Sometimes we learn about animals not from their direct presence, but from the signs they leave behind: scat, tracks in the snow and sometimes their dead remains - bones or fur or feathers. A friend ...

Bird tails tell tales that help us clinch a bird’s identification. The tail’s shape and hues, as well as the way the bird holds its tail, are identifying characteristics. A bird's tail consists of a ...

Melanosomes linked with blue feathers are much longer than they are wide Sven Traenkner/Senckenberg Research Institute and Nature Museum in Frankfurt A prehistoric Eocoracias brachyptera bird whose ...

Birds are integral to Native American culture—they are connected to the spiritual because of their ability to move throughout the earthly and heavenly (sky) realms, says Greene. Donny Bajohr The bird ...

Carla Dove (right) and her team at the Smithsonian Institution’s Feather Identification Lab. Credit: Chip Clark, Smithsonian Collisions between birds and airplanes can result in a range of damage, the ...

"The introductory chapters give a detailed overview of the feather - how feathers developed, the parts of a single feather, and the variety of types of feathers on a bird. In the feather ...

A team of international scientists led by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences reported recently the oldest fossil evidence of beta-keratin from feathers of a 130 million-year-old basal ...

Lark buntings are a striking, easy-to-spot bird of the prairies. Learn what a lark bunting looks and sounds like, and what ...

Feathers are a sleek, intricate evolutionary innovation that makes flight possible for birds, but in addition to their stiff, aerodynamic feathers used for flight, birds also keep a layer of soft, ...