Facts And History About The Peacock English Language Essay

Peacocks belong to the pheasant family, Phasianidae. There are three species, or types, of peacock-the blue (or Indian) peacock, the green (or Javanese) peacock, and the Congo peacock. The only peacocks that have trains of tail feathers are the males of the blue and green types.

Peacocks usually live in lowland forests. At night they sleep in trees. The blue peacock comes from southern Asia, while the green peacock comes from southeastern Asia. The Congo peacock is found in central Africa.

In both the blue and green types, the male’s body is about 35 to 50 inches (90 to 130 centimeters) long. Its train of metallic green tail feathers is about 60 inches (150 centimeters) long. Each tail feather has a shining spot at the end of the feather that looks like an eye. A crest, or tuft of feathers, tops the male’s head. The peahen of both these species is green and brown. It is almost as big as the male.

Male blue and green peacocks put on a showy display when trying to attract mates. The peacock lifts its train and spreads it like a fan. It then struts about and shakes its train, making the feathers shimmer and rustle.

The Congo peacock is mainly blue and green. Its tail is short and rounded. The peahen is reddish and green.

Source:

Peacock. (2011). In Britannica Junior Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 22, 2011, from Britannica Online for Kids: http://kids.britannica.com/ elementary/ article-9353606/Peacock

Green Invaders April 18, 2008

Green invaders are taking over America. Nope, not invaders from space. Plants. You might not think of plants as dangerous, but in this case they are threatening nature’s delicate food web.

The invaders are plants from other countries brought here to make gardens and yards look pretty.  Ever since people started to arrive on America’s shores, they’ve carried along trees, flowers, and vegetables from other places.

Now there are so many of those plants, they are crowding out the native plants that have lived here since before human settlers arrived.

And that’s a problem, says Dr. Doug Tallamy. He’s an entomologist (an insect expert) at the University of Delaware. He explains that almost all the plant-eating insects in the United States-90% of them-are specialized. That means they eat only certain plants.

Monarch butterfly caterpillars, for example, dine on milkweed. If people cut down milkweed and replace it with another plant, the butterflies will not have the food source that they need to survive.

But the trouble doesn’t stop there, it goes right across the food web. When insects can’t get the right plants to eat and they die off, then the birds don’t have enough bugs for their meals. Tallamy points out that almost all migrating birds depend on insects to feed their young. “We cannot let the plants and animals around us disappear,” says Tallamy. “The way to preserve them is to give them food to eat. But when we plant non-native plants, we are clobbering the food web, because then we don’t have the insects the birds need to live.”

Fewer of the right plants mean fewer bugs, and fewer bugs mean fewer birds. And that’s bad for the Earth, because we need a variety of living things to keep the planet healthy and beautiful.

The good news is, gardeners everywhere are working hard to protect native plants and get rid of the invaders. Many local garden centers sell native plants. “Just Google ‘native plants’ and your location, and you can find out which plants really belong where you live,” says Tallamy.

Planting the right things makes a real difference, and fast. He describes planting milkweed in a tiny city courtyard about the size of a living room one spring. By summertime, that milkweed patch had produced 50 new monarch butterflies!

Tallamy encourages kids to go out and plant native plants. “Adopt a bird species in trouble and see if you can’t plant some things that will attract the insects they need,” he suggests. “It will happen-insects move around a lot, and they will find the plants you put out there for them!”

Text by Catherine Clarke Fox

Fox, C. (2008). Green invader. Retrieved January 22, 2011, from national geographic kids: http://kids.nationalgeographic.com /kids /stories/animalsnature/

Chomp! Meat-Eating Plants March 14, 2007

“I want people to get passionate about plants,” says Lisa Van Cleef about a new exhibit at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers. “Everybody gets excited about the zoo and animals, but once you start looking at plants you find they have a lot going on, too!”

Especially the carnivores, or meat eaters, that use the sneakiest of tricks to trap their insect dinners. Take bladderworts, for example. They appear so small and delicate growing in a quiet pond. But these are the fastest-known killers of the plant kingdom, able to suck in unsuspecting mosquito larvae in 1/50 of a second using a trap door!

Once the trap door closes on the victim, digestive enzymes similar to those in the human stomach slowly consume the insect. When dinner is over, the plant ejects the remains and is ready to trap again. Carnivorous plants grow in places with soil that doesn’t offer much food value. “You and I could take a vitamin pill,” says Van Cleef. “But these amazing plants have had to evolve over thousands of years, developing insect traps to get their nutritional needs met. Just look at all they’ve done in the fight to survive.” 

The traps can be well-disguised to fool the eye, like pitcher plants, which get their name because they look like beautiful pitchers full of nectar.

The Asian pitcher plant, for example, has a brightly colored rim and an enticing half-closed lid. Curious insects are tempted to come close and take a sip, then slide down the slippery slope to their deaths.

Hair-like growths along the pitcher walls ensure that nothing can scramble out, and the digestive enzymes can get to work. A tiny insect called a midge might be digested in a few hours, but a fly takes a couple of days.

Some of these pitchers are large enough to hold two gallons (7.5 liters). Carnivorous plants only eat people in science fiction movies, but once in a while a small lizard, rodent, or bird will discover that a pitcher plant isn’t a good place to get a drink. Other plants have found different ways to grab a bite. Sundewsand butterworts snag snacks with flypaper-like stickiness, while the Venus flytrap snaps shut on its victims.

Carnivorous plants grow mostly in wet areas, from sea level to the mountains. They may seem exotic, but if you live in the United States, you don’t have to travel to faraway lands to see some. North America has more carnivorous plant genera than any other continent.

If you can’t travel to the exhibit in San Francisco, check out a carnivorous plant guidebook from your local library, and you may discover some growing in your neck of the woods!

Fox, C. (2007). Chomp! meat-eating plants. Retrieved January 22, 2011, from national geographic kids: http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/ stories/ animalsnature/meat-eating-plants/

Basic Rule

All lines after the first line of each entry in your reference list should be indented one-half inch from the left margin. This is called hanging indentation.

Authors’ names are inverted (last name first); give the last name and initials for all authors of a particular work for up to and including seven authors. If the work has more than seven authors, list the first six authors and then use ellipses after the sixth author’s name. After the ellipses, list the last author’s name of the work.

Reference list entries should be alphabetized by the last name of the first author of each work.

If you have more than one article by the same author, single-author references or multiple-author references with the exact same authors in the exact same order are listed in order by the year of publication, starting with the earliest.

When referring to any work that is NOT a journal, such as a book, article, or Web page, capitalize only the first letter of the first word of a title and subtitle, the first word after a colon or a dash in the title, and proper nouns. Do not capitalize the first letter of the second word in a hyphenated compound word.

Capitalize all major words in journal titles.

Italicize titles of longer works such as books and journals.

Do not italicize, underline, or put quotes around the titles of shorter works such as journal articles or essays in edited collections.

Please note: While the APA manual provides many examples of how to cite common types of sources, it does not provide rules on how to cite all types of sources. Therefore, if you have a source that APA does not include, APA suggests that you find the example that is most similar to your source and use that format. For more information, see page 193 of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, sixth edition.

In-Text Citations: Author/Authors

Summary: APA (American Psychological Association) is most commonly used to cite sources within the social sciences. This resource, revised according to the 6th edition, second printing of the APA manual, offers examples for the general format of APA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the reference page. For more information, please consult the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th edition, second printing.

Contributors:Elizabeth Angeli, Jodi Wagner, Elena Lawrick, Kristen Moore, Michael Anderson, Lars Soderlund, Allen Brizee, Russell Keck

Last Edited: 2010-11-16 02:10:54

APA style has a series of important rules on using author names as part of the author-date system. There are additional rules for citing indirect sources, electronic sources, and sources without page numbers.

Citing an Author or Authors

A Work by Two Authors: Name both authors in the signal phrase or in the parentheses each time you cite the work. Use the word “and” between the authors’ names within the text and use the ampersand in the parentheses.

Research by Wegener and Petty (1994) supports…

(Wegener & Petty, 1994)

A Work by Three to Five Authors: List all the authors in the signal phrase or in parentheses the first time you cite the source.

(Kernis, Cornell, Sun, Berry, & Harlow, 1993)

In subsequent citations, only use the first author’s last name followed by “et al.” in the signal phrase or in parentheses.

(Kernis et al., 1993)

In et al., et should not be followed by a period.

Six or More Authors: Use the first author’s name followed by et al. in the signal phrase or in parentheses.

Harris et al. (2001) argued…

(Harris et al., 2001)

Unknown Author: If the work does not have an author, cite the source by its title in the signal phrase or use the first word or two in the parentheses. Titles of books and reports are italicized or underlined; titles of articles, chapters, and web pages are in quotation marks.

A similar study was done of students learning to format research papers (“Using APA,” 2001).

Note: In the rare case the “Anonymous” is used for the author, treat it as the author’s name (Anonymous, 2001). In the reference list, use the name Anonymous as the author.

Organization as an Author: If the author is an organization or a government agency, mention the organization in the signal phrase or in the parenthetical citation the first time you cite the source.

According to the American Psychological Association (2000),…

If the organization has a well-known abbreviation, include the abbreviation in brackets the first time the source is cited and then use only the abbreviation in later citations.

First citation: (Mothers Against Drunk Driving [MADD], 2000)

Second citation: (MADD, 2000)

Two or More Works in the Same Parentheses: When your parenthetical citation includes two or more works, order them the same way they appear in the reference list, separated by a semi-colon.

(Berndt, 2002; Harlow, 1983)

Authors With the Same Last Name: To prevent confusion, use first initials with the last names.

(E. Johnson, 2001; L. Johnson, 1998)

Two or More Works by the Same Author in the Same Year: If you have two sources by the same author in the same year, use lower-case letters (a, b, c) with the year to order the entries in the reference list. Use the lower-case letters with the year in the in-text citation.

Research by Berndt (1981a) illustrated that…

Introductions, Prefaces, Forewords, and Afterwords: When citing an Introduction, Preface, Foreword, or Afterwords in-text, cite the appropriate author and year as usual.

(Funk & Kolln, 1992)

Personal Communication: For interviews, letters, e-mails, and other person-to-person communication, cite the communicators name, the fact that it was personal communication, and the date of the communication. Do not include personal communication in the reference list.

(E. Robbins, personal communication, January 4, 2001).

A. P. Smith also claimed that many of her students had difficulties with APA style (personal communication, November 3, 2002).

Citing Indirect Sources

If you use a source that was cited in another source, name the original source in your signal phrase. List the secondary source in your reference list and include the secondary source in the parentheses.

Johnson argued that…(as cited in Smith, 2003, p. 102).

Note:When citing material in parentheses, set off the citation with a comma, as above.

Electronic Sources

If possible, cite an electronic document the same as any other document by using the author-date style.

Kenneth (2000) explained…

Unknown Author and Unknown Date: If no author or date is given, use the title in your signal phrase or the first word or two of the title in the parentheses and use the abbreviation “n.d.” (for “no date”).

Another study of students and research decisions discovered that students succeeded with tutoring (“Tutoring and APA,” n.d.).

Sources Without Page Numbers

When an electronic source lacks page numbers, you should try to include information that will help readers find the passage being cited. When an electronic document has numbered paragraphs, use the ¶ symbol, or the abbreviation “para.” followed by the paragraph number (Hall, 2001, ¶ 5) or (Hall, 2001, para. 5). If the paragraphs are not numbered and the document includes headings, provide the appropriate heading and specify the paragraph under that heading. Note that in some electronic sources, like Web pages, people can use the Find function in their browser to locate any passages you cite.

According to Smith (1997), … (Mind over Matter section, para. 6).

Note: Never use the page numbers of Web pages you print out; different computers print Web pages with different pagination.