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Birds

The world's favorite edible bird.

Anthropocene

Chinese Chickens May Have Been Domesticated 10,000 Years Ago

Bones found in ancient farming sites are lending insight into the origins of our favorite fowl

Pacific bluefin tuna populations have declined by up to 33 percent over the last 20 years.

Trending Today

300+ Species Just Joined the List of Threatened Plants And Animals

Overfishing, overhunting and habitat loss drove many of the new additions

Fred Tomaselli, Migrant Fruit Thugs, 2006.

Art Meets Science

The Threatened Birds in These Artworks Might One Day Go the Way of the Dodo

The Smithsonian American Art Museum’s exhibition explores mankind’s relationship to birds and the natural world

A male great bustard struttin' his stuff.

New Research

Male Great Bustards Eat Poison to Look Sexier for the Ladies

The toxic compound can kill mammals - including humans - but helps the birds rid themselves of pests

Geese lift off a lake in front of a sun pillar at Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge near Mound City, Missouri.

American South

The Best Places in America to See Fall Bird Migrations

All across the country, birds are making the trek south for the winter—here are some of the best places to witness their journey

New Research

Prozac Doesn’t Make Birds Happy

Birds on Prozac lose their appetite and libido

An Australian banded stilt in Victoria.

New Research

These Extreme Desert Nomads Set Records for Migrating Birds

Australian banded stilts use mysterious cues to know when to head toward ephemeral lakes in the country’s otherwise dry interior

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Cool Finds

Here’s What Happens When a Hawk And a Drone Fight

This raptor was not ok with a quadcopter fronting on its turf

Buck moth caterpillars are the bane of the New Orleans spring.

New Research

Caterpillars Beware: Venom Won’t Protect You From Clueless Baby Birds

Young birds will dumbly peck at anything that crawls their way—even if it winds up teaching them a painful lesson

The cover of the 2014 State of the Birds 2014, the most extensive study of birds in the U.S. ever published.

The Most Extensive Report Ever on American Birds Says There’s Cause for Concern

Researchers from 23 groups just released the fifth State of the Birds report, which contains good and bad news

From the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

100 Years After Her Death, Martha, the Last Passenger Pigeon, Still Resonates

The famed bird now finds itself at the center of a flap over de-extinction

A dense flock of starlings in the sky above Rome.

How Just One Bird Can Urge an Entire Flock to Change Directions

The equations that describe these movements are equivalent to those that govern waves

A typical 15th century banquet.

New Research

Before He Died, Richard III Lived Large

Bone chemistry sheds light on the monarch’s shifting diet throughout his brief life

Not so mysterious: This is not a realistic depiction of a T. rex dinner.

The Ten Biggest Dinosaur Mysteries We Have Yet to Solve

Which one was the first, the biggest, the fuzziest? These puzzles continue to perplex paleontologists

An artistic depiction of the duck.

Cool Finds

Copenhagen Might Install a Giant, Energy-Gathering Duck in Its Harbor

The duck would be both a tourist attraction and a means of helping the city become carbon-neutral by 2025

New Research

How a Flock of 400 Flying Birds Manages to Turn in Just Half a Second

The birds’ patterns of movement are surprisingly similar to that of superfluid helium

The comet Cheryumov-Gerasimenko seems to be shaped like a rubber duckie

Cool Finds

The ESA is on a Mission to Harpoon a Duck-Shaped Comet

As if catching a comet wasn’t already hard enough

Adult Common starling (Sturnus vulgaris) with gathered insect prey. This is one of the fifteen species shown to be affected by elevated imidacloprid concentrations in surface water in the Netherlands.

New Research

Popular Pesticides Linked to Drops in Bird Populations

This is the latest in a string of studies suggesting that some pesticides impact birds as well as pollinators

When the Last of the Great Auks Died, It Was by the Crush of a Fisherman’s Boot

Birds once plentiful and abundant, are the subject of a new exhibition at the Natural History Museum

Great Spotted Cuckoo

New Research

Cuckoos Don’t Sneak Into Other Birds’ Nests—They Barge Right In

Cuckoos don’t just make other bird’s raise their young, they lay their eggs while the other bird is in the nest

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