Bird Brain: Over 2,400 Questions to Test Your Bird Knowledge

3  Name one of the flagship species for this year’s (2007) Birdfair.

4  When did the second pair of Choughs start breeding in Cornwall following their recolonisation of that county?

5  Which European country has the largest breeding population of Mute Swans?

6  What did French missionaries in Guadeloupe call the fat chicks of Black-capped Petrel, so that they could eat them during Lent with a clear conscience?

7  Which of the following diseases affect birds – psittacosis, puffinosis, wry neck and Parrot’s disease?

8  What species of hummingbird regularly breeds in Alaska?

9  Which of the following birds does not exist – Baza, Bozo, Besra, Brolga?

10  Which of the following is the most important threat to the Puerto Rican Nightjar – hotel development, wind farms or the cage bird trade?

11  What was the ornithological name of Sir Francis Drake’s ship when he set off to circumnavigate the world in 1577, although it was later changed to The Golden Hind?

12  What was the Birdfair project in 2003?

13  Which of the following species have bred in the wild in the British Isles this century: Rosy-faced Lovebird, Rose-ringed Parakeet, Blue-crowned Parakeet and Monk Parakeet?

14  The oldest known Whimbrel was found injured, bitten by a Cape Fur-seal on Bird Island, Algoa Bay, in South Africa in 2005. How old was it?

15  A chick of which species hatched on 1st January 2007 in a captive breeding programme in Haryana in India at least one year before its parents were expected to breed?

16  What Critically Endangered petrel, unrecorded with certainty since 1929, was photographed in the Coral Sea off Australia in 2006?

17  Which 7th-century hermit has been described as Britain’s first bird conservationist?

18  When do the Pheasant and Partridge shooting seasons end?

19  What sort of bird is a Huet-huet?

20  To what kind of morbidly obese bird was Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School likened?

2007 D

Mark Andrews – ABC

Answers: see here (#litres_trial_promo)

1  What is a Sprosser?

2  Which species bred in London for the first time in 1926 on the derelict site of the Wembley Exhibition?

3  Which book won the BB/BTO Best Bird Book of the Year 2006 award?

4  In which country does the adult Syrian population of Bald Ibises winter (as was recently discovered by satellite tracking)?

5  The average male of which rare British breeding bird can mimic at least 76 other bird species – half of them African?

6  What was the Birdfair project in 2002?

7  Where would you hope to find the Obscure Berrypicker?

8  What disease resulted in a permanent ban on the import of wild birds into the EU in January 2007?

9  What Critically Endangered species was rediscovered after 100 years by a shepherd looking for a lost goat in Peru in 1977?

10  Which of the following birds does not exist – Boubou, Brubru, Bobo, Boobook?

11  Which of the following is the most important threat to the Lear’s Macaw – hotel development, wind farms or the cage bird trade?

12  Which European warbler spends 23.7 minutes per copulation on average?

13  How old was a Lesser Flamingo found dead at Lake Bogoria in Kenya in July 2003 that had been ringed by Leslie Brown and Alan Root as a chick?

14  Roughly how many eggs, to the nearest 5,000, of the Horseshoe Crab does a Knot require per day to sustain it at its fuelling stop in Delaware Bay on its spring migration?

15  A group of Belgians is campaigning to allow the trapping of which songbird because wild birds sing better in cages than captive-bred birds?

16  In 2004, what species of raptor electrocuted itself on power lines at Santa Clarita, Los Angeles, and fell burning to the ground, starting a fire which burnt 2,300 ha, necessitating the evacuation of 1,600 homes?

17  By what name was Poecile palustris formerly known?

18  What is closest relative to the Kagu of New Caledonia on both DNA and morphological evidence?

19  Of Hawaii’s 34 species of Honeycreeper, are 3, 13 or 23 now extinct?

20  The WWF (World Wildlife Fund/Worldwide Fund for Nature) was founded in 1961 by Julian Huxley, Max Nicholson and two other ornithologists. Name one.

2008 A

Martin Fowlie – NBC

Answers: see here (#litres_trial_promo)

1  Which project is being supported by Birdfair this year?

2  Is Lincoln’s Sparrow named after President Abraham Lincoln?

3  Which island in the British Isles has only single records of Goosander, Marsh Tit, Eastern Phoebe and Ancient Murrelet?

4  What Critically Endangered species from Brazil was depicted on last year’s Birdfair poster?

5  Which British bird is potentially under threat from Tree Mallow which has spread in the UK due to amelioration of the climate?

6  What sort of flightless ducks have been found to migrate from the Pacific to the Atlantic via the Bering Strait since 1992?