Birds boast some of the most vibrant colors among terrestrial animals. Our pretty avian friends have inspired our Democrat and Chronicle photographers for years and captured the imaginations of many ...

A Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher takes flight on the front cover of the new chapbook "Words of a Feather" with poems inspired by Kansas birds. Many of us have been spending more time outside during the ...

It doesn’t get top billing at the North Museum of Nature and Science in Lancaster. But venture into the basement and behold a world-class bird collection whose origins are full of intrigue and ...

Research assistant James Whatton confirms the feathers in front of him belong to a gray catbird. Credit: Smithsonian In the hallways of the National Museum of Natural History—past the bathrooms, the ...

Feathers are a sleek, intricate evolutionary innovation that makes flight possible for birds, but in addition to their stiff, aerodynamic feathers used for flight, birds also keep a layer of soft, ...

Many birds’ feathers are remarkably efficient at shedding water — so much so that “like water off a duck’s back” is a common expression. Much more unusual are the belly feathers of the sandgrouse, ...

A new study examines feathers across 249 species of Himalayan songbirds, finding that birds at higher elevations have more of fluffy down than lower elevation birds. Finding such a clear pattern ...

Every bird you’ve ever seen— every robin, every pigeon, every penguin at the zoo— is a living dinosaur. Birds are the only group of dinosaurs that survived the asteroid-induced mass extinction 66 ...