Rare Itinerant Breeding Behavior Revealed in California Bird
Reproduction and migration are the two most demanding tasks in a bird’s life, and the vast majority of species separate them into different times of the year.
Tag: research
New Genetic Techniques Are Improving Our Understanding of Plumage Color
Few groups of organisms possess striking visual displays that rival the bright colors and intricate patterns of bird feathers.
Winter Experiences Carry Over into Swallows’ Breeding Success
There’s no shortage of studies demonstrating that conditions during one part of birds’ annual of breeding and migration cycle can affect individuals in subsequent stages — a phenomenon known as carry-over effects.
Do Prairie-Chickens Care More About Land Cover or Wind Turbine Noise?
Imagine living in a grassland landscape with an almost constant low-frequency hum from spinning wind turbine blades. The humming is distracting, so what do you do?
Songbirds Indicate Short-Term Restoration Success
To understand the impact of restoration efforts, one of the things we can do is study the wildlife that lives in these human-restored habitats.
Researchers Identify Previously Unknown Hybrid Zone Between Hummingbird Species
We usually think of a species as being reproductively isolated – that is, not mating with other species in the wild. Occasionally, however, closely related species do interbreed. New research just published in The Auk: Ornithological Advances documents the existence of a previously undiscovered hybrid zone along the coast of northern California and southern Oregon, …
The Threat of a Green-Headed Monster
Affectionately known to some as the “green-headed monster,” the Mallard is one of the world’s most recognizable species of waterfowl.
Chasing Evolutionary Processes in Andean Coeligena Hummingbirds
I am lucky that one of the species of hummingbird I study, the Blue-throated Starfrontlet (Coeligena helianthea), occurs on my university’s campus in the mountains of Bogotá, Colombia.
Seeking Mixed-Species Flocks in China’s Misty Mountains
Have you ever looked up at a mountaintop in the distance and wondered what birds might be living there? When mixed-species flocking fanatics like ourselves see that mountain, another set of questions catches our imagination.
Urban Living Leads to High Cholesterol… in Crows
Animals that do well in urban areas tend to be the ones that learn to make use of resources such as the food humans throw away. But is our food actually good for them? A new study published in The Condor: Ornithological Applications suggests that a diet of human foods such as discarded cheeseburgers might …