English: Trichoglossus haematodus (Linnaeus, 1771) - the rainbow lorikeet (“lorie”) (captive, Columbus Zoo, Powell, Ohio, USA).

This bird is probably the most beautifully colored parrot on Earth (other contenders include the New World scarlet macaw, Ara macao - blog.sunvil.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Scarlet-Maca..., and Australia’s eastern rosella, Platycercus eximius - www.flickr.com/photos/jeluba/15793082295). Rainbow lories crush flowers in their beaks & feed on the squeezed-out juices.

Classification: Animalia, Chordata, Vertebrata, Aves, Psittaciformes, Psittaculidae

Natural distribution: eastern Australia & southwestern Pacific islands.

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Birds are small to large, warm-blooded, egg-laying, feathered, bipedal vertebrates capable of powered flight (although some are secondarily flightless). Many scientists characterize birds as dinosaurs, but this is consequence of the physical structure of evolutionary diagrams. Birds aren’t dinosaurs. They’re birds. The logic & rationale that some use to justify statements such as “birds are dinosaurs” is the same logic & rationale that results in saying “vertebrates are echinoderms”. Well, no one says the latter. No one should say the former, either.

However, birds are evolutionarily derived from theropod dinosaurs. Birds first appeared in the Triassic or Jurassic, depending on which avian paleontologist you ask. They inhabit a wide variety of terrestrial and surface marine environments, and exhibit considerable variation in behaviors and diets.