Aves  

is the class of warm-blooded vertebrates, commonly called birds. This class of animals has around 10 000 species worldwide, grouped into 29 orders (see below, sometimes less depending on which classification used). Birds are recent arrivals in the animal world and evolved probably from dinosaurs. The first known specie is only 150 million years old, a fossil find, which shows both characteristics of a dinosaur (toothed beak) and a modern bird (feathers). After the mass extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, one group of dinosaur / bird is thought to have escaped it and being the true avian ancestor. The birds as known today evolved roughly 5-10 million years ago.

Their most important features, which distinguish them from other animals are their feathers, toothless bills and vocals. Their most important trait is that all of them can fly or like in the case of some birds, like the ostriches and kiwis could so in their recent past. Adaptations to flight greatly influenced their evolutionary process till they became the most efficient flying vertebrates. To achieve that, profound changes had to take place, like forelimbs fusing into wings, bones becoming light and hollow, feathers covering the body and the wings. Flight also enables them like no other animal to move around freely without any major geographical restrictions and large migrations of birds take place every year. One bird, the Arctic Tern, covers every year 50 000km moving from the Arctic to the Antarctic continent.

Like their reptile ancestors, birds lay eggs for reproduction but in contrast all bird eggs are hard-shelled. Having this kind of external reproduction has the advantage that the female bird is not hindered by extra weight, which would make flying difficult or impossible. After the young hatch, the parents take care of their offspring feeding them till they can survive on their own. Sexual maturity is reached quickly. Birds are highly adapted animals and are found on all continents and in all ecosystems from polar regions to the driest deserts and feeding on any possible food items.

Avian Classification


Below you find a classification of the bird world with 29 avian orders, based mostly on their internal anatomy. New fossil finds and advances in behavioral studies and new techniques in DNA tracing and biochemistry question often those classifications and quite a few more tables exist and try to group our feathered friends.

No

No

No

No

No 

No

Note:  All scientific bird orders end in -formes, where else the families which make up the orders end in -idae. Then follow  the genus and at last comes the species, which are defined as birds which can reproduce among themselves. Sub species further separate the birds and are birds which could reproduce but for various reasons do not.

Note 2: The No beside the orders means that no representatives are found in Ecuador.

Most of the information were taken from the following books,
which I recommend to anybody interested in birds:


THE BIRDS OF ECUADOR    Field Guide
by Robert Ridgely & Paul Greenfield

THE BIRDS OF ECUADOR    Status, Distribution & Taxonomy 
by Robert Ridgely & Paul Greenfield

THE SIBLEY GUIDE to Bird Life & Behavior  by David Allen Sibley

THE LIFE OF BIRDS by David Attenborough