Bird 37

Bird 37 would not hold still to have her picture taken!

This is ironic because she is usually very calm, and of all the birds in the lab, will let me pick her up with no fight. Today, was a little different.

Unfortunately, I don't know the bird's gender. I tend to call it 'her' because of her gentle nature. So I will continue to speak of her in the feminine until I know for sure. Also, unfortunately, I do not know her preferred partner. Here are her sparse statistics.

Bird 37
Gender: Unknown
Birth date: Unknown (from older group)
Preferred Partner: Unknown

The reason I don't know many of these statistics is that she has been involved in the Second-Order study for the entire time I have worked in the lab. I'll talk more about that study a little later. When the birds are in studies, they are kept in individual cages. This means that they cannot mate and mating has been the main way I have determined gender. Also, they have a controlled amount of food which I believe is not enough for them to produce eggs.

Bird 37's most striking feature is her cere. A cere is the growth of skin at the base of the beak. Some breeds of pigeon have been bred for this characteristic. Ours just have normal ones. But bird 37's is the most well developed. I have tried to research this to see if it is perhaps a gender indicator (maybe males have bigger ones to attract females?), but I have had no luck yet, and further, the other birds don't seem to follow that pattern. But I did manage to get one mostly not blurry picture that shows her cere close up so that you can see how well developed it is.