Birds

If you saw a finch once, chances are you'd have great difficulty picking it out from a group of finches later on. A new AI-based system can do just that, though, potentially making life much easier for both biologists and the birds that they study.

An international team of scientists has turned to swifts for inspiration to produce a bird-inspired drone with flapping wings that can hover, dart, glide and dive, all while weighing the same as two tablespoons of flour.

New research, led by Professor Emily Shepard of Swansea University and Dr. Sergio Lambertucci of the Universidad Nacional del Comahue in Argentina, indicates that the Andean condor only flaps its wings one percent of the time it's in flight.

In its 11th year the National Audubon Society’s annual photo contest continues to deliver a world-class assortment of creative and technically stunning bird photographs. From more than 6,000 submissions here are the ten best from the 2020 competition.

Researchers at Oregon State University (OSU) College of Agricultural Sciences have found that a bird deterrent called a "flapper" could significantly reduce the number of our feathered friends being killed by colliding with power lines.

Climate change threatens to shake up the lifestyles of many animals around the world and a new study involving GPS-tagged birds has revealed that for the American robin these wheels are already very much in motion.

A tiny, 99-million-year-old skull found in a piece of Burmese amber in Myanmar may not only be the smallest known dinosaur of the Mesozoic era, but it could also provide new insights into the evolution of birds.

With their bright plumage, North American coot chicks really stick out. A new study by UC Santa Cruz indicates that such coloration not only serves to get more food out of the parents, but also maximizes the bird's reproductive strategy.

Some birds make beautiful chirps and tweets. But the white bellbird blasts an obnoxious “song” so loud that it sounds almost digital. Now, researchers have measured just how ear-splitting it is – and crowned it the loudest bird call ever recorded.

Researchers from UT Southwestern implanted “memories” into the brains of zebra finches, teaching them to sing a song they’ve never actually heard.

A new study suggests that the total number of North American birds has declined by 29 percent since 1970.

Palaeontologists in New Zealand have now uncovered the remains of Heracles inexpectatus, an extinct giant parrot that would have stood hip-high to most people and packed a beak powerful enough to crack open pretty much whatever it wanted to.