Birds
Find out everything there is to know about birds and stay updated on the latest bird research with the comprehensive articles, interactive features and bird pictures at LiveScience.com Learn more about these fascinating creatures as scientists continue to make amazing discoveries about birds.
Latest about Birds
See 'incredible' photos of bird that is both male and female
By Patrick Pester published
This green honeycreeper has male plumage on one half of its body and female plumage on the other half.
Watch thousands of starlings perform an 'incredible ballet of life and death' in new murmuration footage
By Sascha Pare published
Over the past six years, Danish photographer Søren Solkær has followed huge flocks of starlings, known as murmurations, across Europe to film and photograph their breathtaking aerial acrobatics.
Weird Chinstrap penguins sleep over 10,000 times a day for just 4 seconds at a time
By Ben Turner published
The penguins accrue 11 hours of cumulative sleep a day from a bizarre adaptation that enables them to doze as they guard their nests.
Stunning footage captures tiny bird's fight for survival in massive Saharan sandstorm
By Hannah Osborne published
First of its kind footage captured for National Geographic's "Incredible Animal Journeys" shows a barn swallow caught in a sandstorm as part of its migration through the Sahara Desert.
120 million-year-old birds tracks near South Pole are the oldest ever discovered in the Southern Hemisphere
By Carys Matthews published
Fossilized bird tracks discovered in Australia show these ancient creatures lived in the southern polar regions on the supercontinent of Gondwana.
1st-known 'highly pathogenic' bird flu cases in Antarctic could threaten penguins
By Nicoletta Lanese published
The British Antarctic Survey detected cases of highly pathogenic bird flu in seabirds on Bird Island, located in the Antarctic region in the South Atlantic.
Upcoming solar maximum could scramble migrating birds' internal compass, new study shows
By Harry Baker published
By analyzing how birds migrated across the U.S. over a 23-year period, researchers have shown that solar weather events can seriously disrupt the navigation of the wandering avians.
Moment falcon digs its talons into pelican's head to protect its nest captured in incredible photo
By Elise Poore published
The winner of the Bird Photographer of the Year was Jack Zhi, who caught the moment a peregrine falcon took on a large brown pelican.
Animal sex: How birds do it
By Tia Ghose last updated
Animals have sex in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways. Birds have sex via an internal chamber called a cloaca that is present on both male and female animals.
Mass die-off strikes endangered emperor penguin chicks across 4 of 5 West Antarctica colonies
By Sascha Pare published
Out of five known emperor penguin colonies in the Bellingshausen Sea region of western Antarctica, four have failed to breed this year as chicks likely drowned in the melting sea ice.
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