Of all the classes in the animal kingdom, birds represent the best known. There are in total about 8600 living species, and the systematic study of this class is more or less complete. Extensive observations - to a large extent by amateur ornithologists - with respect to geographical distribution, life cycles, demands on and adaptations to the environment, breeding habits, migration, and so forth have contributed towards basic and more widely relevant knowledge, e. g., in the areas of ethology, ecology, and evo- lution and also in social biology (Hilprecht 1970; Farner and King 1971)....