Scientists from the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center have found that fledgling catbirds living in the suburbs are extremely vulnerable. Almost 80 percent are killed by predators before they reach adulthood. Nearly half of the deaths are connected to domestic cats. The team studied catbird nests in 3 suburban neighborhoods in Maryland: Spring Park, Opal Daniels [...] [...more]
A recent decline in Ovenbirds (Seiurus aurocapilla), a ground-nesting migratory songbird, in forests in the northern Midwest United States is being linked by scientists to a seemingly unlikely culprit: earthworms. [...more]
For the first time, researchers from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s Migratory Bird Center analyzed how songbirds are affected by both general noise and the acoustics of hard human-made surfaces in urban areas. [...more]
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. [...more]
Smithsonian scientists and collaborators have determined the evolutionary family tree for one of the most strikingly diverse and endangered bird families in the world, the Hawaiian honeycreepers. [...more]
A new study on the dodo’s island home of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, paints a picture of this unusual bird as an intrepid survivor on par with the giant tortoise for its resiliency. [...more]
Illustrations of the nest and eggs of birds of Ohio was published in the small town of Circleville, Ohio, from 1879 to 1886 through the dedicated efforts of the family and friends of a young woman named Genevieve Jones. Despite being produced not just by amateurs but largely by women, far from the publishing houses [...] [...more]
The Zoo’s Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Va., is celebrating the recent hatching of two Micronesian kingfisher (Todiramphus c. cinnamominus) chicks, a female and male, born July 25 and Aug. 20, respectively. [...more]
Scientists from the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center have found that fledgling catbirds living in the suburbs are extremely vulnerable. Almost 80 percent are killed by predators before they reach adulthood. Nearly half of the deaths are connected to domestic cats. The team studied catbird nests in 3 suburban neighborhoods in Maryland: Spring Park, Opal Daniels Park, and Bethesda. Learn more about this 2011 study by clicking here. (Catbird photo by Gerhard Hofmann)
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