The Wright Brothers studied bird flight before they designed the first airplane. Now modern aircraft fly higher and faster than any bird, yet no manufactured device matches the graceful movements and ...

Explore the colors of songbird migration in a photo essay that displays the ways distance and timing affect plumage. In late summer and autumn, millions of birds fly above our heads, often at night, ...

Birds boast some of the most vibrant colors among terrestrial animals. Our pretty avian friends have inspired our Democrat and Chronicle photographers for years and captured the imaginations of many ...

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Charles Darwin is most famous for his finches, from whose beaks he gleaned the idea that a single species might radiate into many. But he studied other attributes of birds, too—like the rhythmic ...

More than 99% of birds can fly. But that still leaves many species that evolved to be flightless, including penguins, ostriches, and kiwi birds. In a new study in the journal Evolution, researchers ...

Nature's changes are fascinating. Birds are no exception, with some species transforming their feather colors with the ...

Researchers found that the iridescent shimmer that makes birds such as peacocks and hummingbirds so striking is rooted in an evolutionary tweak in feather nanostructure that has more than doubled the ...

The fossilized head crest of a pterosaur with evidence of feathers. Cincotta, A. et al. Nature (2022) Paleontologists studying a well-preserved head crest belonging to a species of pterosaurs say the ...

Feather mites are microscopic arthropods that inhabit the plumage and skin of birds, occupying specific microhabitats on their hosts. These mites exhibit extraordinary morphological diversity and host ...

Although they look dramatically different, carrion crows and hooded crows are almost indistinguishable genetically, and hybrid offspring are fertile, but the two forms remain distinct mostly due to ...