Small migratory male birds that winter in a stressful environment age faster than those that winter in a high-quality habitat, according to research stemming from a collaborative National Science Foundation grant between the University of...
Domestic cats in the United States kill some 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion mammals each year, most of them native mammals like shrews, chipmunks and voles according to the New York Times in a...
What scientists found was that the domestic turkey that ends up on the dinner table exhibits less genetic variation than its ancestral wild counterparts, which were first domesticated in 800 B.C..
Scientists determine there is more to the shape and length of bird bills than just how they “get the worm.”
A new video to help aviators identify the cause of bird strikes has been posted on YouTube by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services Airport Wildlife Hazard Program and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
Ornithologists Carla Dove and Storrs Olson used 700- to 1,100-year-old feathers from a long extinct species of Hawaiian ibis to help determine the bird’s place in the ibis family tree. The feathers are the only known plumage of any of the prehistorically extinct birds that once inhabited the Hawaiian Islands.
As researchers investigate the impact of the Burmese python in the Everglades, scientists from the Smithsonian Institution, South Florida Natural Resources Center and the University of Florida examined the snake’s predation of the area’s birds. They found that birds, including endangered species, accounted for 25 percent of the python’s diet in the Everglades.
The turkey has become synonymous with Thanksgiving in the United States. But when exactly where turkeys first domesticated? And where? Bruce Smith, senior archeologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History has the answers.
Science Spotlight
