ScienceDaily

When the bones of an ancient heron were unearthed at a North Florida fossil site, the find wasn't made by researchers but by two Florida Museum of Natural History volunteers. A previously unknown genus and species, the heron has been named Taphophoyx hodgei. View the full article

Research data on bird sightings finds that 56 different parrot species have been spotted in 43 states, and 25 of those species are now breeding in the wild in 23 different states. View the full article

Researchers describe a hitherto unknown bird from the late Jurassic period. It is the second bird capable of flight, after the famous Archaeopteryx, to be identified from this era. View the full article

Researchers have engineered flying robots that behave like hummingbirds, trained by machine learning algorithms based on various techniques the bird uses naturally every day. View the full article

New research has shown that the last surviving flightless species of bird, a type of rail, in the Indian Ocean had previously gone extinct but rose from the dead thanks to a rare process called 'iterative evolution'. View the full article

Members of the same bird species can have dramatically different responses to deforestation depending on where they live, finds a new study. View the full article

In some acorn woodpecker family groups, related females lay eggs in the same nest and raise the chicks cooperatively with one or more related males. View the full article

A new study suggests that some birds prioritize social information over visual evidence when making breeding choices. View the full article

When winter comes, populations of red-neck phalarope from the Western Palearctic migrate to two different destinations -- the Pacific Ocean or the Arabian Sea -- following an exceptional migratory divide strategy which has never been described in this geographical area. View the full article

Songbirds that pack on as much as 50 percent of their body weight before migrating and that sleep very little, exhibit altered immune system and tissue-repair function during the journey, which may hold implications for human health. View the full article

Biologists show that evolution is driven by dependency on other species within ecological communities - testing a long-held idea of the late, great George Gaylord Simpson. View the full article

Based on the analysis of the genomes of more than a dozen flightless birds, including an extinct moa, researchers found that while different species show wide variety in the protein-coding portions of their genome, they appear to turn to the same regulatory pathways when evolving flight loss. View the full article

A new study finds that some sparrow species will likely go extinct within the century due to climate change. View the full article

Cross-referencing a decade of Google searches and citizen science observations, researchers have determined which of 621 North American bird species are currently the most popular and which characteristics of species drive human interest. View the full article

A study has used data collected by volunteer bird watchers to study how the importance of wildlife habitat management for British birds depends on changing temperatures. View the full article