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Crows are known to be intelligent birds, but research has indicated that they may be more intelligent than we think; they can apparently identify individual people by their faces. There are anecdotal stories of Indian House Crows (Corvus splendens) recognising individual people in India. Conservation officials who set poisoned bait for these birds were purportedly [...]

Natural history museum at Tring robbed The Bucks Herald The Natural History Museum at Tring has been targeted by thieves who have stolen a number of bird ‘skins’ from the ornithological collections. They were found to be missing following a break-in on Wednesday June 24. The specimens stolen comprise a number of brightly-coloured tropical birds, [...]

One tends to forget how precariously balanced life can be, especially for birds. It was reported here, just recently, how competition for Horseshoe Crab eggs in Delaware Bay was impacting Red Knot (Calidris canutus rufa) numbers. Knots were not able to build up sufficient energy reserves and were perishing en route to their breeding grounds as [...]

A US Fish & Wildlife report based on 2006 economic data has revealed that one in five Americans is a birder (the report defines a birder as someone who either travels to watch birds or makes an active effort to watch and identify birds at home). That’s a whopping 48 million people! These figures sound [...]

ScienceDaily (2009-07-06) — Catching adult eagles for research purposes is no easy task, but a researcher has found a way around the problem, and, in the process, gathered even more information about the birds without ever laying a hand on one. [more here]

Researchers at Oregon State University believe that their findings about the role of the femur (thigh bone) in a bird’s ability to process 20 times more oxygen than cold-blooded reptiles indicates that birds may have in fact evolved alongside, rather than from, dinosaurs. Here’s an excerpt from Science Daily: Researchers at Oregon State University have [...]

Who would have guessed, British scientists have mapped out the distribution of Emperor Penguin colonies by analysing their guano stains via satellite. According to a British Antarctic Survey press release, scientists noticed reddish-brown stains on satellite images that corresponded with the location of Emperor colonies. Further analysis revealed 37 colonies in total. The researchers plan [...]

This is an interesting question that Hugh B Cott of Cambridge University tried to answer. By feeding various bird species to cats or wasps and observing their preferences he was able to get an idea about which species were preferred. He also included some taste preferences from people. His results indicated that more conspicuous species [...]

Satellite tracking is increasingly being used to track and provide valuable insight into the movement of birds. In a recent doctoral study at the University of Glasgow, Leandro Bugoni applied satellite transmitter technology to track several albatross and petrel species off the coast of Brazil. His research focused on different aspects of seabird biology, however [...]

Recent research published in Current Biology reveals that particular bird species, Snowball the Sulphur Crested Cockatoo in this case, are able to dance to a beat, a characteristic previously only attributed to humans. This from Schachner et al (2009): The human capacity for music consists of certain core phenomena, including the tendency to entrain, or [...]