doesn’t have a tail either.

They are the only bird species that have nostrils at the end of their long beak. They have a beak that is about 1/3 the length of their body. It is extremely sensitive to touch. They have wings but they don’t have any muscle which is why they don’t fly. The wings blend in so well to their feathers that you have to look closely to see that they have them.

They have a roundish body like a chicken. They have claw like feet that are very sharp and they use them for protection when necessary. They also use them to dig for food.

The Southern Alps are the main location for the Kiwi Bird. New Zealand is where about 20,000 of them live. They like dark forests areas, they are able to adapt to a variety of locations. As their natural habitat has been removed they have been forced to live in areas that weren’t common to them before. Breeding programs at the the zoos have helped to increase their overall population.

Feeding

This is a very shy bird and they tend to move quickly when they feel that there could be a predator around their habitat. They are also nocturnal and that helps them to stay away from various types of predators. They are very vocal and that helps them to protect territory, warn of dangers, and call to their mate.

They consume a variety of foods including small invertebrates, grubs, seeds, and various types of worms. They will consume fruit when it is in season and various types of amphibians. They are able to locate insects and worms under the ground without having to see them due to their great sense of smell.

Reproduction

The males and females have dance rituals from March to June when they will take part in mating. They are very particular about who they choose for a mate because they will stay loyal to that same partner for life. If one of them dies there could be another mate in the future..

This particular bird lays the largest size of egg in proportion to their body size of any birds. Only 1 egg is placed into the nest that both the male and the female will create. The female will spend most of the time incubating the egg while the male looks for food to bring back to her.

They young will arrive in about 63 to 92 days. The parents will take turns protecting it and bringing food back to the nest. In a few weeks the bird will be able to leave the nest with them. They can live up to 20 years in the wild.

Firefly

Firefly

Firefly, or Lightning Bug, a beetle that produces light. The light is produced in special organs called photophores located on the underside of the abdomen. They consist of several layers of small reflector cells and a single layer of light-producing cells. The light-producing cells contain nerves, air tubes, and two types of chemicals— luciferin and the enzyme luciferase. When luciferin is activated by adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and luciferase, it combines with oxygen in the air tubes; this reaction produces energy in the form of a heatless, greenish-yellow to reddish-orange light. Fireflies produce light to attract mates. In most species, both sexes produce light.

Most of the 2,000 known species of fireflies live in the tropics. About 60 species live in North America. The insects range in length from less than half an inch (12.7 mm) to more than an inch (25.4 mm).

Luciferin and luciferase, extracted from preserved photophores and purified, are used to detect ATP in a biochemical test. This test has applications in bacteriology, cancer research, oceanography, and space exploration.

Are Fireflies Flies, Bugs, or Beetles?

Fireflies are not really flies. Some people call them lightning bugs, but they are not bugs either. Fireflies are actually beetles.

The firefly is a flat, egg-shaped beetle 1/4 to 3/4 inches (5 to 20 millimeters) long. Its color is mostly brown or black. The firefly would be a rather ordinary beetle, except for one thing. At night, it can “light up.” You probably have seen fireflies whizzing around and flashing their lights on warm summer nights.

Some firefly larvae can glow, too. This is why people call them glowworms. Of course, they are not worms at all.

How Do Fireflies Make That “Cool” Light?

The firefly’s light is cool in more ways than one. Unlike natural and human-made light, it gives off no heat. The firefly’s light is produced by a complicated set of chemical reactions that take place in its abdomen. This complex process is called bioluminescence (by oh loo muh nehs uhns).

There are three layers to the organ that produces the firefly’s light. The innermost layer acts as a reflector. The middle layer contains the light cells. The outermost layer is clear and can be seen through.

Fireflies can control the light they produce. They send out light in a pattern of flashes. Scientists believe that fireflies do this by regulating the amount of oxygen they take into their bodies. Oxygen is the fuel that helps create the light.

What Do All Those Flashes Mean?

The male firefly flashes its light for a very important purpose. It wants to find a mate. When it gets dark, the male firefly flies through the night. It flashes its light like a signal. Each kind of firefly has its own signal.

The female firefly has short wings and often can’t fly. It perches itself on a bush or a rock and waits. When a male passes by with a signal the female recognizes, the female flashes back the same signal. The male lands and touches the female’s antennae. This is how fireflies smell each other. If the female smells right to him, the two fireflies will mate. Later the female lays her eggs.

Bat bug

Bat bug

Bat bugs feed on blood from bats, but when they wander away from the bat roost area, they will feed on other warm-blooded animals, including people. This feeding is an annoyance but is not dangerous. Bat bugs have not been found to transmit any diseases.

Controlling bat bugs requires the elimination of any bats that are present in the home or building. This is accomplished by exclusion techniques also known as "building them out" (i.e., sealing entrance cracks and holes). There are no pesticides to control bats in attics. The best time to seal bats out of the house is late summer to fall. In addition to eliminating the bats you may need to control the bugs themselves. This can be done by applying residual insecticides labeled for indoor use against bat bugs to cracks, crevices, or other bat bug hiding places.

House centipedes

House centipedes

House centipedes (Scutigera) are common arthropods with long, flattened, segmented bodies with one pair of legs per segment. The house centipede is up to 1 1/2 inches long and has 15 pairs of very long, almost thread-like, slender legs. Each leg is encircled by dark and white bands. The body is brown to grayish-yellow and has three dark stripes on top.

Though house centipedes are found both indoors and outdoors it is the occasional one on the bathroom or bedroom wall, or the one accidentally trapped in the bathtub, sink, or lavatory that causes the most concern. However, these locations are not where they normally originate. Centipedes prefer to live in damp portions of basements, closets, bathrooms, unexcavated areas under the house and beneath the bark of firewood stored indoors. They do not come up through the drain pipes.

House centipedes feed on small insects, insect larvae, and on spiders. Thus they are beneficial, though most homeowners take a different point-of-view and consider them a nuisance. Technically, the house centipede could bite, but it is considered harmless to people.

House centipede control consists of drying up and cleaning, as much as possible, the areas that serve as habitat and food source for centipedes. Residual insecticides can be applied to usual hiding places such as crawl spaces, dark corners in basements, baseboard cracks and crevices, openings in concrete slabs, under shelves, around stored boxes, and so forth.

Cricket

Cricket

Although close relatives of the grasshopper, crickets belong to a distinct group of insects that possess very large back legs in proportion to the rest of their body. Crickets come in many different types, but all have short life spans, with few living a single year. Crickets acquired their odd name from the chirping sounds they produce.

Identification

• The large back legs that enable them to jump as far as 20 to 30 times the length of their bodies are two identifying features of crickets. Crickets also have a pair of leathery wings on their fronts that shield their more delicate back wings. The eardrum of the cricket exists on its front legs, and female crickets possess an egg-laying organ called an ovipositor, which extends from the end of their abdomen. Most crickets are dark colors, but their length fluctuates, with some only 1/2-inch long and others more than 2 inches.

Types

• The Insecta Inspecta website declares that hundreds of individual species of crickets reside in North America. The field crickets and house crickets belong to the family called Gryllidae, and are among the most common crickets, and tree crickets in the same family actually look more like grasshoppers than crickets. Other types of crickets you might encounter in the United States include the camel cricket, mole cricket and cave cricket.

Habitat

• Cricket habitats vary by species. House and field crickets are nocturnal and can be found during the day under rocks, logs or in structures like a barn or garage. The tree crickets are at home in tall plants and in the limbs and foliage of trees. Cave and camel crickets inhabit dark, dank places such as caves, basements and near wells. The mole cricket is an underground species that burrows into the soil.

Diet

• The diet of crickets consists of both plant matter and animals. Crickets will devour other insects as well as their eggs, vegetation, seeds, wool, silk, paper and cloth. This wide array of potential foods means crickets are a common insect in many locations. In turn, the cricket is prey for such predators as spiders, birds and an assortment of mammals, reptiles and amphibians.

Jabiru

Jabiru

Jabiru: Huge stork, one of the largest flying birds. Plumage is entirely white, head and neck are black and featherless with a red throat pouch. Black bill is large, slightly upturned. Black legs and feet. Alternates between strong, slow wing beats and short glides. Soars on thermals and updrafts.

Range and Habitate
Jabiru: Native to Central and South America, rare and accidential in Texas and Oklahoma. Lives near rivers, ponds, and marshy areas.

Dove

Dove

The dove's habitat is a dry open nest. They are also raised in zoos and by breeding organizations. The dove's classroom habitat is in a silver cage with a bar, food, water dish, and a box to sleep in. The dove's geographic range started in Asia and has spread to Africa and Europe and then on to the New World. The food in the classroom is birdseed and water, the food in the wild includes worms, moths, crickets, earthworms, chopped vegetables and fruits, and birdseed. The predators of the dove are snakes and other bigger birds.
The dove lays up to three eggs. The eggs take three weeks to hatch. The dove can live up to twenty years old. The dove cares for its young by staying with the young until the doves are old enough to fly by themselves. Then the mother dove will leave the baby doves.
The dove I did my report on has a ring around its neck, it eats with its eyes closed. When you pet the dove's head the dove closes its eyes. When the dove coos, its head moves up and down. At Christmas time some people use two turtle doves to represent their love for each other.
The doves are also related to the pigeons.