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 ...

"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 ...

Fork-tailed flycatchers make a fluttering sound with their wings—but separate subspecies have different “dialects” of fluttering. Christopher Intagliata reports. Charles Darwin is most famous for his ...

A Fork-tailed Flycatcher. Credit: Valentina Gómez-Bahamón, Field Museum Bird feathers have many different functions. Softer down keeps a bird warm and stiffer wing feathers are used for flight.

Vanya, curator of birds and mammals at the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates, studies a turkey vulture wing at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. — Photos: BRYAN ANSELM/The New York Times Vanya ...

Each Canada goose that you see flying around in formation around Lancaster County these days has between 20,000 and 25,000 feathers, most hidden from sight. A typical songbird at your backyard feeder ...

New research, led by the University of Bristol, suggests that feathers arose 100 million years before birds—changing how we look at dinosaurs, birds, and pterosaurs, the flying reptiles. It also ...

Female tanager birds dig flamboyant males. So to build plumage that really pops with orange or red or yellow, a male has to eat fruits and absorb their carotenoids. The fancy feathers he produces then ...