PhysOrg

The medieval Belgian city of Bruges has rounded up dozens of the swans that glide through its picturesque canals to shelter them from the spread of bird flu. View the full article

It hasn't been more than a year and a half since the international researchers' network SPI-Birds started officially. Together they collect, secure and use long-term breeding population data of 1.5 million individually recognizable birds... and counting. Big questions in ecology and evolution can be answered using this data. Today, the publication of SPI-Birds' first scientific paper in the Journal of Animal Ecology coincides with receiving the Dutch Data Incentive Prize for the Medical and Life Sciences. View the full article

Vertebrate populations—from birds and fish to antelope—are not, in general, declining. Despite what has previously been thought and said. View the full article

,City living appears to improve reproductive success for migratory tree swallows compared to breeding in more environmentally protected areas, a new five-year study suggests. But urban life comes with a big trade-off—health hazards linked to poorer water quality. View the full article

Nearly 200 years ago, Charles Darwin noted striking diversity among the finches of the Galapagos Islands, and his observations helped him propose the role of natural selection in shaping species. Today, some biologists focus their attention on a related group of birds, the finch-like capuchino seedeaters of South America, and their studies are deepening our understanding of the forces that drive evolution. View the full article

Picture the Amazon. You're thinking lush rainforests teeming with animals, right? It turns out, the Amazon Basin contains other less-famous ecosystems that have been under-studied by biologists for years, including patches of habitat growing on white sands. Scientists are starting to turn their attention to these "sand forests" and the animals that live there. In a new study, researchers examined birds from the region and found that unlike birds in the dense rainforest, the white sand birds travel from one habitat patch to another and interbreed. It's a characteristic that could change the way conservationists protect the sand forest birds. View the full article

Animals that migrate "live fast and die young", new research shows. View the full article

Albatrosses and petrels are the most threatened group of birds in the world. A new study has now revealed the impact that fisheries and in particular longline fishing is having upon these endangered birds. View the full article

Two hundred years ago, on November 17, Connecticut ship captain Nathaniel Palmer spotted the Antarctic continent, one of three parties to do so in 1820. Unlike explorers Edward Bransfield and Fabian von Bellingshausen, Palmer was a sealer who quickly saw economic opportunity in the rich sealing grounds on the Antarctic Peninsula. View the full article

A trio of researchers at the University of California has found that zebra finches are able to remember up to 42 bird voices based only on their vocalizations. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, K. Yu, W. E. Wood and F. E. Theunissen describe experiments they conducted with captive zebra finches and what they learned about their memory abilities. View the full article

Tristan da Cunha, an island with 245 permanent residents, is creating a marine protection zone to safeguard endangered rockhopper penguins, yellow-nosed albatross and other wildlife in an area of the South Atlantic three times the size of the United Kingdom. View the full article

I've spent more of my life with pardalotes than with most other acquaintances. They are an obscure and odd group of four species of small (thumb-sized) birds. They have little public profile, not helped by the awkward name. But they are quintessentially Australian, occurring nowhere else in the world. View the full article

Scientists have shown that the size and makeup of groups of social birds can predict how efficiently they use and move through their habitat, according to new findings published today in eLife. View the full article

According to a new Finnish study, different groups of insectivores compete for the same type of food. Researchers of the University of Turku, Finland, and the Finnish Museum of Natural History made a discovery by comparing birds, bats and dragonflies that forage in the same area in Southwest Finland. These very distantly related predators consumed the same insect groups, such as flies, mosquitoes, and other dipterans. The results shed new light on the decline in insect populations, because a remarkable portion of insectivores may actually be in greater danger than previously believed. View the full article

If you've ever seen a seagull snatch a pasty or felt their beady eyes on your sandwich in the park, you'd be right to suspect they know exactly when to strike to increase their chances of getting a human snack. View the full article