Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Strauss

Strauss, Strauß or Straus is a typical Germanic surname. Outside Germany and Austria Strauß is constantly spelled Strauss. The families utilizing the Strauss name speak to a hereditarily changed gathering of individuals of both Jewish and Germanic inception. The name has been utilized by families as a part of the Germanic range for at any rate a thousand years. The overlord of Gröna for instance, passed by the name of Struz and utilized the picture of an ostrich as his image. Illustrations of it could at present be seen on the thousand-year-old church chime of that town. "Struz" or "Strutz" is the North-German type of the saying "Strauss", which is the current German word for an "Ostrich". A percentage of the most punctual Jewish bearers of the name hailed from the Judengasse in medieval Frankfurt, where families have been known by the name of the houses they inhabited.all the houses had names and these included Haus Strauss, complete with a picture of an ostrich on the veneer. At the point when, for expense purposes, Napoleon made surnames compulsory in 1808, some more Jewish families chose to embrace the Straus(s) name.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Julie



Julie is a 1975 Hindi film that stars Laxmi in the title role. It also stars Nadira, and Sridevi as a child star. The film became a box office hit. Julie was also a musical hit, with award winning music by Rajesh Roshan which won him the Filmfare Award for the year. It had one of the first English language songs in an Indian film "My Heart is Beating", sung by Preeti Sagar.

It is a rare Hindi film based around an Anglo-Indian family. It is a remake of a Malayalam hit film titled Chattakari, which also starred Laxmi. She would star in yet another remake, the Telugu film Miss Julie Prema Katha. She didn't act in the Kannada remake, released in 2006, which had Ramya in the title role as "Julie" and Dino Morea as the leading man.        

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Yellow-headed Blackbird


The breeding habitat of the Yellow-headed Blackbird is cattail (Typha spp.) marshes in North America, mainly west of the Great Lakes. The nest is built with and attached to marsh vegetation. They nest in colonies, often sharing their habitat closely with the Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus). During the breeding and nesting season the males are very territorial and spend much of their time perched on reed stalks and displaying or chasing off intruders.

These birds migrate in the winter to the southwestern United States and Mexico. They often migrate in huge flocks with other species of birds. These blackbirds are only permanent residents in the USA of the San Joaquin Valley and the Lower Colorado River Valley of Arizona and California. It is an extremely rare vagrant to Western Europe, with some records suspected to refer to escapes from captivity.

These birds forage in the marsh, in fields or on the ground; they sometimes catch insects in flight. They mainly eat seeds and insects. Outside of the nesting period, they often feed in flocks, often with other blackbirds.
This bird's song resembles the grating of a rusty hinge.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

American Bittern


It is a large, chunky, brown bird, very similar to the Eurasian Great Bittern (Botaurus stellaris), though slightly smaller. It is 58–85 cm (23–33 in) in length, with a 92–115 cm (36–45 in) wingspan and a body mass of 370–1,072 g (0.82–2.36 lb).

Although common in much of its range, the American Bittern is usually well-hidden in bogs, marshes and wet meadows. Usually solitary, it walks stealthily among cattails or bulrushes. If it senses that it has been seen, the American Bittern becomes motionless, with its bill pointed upward, causing it to blend into the reeds. It is most active at dusk. More often heard than seen, this bittern has a call that resembles a congested pump.
Like other members of the heron family, the American Bittern feeds in marshes and shallow ponds, dining on amphibians, fish, insects and reptiles.

This bittern winters in the southern United States and Central America. It summers throughout Canada and much of the United States. As a long-distance migrant, it is a very rare vagrant in Europe, including Great Britain and Ireland. This bird nests in isolated places with the female building the nest and the male guarding it. Two or three eggs get incubated by the female for 29 days, and the chicks leave after 6–7 weeks.
No subspecies are accepted today. However, fossils found in the Ichetucknee River, Florida, and originally described as a new form of heron (Palaeophoyx columbiana; McCoy, 1963) were later recognized to be a smaller, prehistoric subspecies of the American Bittern which lived during the Late Pleistocene (Olson, 1974) and would thus be called B. l. columbianus.

This bird's numbers have declined in the southern parts of its range due to habitat loss.

Many of the folk names are given for its distinctive call made by inhaling and exhaling large quantities of air; E. Choate lists "Bogbumper" and "Stake Driver". Pliny likened the old-world bittern's call to the roaring of a bull, "boatum tauri", whence the generic name Botaurus.

To the Cajuns of South Louisiana this bird was known as a "Grobek", and was previously hunted for food, being considered a delicacy.