PhysOrg

After being pushed to the brink of extinction, California condors have returned to a slice of Northern California habitat for the first time in 130 years. On Tuesday, four of the big birds flew the coop after being born in a captive-breeding program.View the full article

A wild fox that breached an enclosure at Washington's National Zoo killed 25 flamingos and one duck before escaping, the facility said Tuesday, one month after a rabid fox went on a biting spree near the Capitol.View the full article

Sleep deprived Australian magpies are tired and unmotivated, just like humans, according to new research from La Trobe University in Melbourne which has found that, after a poor night's sleep, the common black and white songbird shifts their normal singing from twilight to midday, have a reduced song bandwidth and struggle with cognitive tasks.View the full article

Climate change is already affecting plants and animals worldwide and is a growing threat to biodiversity, adding a new layer to the existing challenges of habitat loss, invasive species, pollution, and overexploitation.View the full article

A Colorado prison inmate has become the first person in the U.S. to test positive for bird flu in a recent outbreak that has led to the deaths of millions of chickens and turkeys, but federal officials say they still see little threat to the general public.View the full article

Growing up in a small community has its advantages, but if you want to learn from world experts, you may have better luck in a big city. This is the case in the world of birds as well. Large populations of birds might be better able to maintain complex songs than small populations—all because of access to high-quality tutors.View the full article

University of Manitoba researchers have published a paper that challenges the way we think about airspace. By equipping some migratory birds with a GPS backpack, the biologists provided new and crucial data to a burgeoning idea that argues airspace is a habitat and we need to conserve it, an idea that is gaining support in municipal governments across Canada, including most recently in Winnipeg.View the full article

Australian rainforests and bird communities remain under threat following the catastrophic 2019-2020 bushfire season, new UNSW Sydney research shows.View the full article

Bird species that live in wooded areas are under stress from human-caused changes to forest composition, according to new research led by Oregon State University that quantifies the effects of forest "degradation" on bird habitat.View the full article

Evolutionary biologist Danielle Whittaker has a turkey vulture–size bone to pick with John James Audubon, the well-known artist and Audubon Society namesake.View the full article

If you want to be a scientist, you're going to have to do a lot of reading.View the full article

During the COVID-19 lockdowns, an increase in people taking an interest in birdwatching revealed our deep need to connect with nature and community during stressful times. It demonstrated the link between engagement with the natural world and social activism.View the full article

Trees of the species Pouteria bullata, which is endemic to Brazil and whose common name is guapeva-vermelha, are found solely in the Atlantic Rainforest biome and produce sweet succulent fruit.View the full article

There are more and more threatened species by the impact of human activity and about a million of them are estimated to be endangered if the rate of biological extinction does not stop. Over the last fifty years, the global rate of extinction of the species and ecological destruction has been of 60% worldwide, according to the 2019 report by the UN Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).View the full article

A team of researchers affiliated with a large number of institutions in the U.S. has attempted to determine the vulnerability of bird populations to alternative energy production. In their paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the group describes studying the impact on bird populations in California.View the full article

After two years of pandemic lockdowns and border closures, global travel appears to be rebounding in much of the world in 2022. Wilderness is a big tourist attraction—but do countries that protect their natural environments earn a payoff in tourism revenues?View the full article

With climate change, plastic pollution and a potential sixth mass extinction, humanity has made some incredible messes in the world.View the full article

The next time you find yourself walking across campus, take a moment to stop or slow down and observe the many living things that call Western's vast land their habitat. And while you're at it, take a picture.View the full article

The U-shaped relationship between diet and size in modern land mammals could also stand for "universal," says a new study, which has found that the relationship spans at least 66 million years and a range of vertebrate animal groups.View the full article

Crows and ravens are well known for their black color and the harsh "caw" sound they make. They are intelligent birds that use tools, solve complex abstract problems and speak a volume of words.View the full article

The BirdCast program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is exploring bird migration—one of the greatest, mostly unseen spectacles of nature—with its new Migration Dashboard, which reveals bird movements in localized detail previously unavailable to the general public.View the full article

An international team of paleontologists has discovered remarkable new evidence that pterosaurs, the flying relatives of dinosaurs, were able to control the color of their feathers using melanin pigments.View the full article

Protected areas such as national parks have a "mixed impact" on wildlife, according to the largest ever global study of their effects.View the full article

In the race to avoid runaway climate change, two renewable energy technologies are being pushed as the solution to powering human societies: wind and solar. But for many years, wind turbines have been on a collision course with wildlife conservation. Birds and other flying animals risk death by impact with the rotor blades of turbines, raising questions about the feasibility of wind as a cornerstone of a global clean energy policy. Now, a pair of animal tracking studies from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of East Anglia, UK, has provided detailed GPS data on flight behavior of birds that are susceptible to collision with energy infrastructure. The first, a large-scale study of 1,454 birds from 27 species, has identified hotspots in Europe where birds are particularly at risk from wind turbines and power lines. The second zoomed in on how birds behave when flying near turbines, revealing that individuals will actively avoid turbines if they are within one kilometer. By tracking the movement of birds with high precision GPS devices, both studies provide the detailed biological data needed to expand renewable energy infrastructure with minimal impacts to wildlife.View the full article

Non-biting midges are the tiny flies that swarm together as thick masses around lakes and streams, annoying passers-by in warm weather. But early in a midge's life, it lives in the water. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology have observed that non-biting midge larvae accumulate contemporary pesticides from polluted water and retain the substances into adulthood. As a result, animals that eat the adult flies could consume small amounts of pesticides daily.View the full article