PhysOrg

New research led by academics at Royal Holloway, University of London, has revealed how the moisture-resistance of bird eggshells has evolved to thrive in different environments.View the full article

Noisy miners are familiar to many of us on Australia's east coast as plucky gray birds relentlessly harassing other birds, dive-bombing dogs and people—even expertly opening sugar packets at your local café.View the full article

After thousands of gallons of oil poured into the Pacific Ocean following the October 2 spill, agencies and volunteers have worked around the clock to mitigate the damage and stop the spread.View the full article

Overhunting depleted the population of American bison from tens of millions to fewer than 1,000 in the span of just the 19th century. With conservationists and ranchers recently reintroducing the species to U.S. grasslands, though, the American bison now numbers in the hundreds of thousands.View the full article

Life was never easy for the Pacific Coast's western snowy plover.View the full article

Seabirds from Gough Island in the south Atlantic, Marion Island near Antarctica and the coasts of both Hawaii and Western Australia have a dangerous habit: eating plastic. Across 32 species of seabirds sampled from around the globe, an international team from 18 institutions in seven countries found that up to 52% of the birds not only ate plastic, but also accumulated the plastic's chemical components in their bodies.View the full article

Thirteen years after Vermont lost the ignominious distinction of being the only state in the continental United States without any breeding pairs of bald eagles, the state is moving to remove the iconic national symbol from its list of threatened and endangered species.View the full article

Yellow warblers are hosts to brood parasitic brown-headed cowbirds, which rely on other species to raise their offspring. Warblers use referential "seet" calls to warn female warblers specifically of the brood parasitic brown-headed cowbirds that may try to lay eggs in their nests. When exposed to experimental playbacks of seet calls one day, female warblers were more vigilant the next morning, researchers report in the current issue of the journal Biology Letters.View the full article

Human-altered landscapes often bring hardships for wildlife—unless you're a vulture, according to a new study by University of Georgia researchers.View the full article

In the Green Swamp of Polk County, Florida, Paul Sykes heard a sound that raised the hairs on the back of his neck. The sharp honk may have sounded, to a layperson, like a stepped-on squeaky toy. But to Sykes, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist then based in Delray Beach, it sounded like the recordings he'd heard of the spectral ivory-billed woodpecker.View the full article

A scientific explanation for those battles over the air conditioning remote control: Researchers at Tel Aviv University's School of Zoology offer a new, evolutionary explanation for the familiar scenario in which women bring a sweater into work, while their male counterparts feel comfortable wearing short sleeves in an air-conditioned office. The researchers concluded that this phenomenon is not unique to humans, with many male species of endotherms (birds and mammals) preferring a cooler temperature than the females.View the full article

The sight of ducklings paddling in a line behind their mother is a common sight in rivers and ponds across the country.View the full article

Whether birds get caged in the eye of a hurricane may depend on the intensity and totality of the chaos beyond the calm, says a novel study from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln's Matthew Van Den Broeke.View the full article

A Texas company's plans to drill for oil in the Everglades may have a tougher time winning approval, now that an administration that's skeptical of fossil fuels has taken over in Washington.View the full article

New Jersey's tidal marshes aren't keeping up with sea level rise and may disappear completely by the next century, according to a study led by Rutgers researchers.View the full article