Telluraves Telluraves Telluraves (also called land birds or core landbirds) is a recently defined clade of birds with controversial content. Based on most recent genetic studies, the clade unites a variety of bird groups, including the australavians (passerines, parrots, seriamas, and falcons) as well as the afroavians (including the Accipitrimorphae – eagles, hawks, buzzards, vultures etc – owls and woodpeckers, among others). They appear to be the sister group of a newly defined clade centered on Aequornithes. Given that the most basal extant members of both Afroaves (Accipitrimorphae, Strigiformes) and Australaves (Cariamiformes, Falconiformes) are carnivorous, it has been suggested that the
The Birds (film) as they carefully escort Melanie to the car past a mass of birds nearby. The car slowly makes its way through a landscape in which thousands of birds are ominously perching. Residents in the town of Capitola, California awoke on August 18, 1961 to find sooty shearwaters slamming into their rooftops and their streets covered with dead birds. News reports suggested domoic acid poisoning (amnesic shellfish poisoning) as the cause. According to the local "Santa Cruz Sentinel", Alfred Hitchcock requested news copy in 1961 to use as "research material for his latest thriller". At the end of the same month,