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Trees and cities are not rivals—at least, no longer entirely. The ambitious tree-planting programs we have witnessed in cities over the past years are proof of urban dwellers' passion for them.View the full article -
A Johns Hopkins University researcher can continue medical experiments on barn owls after a lengthy battle with the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals over animal cruelty and permit complaints.View the full article
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Animals are more likely to mate in warmer environments, a study analyzing the impact of climate change on reproductive behavior has found.View the full article
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In a study, published in Science Advances, an international team of researchers have identified 28 gene regions that have been particularly important in the evolution of Darwin's finches. These genetic variants do not represent recent mutations but constitute ancestral genetic variation that has accumulated over time as different species of Darwin's finches have evolved with striking differences in beak morphology.View the full article
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A recent survey in northern Victoria uncovered a record number of plains wanderers—small, quail-like birds that live only in eastern Australia grasslands, and represent an ancient lineage of birds that evolved in Gondwana more than 100 million years ago.View the full article
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Hamilton's rule—the mathematical relation quantifying the idea that genetically related subjects are more likely to help each other, even at the expense of their own survival—has been observed in many animal species, but it had yet to be tested in financial decision-making contexts. Now, in a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, MIT Sloan School of Management Prof. Andrew W. Lo and Hebrew University School of Business Prof. Moshe Levy have found strong support for this rule in an experiment involving monetary transactions among human subjects with varying degrees of genetic relatedness.View the full article
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Swans give up resting time to fight over the best feeding spots, new research shows.View the full article
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Australia's largest wild bird sample collection has been established by experts around the nation, including a Deakin University researcher. Here's what it's showing about zoonotic disease.View the full article
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Migratory birds have been called the super-athletes of the animal kingdom because of the remarkable endurance they display during hours-long, non-stop flights that can span thousands of kilometers. Their endurance is made possible by several unique physiological adaptations that allow birds to fuel long bouts of high-intensity exercise with fat rather than less energy-dense and less storable carbohydrates on which mammals rely. Now, a new study published in Scientific Reports is raising concern that a globally ubiquitous pollutant, methylmercury (MeHg), may be hindering the rates at which birds can burn fat during migratory flights and subsequently replenish fat stores during stopovers.View the full article
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A committed and lucky birdwatcher in Alaska may see an elusive bluethroat north of the Brooks Range, catch a glimpse of the bold markings on a harlequin duck as it zips along an Interior river, encounter all four species of eider in Utqiaġvik, or take in the sounds of thousands of feeding shorebirds in the Copper River Delta.View the full article
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A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in China, the U.S. and Germany has found evidence that suggests that colorful ventral wings help colonizing birds to avoid running into one another. In their paper published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the group describes comparing ventral wing colors from 1,780 bird species comprising 75% of orders.View the full article
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Due to the possibility that bird flu viruses could mutate and gain the ability to spread easily between people, avian influenza poses a significant pandemic threat to birds and humans alike. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been monitoring for illness among humans exposed to infected birds since outbreaks were detected in poultry and wild bird populations in late 2021-2022. As of July 5, 2022, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported 40.09 M birds in 36 U.S. states to be infected with highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI).View the full article
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The Arctic Tern migrates an extraordinarily long way—from pole to pole. And while this bird is unique in the distance it traverses, its excellent sense of direction is shared by many other animals that use a variety of environmental factors to optimize their routes. In a new review paper in EPJ Special Topics, Roswitha and Wolfgang Wiltschko from the Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, outline how animals use internal compasses to navigate and the mechanisms they are likely to use to determine the direction of their destination. These can be applied when developing effective navigation systems for robots. View the full article
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Sipping a coffee on your way to work is a ritual most people take for granted without thinking about how the delicious coffee beans reached their cup. You probably know it comes from tropical regions. But what is less well-known is that coffee is the product of an incredible partnership between the birds and the bees.View the full article
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Researchers at the University of Oxford have found that hawks control their flight to ensure the safest landing conditions when perching, even if it takes longer and more energy to do so. Understanding how birds optimise their landing manoeuvres through learning may help in developing small aircraft capable of perching like birds.View the full article
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Seabird reserves in northeast England and Scotland have been closed to visitors after a suspected outbreak of bird flu, officials said on Friday.View the full article
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Researchers led by members of Oxford University's Department of Biology have found rare colonies of the wild ancestors of common domestic and feral pigeons.View the full article
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When most people are just getting home from their workdays, I'm about to start mine. I am a researcher studying the breeding behavior of the Eastern whip-poor-will (Antrostomus vociferus), a cryptic bird that is primarily active after sunset as it forages on the wing for moths. So—for the summer, at least—I also am nocturnal.View the full article
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Songbirds learning from nearby birds that food supplies might be growing short respond by changing their physiology as well as their behavior, research by the Oregon State University College of Science shows.View the full article
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Many bird species fly together with conspecifics in flocks to safely cover flight distances. To avoid collisions with each other and head in the same direction, flock members have to communicate and coordinate their flight positions. Researchers led by Susanne Hoffmann from Manfred Gahr's department at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence investigated how this communication takes place in zebra finches. In their study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, they found that zebra finches use both vision and calls to coordinate their flight positions and avoid collisions.View the full article
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A quartet of researchers at the University of Oxford's Department of Zoology has found that a careful look at the way large birds perch could perhaps lead to improvements in the ways that drones are programmed to land. In their paper published in the journal Nature, Marco KleinHeerenbrink, Lydia France, Caroline Brighton and Graham Taylor describe their close analysis of perching by Harris hawks and what they learned about how and why they land on perches the way they do.View the full article
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Tropical forest covers 12% of the planet's land surface yet hosts around two thirds of all terrestrial species. Amazonia, which spans the vast Amazon River basin and the Guiana Shield in South America, is the largest extent of remaining tropical forest globally, home to more species of animal than any other terrestrial landscape on the planet.View the full article
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The evening grosbeak, a noisy and charismatic songbird, once arrived at Oregon State University in springtime flocks so vast an OSU statistics professor estimated there were up to a quarter million of the birds on campus daily.View the full article
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The BirdNET app, a free machine-learning powered tool that can identify over 3,000 birds by sound alone, generates reliable scientific data and makes it easier for people to contribute citizen-science data on birds by simply recording sounds.View the full article
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House sparrows (Passer domesticus) have adapted to urban environments, which are changing and growing faster than ever before. A range of both biotic and abiotic factors—including habitat fragmentation, changing food availability, heavy metals, nighttime light, noise and urban density—change the way birds live in an urban environment. Understanding how cities affect birds can help scientists understand and predict how bird populations may change in the future and help birds and humans coexist.View the full article
