Feature Channels: Birds

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How did birds get their wings? Bacteria may provide a clue, say scientists.

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The primary threat to vultures is the presence of toxins in the carrion they consume. Losses of vultures can allow other scavengers to flourish. Proliferation of such scavengers could bring bacteria and viruses from carcasses into human cities.

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How birds' beaks evolved characteristic shapes to eat different food is a classic example of evolution by natural selection.

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A UD research team is studying the Atlantic brant goose in Canada’s Hudson Bay region. The bird's population has been on a moderate decline, and the team is looking to seen if limitations during the summer breeding season have accelerated that trend.

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Researchers from Vetmeduni Vienna for the first time collected quantified data on hybrid forms of two species of the northern house mosquito in eastern Austria. The reproductive hybrid feeds – in contrast to the two known species of house mosquito – on the blood of both birds and humans. Hybrid mosquitoes could therefore serve as a vector for the transmission of avian diseases to people. Identification of the three forms is only possible through molecular biology. Morphologically they are indistinct. The study was published in the journal

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Multiple dispersals of penguins reached Australia after the continent split from Antarctica, including 'giant penguins' that may have lived there after they went extinct elsewhere, according to a study published April 26, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Travis Park from Monash University, Australia, and colleagues.

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New research based on high-resolution x-ray movies reveals that despite having extremely underdeveloped muscles and wings, young birds acquire a mature flight stroke early in their development, initially relying heavily on their legs and wings to work in tandem to power the strenuous movement. The new study, published today in the journal PLOS ONE, is important for understanding the development of flight in modern birds and reconstructing its origins in extinct dinosaurs.

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A new study from WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) and TRAFFIC underlines Singapore's role as a leading transit hub for birds from Africa and Europe to East Asia and the Middle East, and highlights serious discrepancies in the way this trade has been recorded over a decade.

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In groundbreaking new work, Natalie Wright, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Montana, has discovered a predictable trend in the evolution of bird shape.

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Extensive testing of malarial DNA found in birds, bats and other small mammals from five East African countries revealed that malaria has its roots in bird hosts. It then spread from birds to bats and on to other mammals.

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Birds living in urban environments are smarter than birds from rural environments. But, why do city birds have the edge over their country friends? They adapted to their urban environments enabling them to exploit new resources more favorably then their rural counterparts, say a team of all-McGill University researchers.

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UA researcher Julie Miller believes birds can help us understand the genetics behind language problems associated with Parkinson's disease.

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White storks are addicted to junk food and make round-trips of almost 100km to get their fix – according to new research from the University of East Anglia.

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Cornell researchers have quantified what makes the New Caledonian crow's beak different and how it got that way. Their findings were published March 9, 2016 in the journal Scientific Reports.

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University of Utah scientists identified two genes that make some pigeon breeds develop feathered feet known as muffs, while others have scaled feet. The same or similar genes might explain scaled feet in chickens and other birds, and provide insight into how some dinosaurs got feathers before they evolved into birds.

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Wake Forest University researchers tested how woodpecker pairs perceived drumming to see how it influenced territorial interaction and coordination of defensive behavior.

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The courtship and mating behaviors of the perky Australian red-backed fairy-wren have evolved into nothing short of a free-for-all. The rampant promiscuity of both sexes is legendary. What’s a fairy-wren to do to keep from wasting energy raising another male’s chicks? New research from scientists at the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology provides a surprising answer: Sing with your mate.

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Young male bluebirds may gain an evolutionary advantage by delaying breeding and helping out their parents' nests instead, according to new research led by Caitlin Stern of the Santa Fe Institute.

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X-ray scans reveal that dodo's relative brain size was similar to pigeons, likely had enhanced sense of smell.

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The dodo, an extinct bird popularly recognized for its stupidity that may have led to their quick extinction, may actually have been fairly smart, at least as smart as a common pigeon. This finding is based on a study led by Eugenia Gold of Stony Brook University, and published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

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Biodiversity in bird communities indicates healthier ecosystems and may also be connected to local human communities' wellbeing. Michigan Tech researcher David Flaspohler looks at how bird diversity relates to bioenergy.

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A single toe bone found on Ellesmere Island in the 1970s is described for the first time.

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A research wildlife biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and the executive director of Boise State University’s Intermountain Bird Observatory have teamed up with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game to create a series of motion-sensitive camera traps to monitor golden eagle migration and distribution in southwest Idaho.

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Young penguins suffer at feeding time due to an inflexible division of parental duties.

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The whooping crane, with its snowy white plumage and trumpeting call, is one of the most beloved American birds, and one of the most endangered. As captive-raised cranes are re-introduced in Louisiana, they are gaining a new descriptor: natural killer. A new study from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, suggests Louisiana cranes are faring well thanks in part to their penchant for hunting reptiles and amphibians.

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A new species of bird has been discovered in northeastern India and adjacent parts of China by a team of scientists from Sweden, China, the U.S., India and Russia.

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A songbirds’ vocal muscles work like those of human speakers and singers, finds a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

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A North Dakota State University faculty member is among a group of international researchers studying why older parents produce offspring who tend to have shorter lives. Britt J. Heidinger, assistant professor of biological sciences at NDSU, Fargo, has joined colleagues in Scotland to address this question through the study of a long-lived seabird, the European shag. The results appear in "Parental age influences offspring telomere loss," published in Functional Ecology.

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NMSU professor and student are part of a research team studying sandhill crane migration at New Mexico wintering locations. Satellite transmitters are affixed to the cranes and provide 12 GPS fixes per day and last 3 to 5 years. The study began solely on the cranes’ wintering grounds in the Middle Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico but has since expanded.

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University of Delaware researchers have used underwater robotics to better understand foraging competition between Adelie and Gentoo penguins.

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Mathematical simulations at the University of Utah show parasitic flies may spell extinction for Darwin’s finches in the Galapagos Islands, but that pest-control efforts might save the birds that helped inspire the theory of evolution.

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A new study led by the American Museum of Natural History links modern birds to a "feathered father" that lived in South America some 90 million years ago.

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Snail kites are important for at least two reasons: Bird enthusiasts flock to see them in their natural habitat, so they’re a bit of a tourist magnet. Secondly, wildlife managers use the snail kite as a barometer for conservation actions to preserve the Everglades, said Robert Fletcher, a UF/IFAS associate professor of wildlife ecology and conservation.

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Wisdom, a Layman albatross, is the world’s oldest living tracked bird at age 64. She has been spotted with a mate on her return to the Midway Atoll national wildlife refuge to lay an egg.

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Eagles feasting on winterkill fish aren’t an inspiring sight to most young women, but they were to Anne Schaefer. The outing was fieldwork for an ornithology class at South Dakota State University that set Schaefer on the path to becoming an avian research assistant at the Prince William Sound Science Center in Cordova, Alaska.

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A joint study from the University of Iowa and the University of California-Davis found pigeons performed as well as humans in categorizing digitized slides and mammograms of benign and malignant human breast tissue. Results published in the journal PLOS One.

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Vulture populations - which contribute to the safe disposal of wasting cattle caucuses - have declined by 97%. WVU, National Geographic will help tag, track and strengthen population numbers.

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A new study in Nature Communications by Luis Ossa, Jorge Mpodozis and Alexander Vargas, from the University of Chile, provides a careful re-examination of ankle development in 6 different major groups of birds, selected specifically to clarify conditions in their last common ancestor.

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Wild birds will sacrifice access to food in order to stay close to their partner over the winter, according to a study by Oxford University researchers.

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People feeding white ibises at public parks are turning the normally independent birds into beggars, and now researchers at the University of Georgia say it might also be helping spread disease.

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The evolution of male songbirds as the colorful consorts of drab female partners is more complicated than long thought, says a McMaster researcher on a team that looked at nearly 6,000 species for a massive study published in the journal Nature.

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A new study led by Colorado State University finds that the West Nile virus is killing birds — more so than previously thought — in the short- and long-term.

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A study in the Nov. 2 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is the first to fully document the demographic impacts of West Nile virus on North American bird populations. Data from bird-banding stations shows more species were hit than suspected, and half of those have yet to recover.

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The rapid extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago gave rise to a stunning variety of bird species over the next few million years, according to Florida State University researchers.

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This study shows that some of the earliest birds from the Late Jurassic were capable of aerodynamic prowess like many present-day birds.

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Research into the lives – and deaths – of young rusty blackbirds could help scientists learn more about the complex connections between human activities and the well-being of rapidly declining species, according to a study published today (Oct. 7, 2015) in the journal, “The Condor: Ornithological Applications.”

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Can owls and loggers get along? A recent study conducted in Primorye in the southern Russian Far East suggests it’s not only possible, but essential for endangered Blakiston’s fish owls to survive there. The study was conducted by the WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society), the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the University of Minnesota.