The bird’s circadian clock ticks from birth. It informs the bird when it is the right time to breed, the best time to change feathers (molt), and, in some bird species other than parrots, the best time to fly south for the winter (no, birds don’t fly South like Daffy because they are cold). It is also a calendar (circannual) clock, in that it keeps very accurate track of the month of the year. It is called their diurnal, circadian or photoperiodic clock and it keeps track of the hours of the day. It may surprise you that deep inside your parrot there is a clock.
It has everything to do with a natural hormonal rhythm that all birds maintain. Normal molt has nothing to do with temperature or new feathers pushing out old ones. It has only been in the last few years that the process has begun to be understood. But the basic mechanism of parrot feather molt remains the same. Parrots are less exacting because they come from areas where the temperature is tropical all year long and food is always available. These birds have evolved to have their molts at exactly to the right season – when food is plentiful, their babies have flown away and the weather is mild. Some birds live in harsh climates or depend on food sources that are only available periodically. It is a very complex process that has been difficult to sort out and fully understand. Parrots have the same molt mechanisms that all birds share. What causes birds to molt has intrigued scientists for years. What Causes Parrots And Other Birds To Molt? By only loosing a few body feathers at a time, the bird also stays protected from the chill of rain and cold air. This allows birds to continue to fly balanced while they are molting. That means that when one or two feathers are lost and replaced on one wing, the same feathers are lost and replaced on the other. All birds loose their feathers symmetrically.
The fluffy base portion is called the afterfeather. The feathery sides or vane are composed of individual barbs, which are, themselves, covered with smaller barbules that keep them “zippered” together. The central shaft of the feather is composed of a hollow base – called the quill or calamus and the remaining portion of the shaft called the rachis. Under the contour body feathers are the fluffy down feathers that provide insulation. The feathers that cover the bird’s body and give it its shape are called contour feathers. The base of these wing feathers are covered with shorter ones called coverts. The longest feathers of the wings are called primary feathers or flight feathers, the shorter wing feathers, secondary feathers. Scientists who study feathers give different types of body feathers different names. When the shaft of a feather on your bird is still alive, it will have a purple-blue color and it will bleed profusely if it gets injured. What Are Feathers Composed Of?Īlthough feathers start out alive as pinfeathers, when they are fully formed, like your hair, they are dead and cannot be repaired. They have all told me that there are big gaps in what we know about the molt process. The US NIH funds this research because of its interest in how human body organs might be regenerated.
Current research on how feathers develop is centered at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and Arizona State University. Fortunately, the basic mechanisms and life processes are very similar between birds. But since no scientific experiments use parrots as their subjects, I have had to use my personal observations and to reach out for information to birds that have been studied. Even then, this article may be a yawn to most parrot owners – I got deeper into feathers than most veterinarians do during my days working with penguins, display macaws and cockatoos at SeaWorld. In this article, I put detailed stuff that most bird owners probably don’t care about in a smaller, italicized font. Even with careful preening, the feathers get frazzled and crimped from the wear and tear of ordinary activity. However, after about a year, these delicate structures wear out. To learn more about parrot nutrition go hereįeathers are a bird’s most precious possession – beautiful and complex structures that give the gift of flight and insulate their bodies. To learn more about why some parrots pull out their own feathers, go here Is This A Wild Bird? If So, This Links To All Of Dr. All About Your Parrot’s Feathers The Causes of Molt, Feather Problems And What You Can Do About Them
0 kommentar(er)
