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A top-notch article ( "The Golden Age of Tracking," pictured above) in our forthcoming April issue explains how tiny new tracking devices known as geolocators are rapidly changing what we know about the migration of Northern Wheatears, Flammulated Owls, and other birds. Author Anne Murray spoke with...

Researchers studying homing pigeons like these have overturned a long-held belief about birds' navigational abilities. Photo courtesy Keays, et al. Scientists have thrown cold water on the theory that iron-rich nerve cells in birds' bills help them navigate using Earth's magnetic field...

A Tree Swallow peeks out of a PVC-pipe nest tube in northwest Ohio. Photo by Tom Seamans, USDA Wildlife Services. In January, Contributing Editor Laura Erickson wrote on our blog about planning and building birdhouses . She mentioned two designs for nesting tubes for chickadees, one from the Cornell...

Life imitates art: A painting (at left) by Milo Winter illustrating the Aesop's fable "The Crow and the Pitcher." At right, a New Caledonian Crow brings floating food within reach by dropping stones into a water-filled tube. Illustration courtesy Project Gutenberg . Photo by Russell Gray...

The Allen's Hummingbird is one of several hummingbird species that produces sounds with its tail feathers. The bird generates two simultaneous tones with two of its narrow outer tail feathers. Photo © Anand Varma In 2008, in an earlier version of this blog, we reported on the discovery that...

Research published in Ecosphere , a new open-access journal of the Ecological Society of America, adds scientific support to the widely held assumption that the welfare of the Red Knot, a small, at-risk shorebird, is directly tied to horseshoe-crab populations in Delaware Bay. Populations of the rufa...

Capturing birds in mist nets is one of the most common research methods in field ornithology, but until now, the risks mist nets pose to birds were largely unknown. New research published today finds good news for birds and scientists: Birds are rarely injured or killed by mist nets. Out of 620,997 captures...

Bar-headed Goose, near Masinagudi, India. Photo by Mr. Bird Brain , CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Scientists have long presumed that the five-pound, 30-inch-long Bar-headed Goose, the world's highest-altitude migrant, relies on tailwinds to push it up and over the world's highest mountains. The bird winters...

For every Kirtland's Warbler and California Condor — species whose chances at avoiding extinction have improved thanks to conservation efforts — at least six more species have slid closer to extinction in the last two decades, according to new research. And that's just looking...

Here's a photo that grabbed our attention. An American Coot attacks a young chick and prepares to kill it. Bruce Lyon , professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California Santa Cruz, shot the photo during the course of a research project that found that the coot's reproductive...