File:Aphelocoma woodhouseii (Woodhouse's scrub jay) (Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA) 3 (49176522317).jpg

Aphelocoma woodhouseii (Baird 1858) - Woodhouse's scrub jay in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA.

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.

Woodhouse's scrub jay principally occurs in the Rocky Mountains area of western America and into Mexico.

Classification: Animalia, Chordata, Vertebrata, Aves, Passeriformes, Corvidae

Locality: Garden of the Gods, between Rampart Range Road & 30th Street, northwestern side of the town of Colorado Springs, northeast of Manitou Springs, western El Paso County, central Colorado, USA (38° 52’ 42.93” North latitude, 104° 52’ 50.00” West longitude)

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