Home on the Range
Posted by jesse on June 6, 2003
Q: How old can birds get before they die?
A: It's not easy to keep track of birds, so one can know their age, but captive birds can easily be aged and even wild birds that are banded or are easy to identify can be aged too. For most birds in the wild, one or two years is about as long as they live, but there are exceptions.
A captive American Robin is known to have lived 17 years, a pigeon recorded as living 29 years, and a captive Canada Goose as much as 42 years. The oldest bird I was able to find was a Great-horned Owl that is reported, not confirmed, to have lived almost 100 years!
John Wiessinger ( June 7, 2003)
Filed under: Ecology