Monday, August 21, 2006

The Bufflehead (Bucephala albeola) is a small sea duck of the genus Bucephala, the goldeneyes. They are 32-39 cm long, with the drakes larger than the females.
Adult males have a dark head with a large white cap behind the eye and a mainly white body with a black back. Adult females have a brown head with a smaller white patch behind the eye and a mainly brown body.
Bufflehead (female) their breeding habitat is wooded lakes and ponds in Alaska and Canada. They nest in cavities in trees, often using old Flicker nests.
They are migratory and most winter in protected coastal waters or open inland waters on the east and west coasts of North America and the southern United States. Bufflehead is an extremely rare vagrant to Western Europe.
These diving birds forage underwater. They eat aquatic insects, crustaceans and plants.
Buffleheads do not tend not to collect in large flocks; groups are usually limited to small numbers (less than 10).

Friday, August 04, 2006

Language
A language is a system of arbitrary signals, such as voice sounds, gestures or written symbols which communicate thoughts or feelings.Human spoken and written languages can be described as a system of symbols and the grammars by which the symbols are manipulated. The word "language" is also used to refer to common properties of languages and to communicate to other person.
Language learning is normal in human childhood. Most human languages use patterns of sound or gesture for symbols which enable communication with others around them. There are thousands of human languages, and these seem to share certain properties,feelings even though many shared properties have exceptions.

There is no defined line between a language and a dialougue, but Max Weinreich is credited as saying that "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy;" in other words, the distinction between a language and a dialect of a language is as much due to political divisions as it is because of cultural differences, distinctive writing systems, or mutual intelligibility.