h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Dmitri, I loved those videos! Just a technical point: most of those are Australian Magpies. Which aren't 'real' magpies! They are another of those birds who've been inaccurately named after something familiar by newcomers to a specific region ... so European folks arrived in Australia and saw these crow/magpie-like birds and called them magpies. They're actually something quite different! They belong to an Australasian group which includes birds such as Butcherbirds and Currawongs ... they're also related to Wood-Swallows, which again are not at all related to 'real' swallows! Those birds look like swallows, like shrikes, and like crows and magpies, but it's a case of convergent evolution ... they live in the same way and so came to look somewhat the same. But they are indeed all very, very intelligent! And ... indeed, the woodswallow/butcherbird/currawong/Ozzie magpie family are distantly related to crows and magpies (along with a HUGE bunch of other birds) and so are placed in the crow superfamily, or Corvoidea ... so, they're corVOIDS rather than corVIDS. It's a bit similar with the orioles ... what we have here in Africa (also Asia and Europe) are the 'real' orioles, while what you folks in America call orioles, are actually members of the Icteridae, an amazingly diverse New World family that has 'mimics' of various bird types of the 'old world' as well as some quite unique things. Interestingly (well if you're a science nut like me), 'real' orioles are also corvoids, while icterids are actually passeroids ... closer relatives of sparrows, finches and strangely enough, wagtails.

That's great! See, my essay on magpies, while inaccurate, still brings out the behaviour I was encouraging in the first place.

And that's really interesting! So our Baltimore Orioles aren't 'real' orioles? They're pretty birds, though, and we enjoy them.

I confess to not being much of an ornithologist. I DID have one course shy of an undergraduate major in biology (my degree is really in German), and Elektra has her bachelor's in biology, but our professors concentrated on ethology and genetics, so we're weak on some areas, such as birds and plants.

Heh heh! All birds are pretty to me whatever they're called! But it's a major aspect of what I'm trying to learn about birds (and other living things), figuring out their relationships, indeed their entire evolutionary histories. I don't have any degree in biology, zoology or botany, I'm just interested in all of this!

And yes, all birds are pretty - even buzzards.

Buzzards, and vultures! Anyways again thanks for those videos. I love the one playing with the dog and the vids of them singing! That's a big difference between the Ozzie magpies and the 'real' ones ... the real ones don't really sing, but make 'chuck-chuck' and other crow-like sounds, while the Ozzie magpies have those incredible complex songs.

Ah, that's it. .