Bird
Birds (class Aves) are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic (warm-blooded), egg-laying, vertebrate animals. With around 10,000 living species, they are the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. All present species belong to the subclass Neornithes, and inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from the 5 cm (2 in) Bee Hummingbird to the 2.75 m (9 ft) Ostrich. The fossil record indicates that birds emerged within theropod dinosaurs during the Jurassic period, around 160 million years (Ma) ago. Paleontologists regard birds as the only clade of dinosaurs to have survived the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 65.5 Ma (million years) ago.
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Famous quotes containing the word bird:
“And the one bird singing alone to his nest,
And the one star over the tower.
I thought of our little quarrels and strife,
And the letter that brought me back my ring;
And it all seem’d then, in the waste of life,”
—“Owen” “Meredith” (1831–1891)
“The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“What bird so sings, yet so does wail?
O, ‘tis the ravished nightingale!
“Jug, jug, jug, jug, tereu,” she cries,
And still her woes at midnight rise.
Brave prick-song! who is’t now we hear?
None but the lark so shrill and clear;”
—John Lyly (1553–1606)