ARTHUR'S Birds Water    CLIPART

  Geese

This free water bird clip art is of large format and is suitable for presentations and projects and school usage for both students and educaters etc. The large images are too big for use on the internet. However you may use the thumbnail clip art pictures for web pages. Selections of both colour and black and white clip art are available, tha latter are suitable for coloring books. Please do not use them in any other collections of clipart. To download a thumbnail left click on the picture and then "Save As" to a directory of your choice. To download the full size image, first right click on the thumbnail and then left click on the full size image and "Save As" to a directory of your choice. Seabirds are birds that have adapted to life within the marine environment. While seabirds vary greatly in lifestyle, behaviour and physiology, they often exhibit striking convergent evolution, as the same environmental problems and feeding niches have resulted in similar adaptations. The first seabirds evolved in the Cretaceous period, and modern seabird families emerged in the Paleogene. In general, seabirds live longer, breed later and have fewer young than other birds do, but they invest a great deal of time in their young. Most species nest in colonies, which can vary in size from a few dozen birds to millions. Many species are famous for undertaking long annual migrations, these birds of water filter through the migrations, crossing the equator or circumnavigating the Earth in some cases. They feed both at the ocean's surface and below it, and even feed on each other. Seabirds can be highly pelagic, coastal, or in some cases spend a part of the year away from the sea entirely. Waders, called shorebirds in North America (where "wader" is used to refer to long-legged wading birds such as storks and herons), are members of the order Charadriiformes, excluding the more marine web-footed seabird groups. The latter are the skuas (Stercorariidae), gulls (Laridae), terns (Sternidae), skimmers (Rhynchopidae), and auks (Alcidae). Also, the pratincoles (Glareolidae) and the Crab Plover (Dromadidae), which bear greater resemblance to waders, are closely related to the seabirds. This leaves about 210 species, most of which are associated with wetland or coastal environments. Many species of Arctic and temperate regions are strongly migratory, but tropical birds are often resident, or move only in response to rainfall patterns . Some of the Arctic species, such Little Stint are amongst the longest distance migrants, spending the non-breeding season in the southern hemisphere

NOT FOR COMMERCIAL USE