Sometimes we learn about animals not from their direct presence, but from the signs they leave behind: scat, tracks in the snow and sometimes their dead remains - bones or fur or feathers. A friend ...

You are able to gift 5 more articles this month. Anyone can access the link you share with no account required. Learn more. A down feather illustrates the varied assortment of barbs that allow it to ...

Bird tails tell tales that help us clinch a bird’s identification. The tail’s shape and hues, as well as the way the bird holds its tail, are identifying characteristics. A bird's tail consists of a ...

Carla Dove and her team at the feather-identification lab at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, study snarge — that's the bird goo that is wiped off an aircraft after it ...

Carla Dove (right) and her team at the Smithsonian Institution’s Feather Identification Lab. Credit: Chip Clark, Smithsonian Collisions between birds and airplanes can result in a range of damage, the ...

A bird fell from the sky and crash-landed in my backyard. In truth, I did not see it happen — I heard it.

"The introductory chapters give a detailed overview of the feather - how feathers developed, the parts of a single feather, and the variety of types of feathers on a bird. In the feather ...

So you think you’ve sighted a rare bird. The color pattern is so unusual. You consult multiple field guides before discovering that the sighting is actually a common bird, though an immature one that ...

Melanosomes linked with blue feathers are much longer than they are wide Sven Traenkner/Senckenberg Research Institute and Nature Museum in Frankfurt A prehistoric Eocoracias brachyptera bird whose ...