Sea Birds

This remarkably well-preserved horned lark died toward the end of the last ice age

This Bird Froze 46,000 Years Ago. Now, It Can Tell Scientists About the Last Ice Age

A likely ancestor of today’s horned larks, the specimen was preserved in pristine condition by permafrost

The red-breasted nuthatch eavesdrops on chickadee conversations to get advanced notice of predators like pygmy owls.

Nuthatches Heed Chickadees' Warning Calls—but They're Wary of False Alarms

Nuthatches prefer to check the facts before they 'retweet' chickadees' alerts

'Directional Velcro' on birds' feathers prevent gaps from forming between them when hit by a gust of wind.

‘PigeonBot’ Uses Real Feathers to Fly Like a Bird

The flying robot is better at following directions than its namesake

These scavenging bird could use a lesson or two in manners.

Vulture Poop Has Compromised a Customs and Border Protection Radio Tower in Texas

Officials are scrambling for a solution to the fecal fiasco

Researchers now have video evidence that Atlantic puffins can use sticks as tools to scratch their backs.

In a First, Scientists Film a Puffin Scratching Itself With a Stick

Behold the first evidence of tool use in seabirds

The North Island brown kiwi is a flightless, nocturnal bird that lays the biggest egg relative to its body size.

What Bird Lays the Biggest Eggs Compared to Its Body Size? Where Does 'Lame Duck' Come From? And More Questions From Our Readers

You've got question. We've got experts

See a Bald Eagle and Octopus Tangled in Epic Battle

The big cephalopod was winning until the humans intervened

New York is the largest city to implement legislation requiring bird-friendly construction.

New York Is Poised to Require Bird-Friendly Glass on All New Buildings

Each year, up to a billion birds in the United States die from glass collisions

Invasive Mice Are Gnawing the Scalps of Endangered Albatrosses

The mice already kill an estimated 2 million seabird chicks per year, but they now target breeding adults

One scientist, Dave Willard, took the measurements of the 70,716 bird specimens in this study and recorded them by hand into ledgers like this. This photo shows one of Willard's ledgers, his measuring tools, and a Tennessee Warbler.

Climate Change May Be Causing Birds to Shrink—and Their Wings to Grow

The phenomenon was ‘shockingly’ consistent across a variety of bird species, according to the authors of a new study

An image from Birds of America by John James Audubon depicting the Great Auk.

Humans May Be Solely to Blame for the Great Auk’s Extinction

A new study suggests that the flightless birds were not declining due to environmental changes when humans began to hunt them in large numbers

Birds Sniff Each Other's Bacteria to Help Choose a Mate

A new study finds the microbiome in a bird's preen oil determines its scent, which can impact its reproductive success

A steppe eagle with an SMS tracker attached.

Text Messages Sent by Roaming Eagles Bankrupt Scientific Study

A steppe eagle named Min spent months out of range before reappearing in Iran and sending hundreds of expensive SMS texts

Why Did Thousands of Rubber Bands Show Up on an Uninhabited Cornish Island?

Nesting gulls have likely been trying to feed the bands found in nearby flower fields to their chicks for decades

Birds are considered an indicator species, representing the health of entire ecosystems.

North America Has Lost Nearly 3 Billion Birds Since 1970

The staggering population loss of 29 percent of North American birds could signal an ecological crisis

Birds given doses of a common pesticide lost significant body mass, fat stores

Common Pesticides Delay Songbird Migration, Trigger Significant Weight Loss

Within six hours of ingesting a high dose of pesticide, sparrows lost six percent of their body weight and 17 percent of their fat stores

A Human-Sized Penguin Once Waddled Through New Zealand

The leg bones of Crossvallia waiparensis suggest it was more than five feet tall and weighed up to 176 pounds

The Scientists Who Stared at Gulls

A new study suggests that watching the birds as they approach will slow them down or scare them off

Members of the control group showed none of the behavioral and physiological changes seen among the experimental clutches

Unhatched Bird Embryos Communicate With Siblings by Vibrating Their Shells

Baby seabirds exposed to nestmates' warnings exhibit behavioral and physiological adaptations designed to help avoid predators

The tough little egg made it all the way through the digestive system of a coscoroba swan like this one.

A Swan Swallowed This Fish Egg, Pooped It Out—and Then 49 Days Later, It Hatched

The new study is one of the first to demonstrate fish egg dispersal via avian fecal matter

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