ScienceDaily

Many millions of homeowners use feeders to attract birds. But a two-year study suggests there may be one unintended consequence to this popular hobby. Bird feed mixtures may be helping to spread troublesome weeds that threaten agricultural crops. View the full article

The oldest fossil of a modern bird yet found, dating from the age of dinosaurs, has been identified by an international team of palaeontologists. View the full article

Researchers found that farms with diverse crops planted together provide more secure, stable habitats for wildlife and are more resilient to climate change than the single-crop standard that dominates today's agriculture industry. View the full article

New findings suggest several island bird populations in the Pacific that were previously designated as a single species actually comprise up to four distinct species. The results upend understanding of the islands' robin populations, which have been used as a textbook example of evolution since the 1940s. The new findings have important implications for conservation, as some of the newly-designated species live only on a few isolated islands. View the full article

A new study of North American birds finds that the regional stability of ecosystems over time depends on both the total number of species present in a locality and on the variation in species identities among localities. View the full article

A growing body of research shows that birds' spring migration has been getting earlier and earlier in recent decades. New research on Black-throated Blue Warblers, a common songbird that migrates from Canada and the eastern US to Central America and back every year, uses fifty years of bird-banding data to add another piece to the puzzle, showing that little-studied fall migration patterns have been shifting over time as well. View the full article

By watching videos of each other eating, blue tits and great tits can learn to avoid foods that taste disgusting and are potentially toxic, a new study has found. View the full article

Every social network has its fake news. And in animal communication networks, even birds discern the trustworthiness of their neighbors, a new study suggests. View the full article

Darwin's finches are among the most celebrated examples of adaptive radiation in the evolution of modern vertebrates and now a new study has provided fresh insights into their rapid development and evolutionary success. View the full article

Using albatrosses fitted with loggers, researchers have made a first estimation of the number of non-declared fishing boats operating without an identification system in the Southern Ocean: more than a third of the boats the birds detected in international water were non-declared. View the full article

Did the chicks of dinosaurs from the group oviraptorid hatch from their eggs at the same time? This question can be answered by the length and arrangement of the embryo's bones, which provide information about the stage of development. But how do you look inside fossilized dinosaur eggs? View the full article

New study shows that peach-fronted conures have a surprisingly advanced talent for collaboration when it comes to finding food. This is important knowledge for biologists working with conservation of wild bird populations. View the full article

Few singers reach their sunset years with the same voice they had in younger days. Songbirds are no different. New research reveals that elderly swamp sparrows don't sound quite like they used to -- nor do they strike the same fear in other males who may be listening in. Humans are remarkably good at guessing a person's age by their voice. But this is the first time the phenomenon has been demonstrated in wild animals. View the full article

When nearly one million common murres died at sea and washed ashore from California to Alaska in 2015 and 2016, it was unprecedented -- both for murres, and across all bird species worldwide. Scientists blame an unexpected squeeze on the ecosystem's food supply, brought on by a severe and long-lasting marine heat wave known as 'the blob.' View the full article

Complex learning processes like speaking or singing follow similar patterns. Using the example of zebra finches, researchers have investigated how young birds imitate the courtship songs of their fathers and practice them thousands of times. The study has revealed what aspects of the song are remembered overnight, and that sleep allows the bird to optimally build upon the progress made on the previous day. View the full article