The Alpine chough (Pyrrhocorax graculus) is a bird in the crow family, one of two species in the genus Pyrrhocorax. Its two subspecies breed in high mountains from Spain east through southern Europe and North Africa to Central Asia, India and China. It has nested at 6,500 m (21,300 ft), higher than any other bird species, and its eggs have adaptations that improve oxygen intake and reduce water loss at these altitudes. This bird has glossy black plumage, a yellow bill, and red legs. Widely spread flight feathers allow acrobatic manoeuvres. A large bird with distinctive whistling calls, it pairs for life and displays fidelity to its breeding site, usually a cave or crevice in a cliff face. Building a lined stick nest, it lays three to five brown-speckled pale beige eggs. It feeds on fruit in winter and mainly invertebrate prey in grazed grassland in summer. Although some localised populations have declined due to predation, parasitism and changes in agricultural practices, this widespread and abundant species is not threatened globally. Climate change may present a long-term threat by shifting the bird's alpine habitat even higher.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_chough

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1818:

On the first anniversary of its victory in the Battle of Chacabuco, Chile formally declared its independence from Spain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_Declaration_of_Independence

1855:

Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, was founded as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the United States' first agricultural college. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_State_University

1912:

Xinhai Revolution: Puyi, the last Emperor of China, abdicated under a deal brokered by military official and politician Yuan Shikai, formally replacing the Qing Dynasty with a new republic in China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puyi

1946:

Black United States Army veteran Isaac Woodard was severely beaten by a South Carolina police officer to the point that he lost his vision in both eyes, an incident that galvanized the Civil Rights Movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Woodard

1993:

Two-year-old James Bulger was led away from New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle, England, and brutally murdered by two ten-year-old boys, who became the youngest convicted murderers in modern English history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

gravitational wave: (physics) A fluctuation in spacetime caused by accelerating mass, which propagates as a wave at the speed of light. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gravitational_wave

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Slavery, I can not but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world; enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty; criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action.   --Abraham Lincoln https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln