Birds
Wild Things: Mongooses, Bladderworts and More...
Fairy-wrens, wasps, and a nearly 3,000 year old big toe
April 2011 |
By T.A. Frail, Megan Gambino, Laura Helmuth, Jesse Rhodes and Sarah Zielinski
What Do You Call a Flock of Birds?
Recently, while perusing the shelves of my bird-crazy colleague Laura, I came across "Winged Wonders: A Celebration of Birds in Human History," by Peter Watkins and Jonathan Stockland. The book is full of examples of how birds can be found in art and language, but what particularly intrigued me was...
March 29, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Migrating Moths Can Travel As Fast As Songbirds
If you held a short race between a silver Y moth and a European songbird, the bird would win hands down. These birds, such as warblers, thrushes and flycatchers, can fly about three times as fast as the silver Y moth. But when it comes to long-distance migration, from northern Europe to the Mediter...
March 22, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Amazing Bird Photo Shows a Mother's Love
Contrary to what Laura might have implied yesterday, I'm not anti-bird. And to prove it, I present to you one of the finalists in the Natural World category of Smithsonian magazine's 8th Annual Photo Contest. The photographer, Ho Sung Wee, captured this moment, titled "Mother's Love," in an orchard...
March 18, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
A Birds vs. Cats Blog Showdown
While Sarah the cat lover (really, she loves cats; see what I mean?) is busy with another project, she turned the blog over to me, a longtime birder. Heh heh heh.Now, cats do a fine job providing companionship and keeping a house mouse-free, and few things bring more instant joy to a room than a la...
March 17, 2011 |
By Laura Helmuth
Why Bird Brains Bloom in Spring
Aah, springtime. Crocuses are blooming, squirrels are cavorting, birds are singing ... and the HVc region of the neostriatum, the robust nucleus of the archistriatum and area X of the parolfactory lobe are recrudescing. Those are the bits of a male bird's brain responsible for singing, and they are...
March 07, 2011 |
By Laura Helmuth
Looking Back at A&E's "Dinosaur!"
In 1991, the cable channel A&E ran a four-part prehistoric extravaganza hosted by Walter Cronkite and simply called Dinosaur! I was only eight when it aired, and I remember begging my parents to stay up to watch the episodes. Irrepressible little dinosaur...
March 02, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Biology’s Ten Worst Love Stories
Animal sex can get pretty weird. And we're not comfortable with some of its variants. I'm sure I'm on someone's watch list after researching this post; while searching for juicy examples, I kept coming across sites barred by the Smithsonian's internet filter—such as the Wikipedia entry on "sexual c...
February 14, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Juravenator: Germany's Other Feathered Dinosaur
In 1861, as debates about evolution were brewing among naturalists, two important skeletons were discovered from the Late Jurassic limestone quarries of Germany. Both would be relevant to ideas about how birds evolved. Although not recognized as such until the late 20th century, Archaeopteryx was t...
December 17, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Bird Sets Up Protection Racket to Ensure Meals
Announcing your presence would seem to be a bad strategy for a bird that survives through kleptoparasitism—stealing food from others. But that's just what the fork-tailed drongo (Dicrurus adsimilis) of the Kalahari Desert does. And the drongos seem to have taken some lessons from the Italian mafia,...
December 15, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Thomas Henry Huxley and the Dinobirds
Evolution never got much time in my elementary school science classes. When the topic came up, inevitably near the end of the term, the standard, pre-packaged historical overview came along with it. Charles Darwin was the first person to come up with the idea of evolution, and, despite the ravings ...
December 07, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Dinosaurs' Living Descendants
China's spectacular feathered fossils have finally answered the century-old question about the ancestors of today's birds
December 2010 |
By Richard Stone
A "Perverted" View of Bird Evolution
Among the many recurring themes on this blog, the evolution of birds from feathered maniraptoran dinosaurs is probably the most prevalent. Hardly a month goes by without a new study relevant to this major evolutionary transition, and as paleontologists discover more they continue to find that many ...
November 30, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
This Thanksgiving, Make a Wish on a Dinosaur
Tomorrow families all over the United States will be taking part in the ritualized, yearly tradition of dinosaur dissection. Granted, "Thanksgiving" is a much better name than "Annual Dinosaur Dissection Day", but the fact of the matter is that the turkey on the table has a lot in common with its ...
November 24, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Pink Flamingoes Attract Mates With Make-Up
The flamingo's bright pink coloration comes from its diet—animals can't synthesize the carotenoids that color these feathers. The more carotenoid-containing food a flamingo eats before molting and growing new feathers, the brighter those feathers will be. Over time, though, the color fades. So how ...
November 01, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Tracking the Emergence of Birds
Since the description of the fuzzy-feathered dinosaur Sinosauropteryx in 1996, paleontologists have been inundated with a still-flowing flood of fossil evidence confirming that birds are living dinosaurs. More than that, many of the characteristics we once thought were unique to birds—from air-sacs...
October 27, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Photo Contest Finalist: Chinstrap Penguins Climbing an Iceberg
Most everyone here in D.C. would prefer to forget the Snowpocalypse of 2010, but with autumn upon us, winter—and the weather that comes with it—is just around the corner. Don’t get me wrong: snow is quite pretty when it’s freshly fallen. But at this point I’d just as soon admire the stuff from afar...
October 15, 2010 |
By Jesse Rhodes
It's Hawk Watch Season
It's the most wonderful time of the year—fall bird migration.Spring migration is nice, too, when birds are in their brightest breeding plumage (see the difference between spring and fall colors in a chestnut-sided warbler). But birds flying from their wintering grounds to their breeding grounds are...
October 13, 2010 |
By Laura Helmuth
It's All in the Hips: the Feathered Dinosaur Microraptor
Ever since the announcement of an exquisitely-preserved specimen of the feathered dinosaur Microraptor gui in 2003, paleontologists have been debating how it might have flown and what relevance it might have to the origin of birds. How did it hold its legs? Could it really fly, or just glide? Is is...
October 01, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
A Strange Sail-Backed, Bristly-Armed Dinosaur
When I logged on to Facebook Wednesday morning, one of the first things I saw was a cryptic status update from University of Maryland paleontologist Thomas Holtz. He speculated that the paleo community at large would be "duly impressed" by something set to debut later in the day, but what was it? ...
September 10, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
