The unique Oilbirds of South America| Epistolary by Devaanshi,Kolkata+ Cool facts
Today’s write up is an epistolary work, which means in the form of letters by 10 year old Devaanshi from Kolkata about the oilbird +Cool facts.
The unique Oilbirds of South America + Cool facts
Dear Uncle,
Your previous letter is still with me. Apologies for not responding as I was busy with my trip. It’s so lovely in South America that I don’t get time to see the letters.
By the way, do you know that when I went to the jungle for studying the animals with my mates, we saw the most unusual bird! Oilbird was the creature’s name. It was mainly reddish brown with white spots on its nape and wings. Its lower parts were cinnamon-buff with white diamond shaped spots edged in black. These spots started to decrease towards the throat and grew bigger as they reached the back.
Their stiff tail feathers were rich brown spotted with white on either side. I came to know that they are a small nocturnal cave-dwelling creature, which hunts its food by echolocation just like bats and dolphins do. It is also the only flying, fruit- eating nocturnal bird in the world.
The oilbirds forage at night, with specially adapted eyesight. When I searched about them in google, I found out that they favor oily, fatty wax palm and avocado fruits, which they pluck from trees with their formidable-looking hooked beaks. I am not sure whether they migrate but they surely aren’t in broods. And do you know that the oil birds are so oily that people used to boil them to extract their oil and use it as a fuel! It was a strange observation!
It was a jolly good experience knowing about the bird.
Yours Loving
Devaanshi
Read more about it at Audobon here
Cool Fact #2: Oilbird’s body enables it to move around in the dark
Their retinas pack one million rods per millimeter—the highest rod density recorded in any vertebrate—which allows their eyes to take in more light than any other bird’s. And those whiskers, pathetic looking though they might be, actually serve a purpose, providing additional sensory cues that help the Oilbird get around, not unlike many mammals.
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Photo Credit – Copyright Free, Royalty Free images from Canva
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