There are about 10.000 bird species on earth. Birds are feathered warm blooded animals, lay eggs, have vertebrates and have two wings. This makes it possible for them to fly, but not al species can. The bird on this photo is julie, named after Julie Fryer.

Julie is a agapornis. There are 9 species, all living in the tropical rainforest in Africa. Julie is an Agapornis roseicollis, living in trees at the Atlantic coast. two other agapornis species have a special relation to ants. You can read about it here.

In the blog: Love birds living in a tree ant nest

Species

Agapornis are small parrots. Eight of them live in Africa, one (A. canus) lives on Madagascar. Agapornis birds are often called love bird.

1. Agapornis roseicollis, Peach-faced Lovebird
2. Agapornis personatus, Masked Lovebird
3. Agapornis fischeri, Fischer’s Lovebird
4. Agapornis lilianae, Lilian’s Lovebird
5. Agapornis nigrigenis, Black-cheeked Lovebird
6. Agapornis canus, Madagascar Lovebird
7. Agapornis taranta, Abyssinian Lovebird
8. Agapornis pullarius, Red-faced Lovebird
9. Agapornis swindernianus, Black-collared Lovebird

Nesting behavior

The Agapornis roseicolis (see photo) and most of the other species build nests with grass, leaves and twigs. They collect it in the forest by stripping it to smaller pieces. Then these small strips are places in the feathers on the tails. And so they transport the nesting material to the nest. Two species, A. canus and A. taranta use tree holes to  build a nest in. Agapornis pularus has a special relation to some ant species. These love birds dig holes in nests of tree ants and termites.

Arboreal ants

Cameroon is one of the countries where agapornis birds live in the wild. In many trees live tree ants Crematogaster depressa. These ants build nests from leaves. The agapornis birds dig in their holes while ants still live in. Other tree ants or arboreal ants are Crematogaster Atopogyne, Oecophylla longinoda and Tetramorium aculeatum.

Resources

• Evolution of nest-building behavior in Agapornis parrots
• The ants of africa
• Love birds

Sound of Bees

• bee/bee (1).wav
• bee/bee.wav
• bee/bee (2).wav
• bee/bee (3).wav

Sound of crickets

• cricket/cricket.au

Sound of mosquito’s

• mosquito/mosquito (1).wav
• mosquito/mosquito.wav
• mosquito/mosquito (3).wav
• mosquito/mosquito (2).wav

Sound of wasps

• wasp/wasp.wav

• More about insects

Information about some other insects

Ants are insects. In general insects have six legs, a head, thorax and abdomen. There are about 30 million insect species in the world. But there are many species undiscovered. There are estimates that it could be 50 million! This is 90% of all living animals. In this section of Ant-maps.com you find information about other insects.

When I visited Ant colony Ravensheide 88 these lady bugs swarmed around. Thousands of them came out the woods and landed on our noses, hands, bikes… anywhere!

Insect species

• Lady bugs
• Wasps
• Mosquito’s
• Crickets
• Bees