With the emphasis on staying at home, more and more people are discovering the birds in their backyards—and they want to know the names of those birds. The free Merlin Bird ID app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology was designed to answer the simple question, “What’s that bird?
Answers to questions about any bird species, anywhere on Earth, may be found in a new digital publication from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology called Birds of the World.
According to a new study, Zebra Finches exposed to low levels of environmental PCBs as nestlings show changes in breeding behavior as adults.
Three new species of toothed pterosaurs — flying reptiles of the Cretaceous period, some 100 million years ago — have been identified in Africa by an international team of scientists led by Baylor University.
The world's animal distribution map will need to be redrawn and textbooks updated, after researchers discovered the existence of 'Australian' species on Christmas Island.
A new study of North American birds from Washington University in St. Louis finds that the regional stability of ecosystems over time depends on both the total number of species present in a locality and on the variation in species identities among localities.
What do you get when you combine what bird-watchers observe with what satellites see from space? Something spectacular.
The eBird program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology just released more than 500 animated maps spanning the entire Western Hemisphere. The maps show in fine detail where hundreds of species of migratory birds travel and how their numbers vary with habitat, geography, and time of year.
Scientists have recovered DNA from a well-preserved horned lark found in Siberian permafrost.
By watching videos of each other eating, blue tits and great tits can learn to avoid foods that taste disgusting and are potentially toxic, a new study has found.
New research by neuroscientists at the University of Chicago uses a unique model — the intricate mating songs of birds — to show how the intrinsic properties of neurons are closely tied to the complex processes of learning.
A Mississippi State researcher is co-leading a new network of more than 100 wildlife scientists and land managers from across the U.S. to monitor and aid birds along the Gulf of Mexico.
Researchers have for the first time found a connection between the immune systems of different bird species, and the various climatic conditions in which they live.
This year’s Great Backyard Bird Count begins on Valentine's Day, Friday, February 14, and continues through Monday, February 17. Volunteers from around the world count the birds they see for at least 15 minutes on one or more days of the count, and then enter their checklists at birdcount.org.
A new study finds that many species of animals and plants likely will need to migrate under climate change, and that conservation efforts will also need to shift to be effective.
When nearly one million common murres died at sea and washed ashore from California to Alaska in 2015 and 2016, it was unprecedented — both for murres, and across all bird species worldwide. Scientists from the University of Washington, the U.S. Geological Survey and others blame an unexpected squeeze on the ecosystem's food supply, brought on by a severe and long-lasting marine heat wave known as "the blob."
Unprecedented numbers of common murres—North Pacific seabirds—died between 2015 and 2016. A new analysis lays out the scope of this event and suggests a potential culprit: severely reduced food supplies resulting from unusually elevated sea temperatures.
The first animal study of a pig virus’s potential to jump to another species shows that the virus, once introduced to a select group of birds, is easily transmitted to healthy chickens and turkeys.
A database of 10,000 bird species shows how measurements of wings, beaks and tails can predict a species' role in an ecosystem.
Hummingbirds are some of the most brightly-colored things in the entire world.
A research team led by Associate Professor Frank Rheindt from the National University of Singapore found five bird species and five subspecies new to science in three small island groups off Sulawesi, Indonesia. The islands are situated in Indonesia’s Wallacea region, an archipelago at the interface between the Oriental and Australian biogeographical realms, named after Sir Alfred Wallace.
UC San Diego researchers studied nearly 900 vertebrate species and found that bats have unusual gut microbiomes that more closely resemble those of birds than other mammals, raising questions about how evolutionary pressures change the gut microbiome
Evaporation ponds, commonly used in many industries to manage wastewater, can occupy a large footprint and often pose risks to birds and other wildlife, yet they’re an economical way to deal with contaminated water. Now researchers at Berkeley Lab have demonstrated a way to double the rate of evaporation by using solar energy and taking advantage of water’s inherent properties, potentially reducing their environmental impact. The study is reported in the journal Nature Sustainability.
When departments collaborate across campus, good things happen.
When Israeli conservation scientists looked at trends of common bird populations over the last 15 years, they found that invasive bird species are thriving, and native ones are largely declining. They present the reasons for these changes, and flag the importance of strategies to mitigate the spread of non-native birds.
Mammals inhale oxygen-rich air and they exhale depleted air, exhibiting a so-called tidal flow pattern. In contrast, bird breath travels through part of the respiratory system, but in a one-way loop throughout most of the lung. Biologists have discovered that Savannah monitor lizards have lung structures that are hybrid system of bird and mammal lungs.
Millions of people from around the world can now witness a rare sight in real time: a Northern Royal Albatross pair nesting and raising their chick. The live views originate from a coastal albatross colony in Otago, on South Island, New Zealand, and are made possible by a new partnership between the country's Department of Conservation (DOC) and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Thrips don’t rely on lift in order to fly. Instead, the tiny insects rely on a drag-based flight mechanism, keeping themselves afloat in airflow velocities with a large ratio of force to wing size. In a study published in this week’s Journal of Applied Physics, researchers performed the first test of the drag force on a thrip’s wing under constant airflow in a bench-top wind tunnel. Drawing from experience in microfabrication and nanomechanics, they created an experiment in which a thrip’s wing was glued to a self-sensing microcantilever.
National Park Service scientists analyzed nearly 1 million 10-second audio recording samples from national parks across the country and discovered a small increase in bird sound detection when an aircraft sound is also detected. During the 178th ASA Meeting, Kurt Fristrup will present the findings and how human responses to noise might be studied.
Cornell University researchers have found that colder temperatures during tree swallows' development stage has an effect on swallows later in life.
Researchers from Queen’s University Belfast have found noise pollution is threatening the survival of more than 100 different species.
Coordinated behavior is common in a variety of biological systems, such as insect swarms, fish schools and bacterial colonies. But the way information is spread and decisions are made in such systems is difficult to understand. A group of researchers from Southeast University and China University of Mining and Technology studied the synchronized flight of pigeon flocks. They used this as a basis to explain the mechanisms behind coordinated behavior, in the journal Chaos.
Calling all shutterbug bird lovers: The BirdSpotter Photo Contest is back—always a popular feature of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Project FeederWatch. The contest runs through March 12, with many great prizes available for biweekly winners and final Grand Prize winners. The contest is sponsored by Wild Birds Unlimited.
In ancient Egypt, Sacred Ibises were collected from their natural habitats to be ritually sacrificed, according to a study released November 13, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Sally Wasef of Griffith University, Australia and colleagues.
Secrets hidden in more than 300,000 index cards with hand-written information about nesting birds are gradually being revealed. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is partnering with Zooniverse, an online people-powered research tool, to digitize this valuable collection and create the largest database of nesting bird information in the U.S. This new effort is called "Nest Quest Go!"
The generation of species-specific singing in songbirds is associated with species-specific patterns of gene activity in brain regions called song nuclei, according to a study published November 12 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Kazuhiro Wada of Hokkaido University in Japan, and colleagues.
After pairing up and raising chicks, males and females of some bird species spend their winter break apart. At the end of their journey to Central or South America, you might find mostly males in one habitat, and females in another. Yet conservation strategies have typically overlooked the habitats needed by females, putting already-declining species in even more peril.
Hurricanes can destroy nesting sites, reduce ocean oxygen, increase beetle populations inland
Research on zoo animals focuses more on "familiar" species like gorillas and chimpanzees than less well known ones like the waxy monkey frog, scientists say.
Vampire bats could be said to be sort of like people – not because of their blood-sucking ways, but because they help their neighbors in need even if it’s of no obvious benefit to them.
Wildlife disease ecologist Jeff Foster of Northern Arizona University is partnering with researchers throughout the world to study the spread of white-nose syndrome, which was discovered in North America in 2006. Researchers believed it migrated from Europe and has continued moving west.
Birds use odor to identify other birds, and researchers at Michigan State University have shown that if the bacteria that produce the odor is altered, it could negatively impact a bird's ability to communicate with other birds or find a mate.
There are many shortfalls in knowledge of the world's biodiversity, and one of the most basic is the lack of knowledge about where species occur geographically. This deficiency has broad ramifications for research and conservation. This study, published in Ecography, suggests that the development of citizen science programs to collect data by volunteers has the potential to reduce this shortfall.
The U.S. population of eastern mallards – dabbling ducks with distinctive green heads – has plunged inexplicably by 50 percent in the last 20 years, causing scientists to launch research into the birds’ productivity, changes in their habitat and their genetic diversity.
Researchers have discovered a previously unknown virus infecting nearly a third of America’s bald eagle population. Scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, USGS and the Wisconsin DNR found the virus while searching for the cause of Wisconsin River Eagle Syndrome, an enigmatic disease endemic to bald eagles near the Lower Wisconsin River. The newly identified bald eagle hepacivirus, or BeHV, may contribute to the fatal disease, which causes eagles to stumble and have seizures.
A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by biologists at the University of Chicago and the University of North Carolina explains how sexual cooperation in species that form long-term pair bonds.
Anthropogenic noise pollution (ANP) is a globally invasive phenomenon impacting natural systems, but most research has occurred at local scales with few species. Researchers in this study investigated continental‐scale breeding season associations with ANP for 322 bird species to test whether local‐scale predictions related to breeding habitat, migratory behavior, body mass, and vocal traits are consistent at broad spatial extents for an extensive group of North American bird species in the continental United States.
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