“Upupa, ilare uccello calunniatodai poeti, che roti la tua crestasopra l’aereo stollo del pollaioe come un finto gallo giri al vento;nunzio primaverile, upupa, comeper te il tempo s’arresta,non muore più il Febbraio,come tutto di fuori si protendeal muover del tuo capo,aligero folletto, e tu lo ignori” Eugenio Montale – “Ossi […]
N. Emilio Baldaccini
11 posts
The three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) is a small fish made particularly famous by the studies that Niko Tinbergen carried out on it, so much so that it is considered a true icon of the behavioral sciences. Certainly, on the same level of Konrad Lorenz’s geese and Karl von Frisch’s bees, […]
The Wren (Troglodytes troglodytes) is a small, plump, finely striped brown bird, with a proud and impertinent appearance that does not reach 10 centimeters in length. The short tail is constantly held up, helping to give it a vague brawler-like air. If its song is decidedly strong and melodious, with […]
Usually, the bird’s nest is a construction with specific characters aimed at reproductive behaviour. It is often found in the male’s territory and can thus be the center of its activities in every season. Other times it is something ephemeral, done just to lay eggs, hatch them and then leave […]
Eels grow in the fresh waters of rivers and lakes but reproduce in the oceans. Several species are known, all very similar to each other, both in the Atlantic and in the Pacific, capable of moving for thousands of kilometers, with migration systems that are among the most complex that […]
Mammals are animal species that have evolved from pre-existing reptiles in the terrestrial environment, undergoing extraordinary adaptive radiation [1]. But the lands are surrounded by seas, extremely productive ecosystems [2], and biodiversity that is unmatched on land. Thus some groups of them have started, in remote geological eras, a process […]
No man can bathe in the same river twice, because neither man nor the waters of the river are the same. (Heraclitus) Rivers build themselves over time. Their waters marry the orography of the areas they cross, looking for a road, not always the shortest, towards the mouth. They merge […]
Falconry may have begun before the 2nd millennium in tribes living between Middle East and Central Asia, because of hunting purposes and afterwards it spread towards east and then west. However, some people think that the real value of falconry, more than being a mere hunting style, consists in devoting […]
The visual and behavioral characteristics of the Common kingfisher have certainly not gone unnoticed and so, since ever, popular imagination has given these birds virtues and magical powers that certainly did not help their conservation, making them the object of hunting and easy hunting techniques: a viscous substance placed near […]
Migration is a completely dynamic phenomenon that over time has evolved in parallel with changing environmental and climatic conditions in particular. To maintain its character of survival strategy, the adaptive changes that migration must face are therefore continuous. As a result, the different species must optimize their movement strategies in […]