A paper published last year in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface described a feather as a masterpiece of engineering, one comprising nine orders of magnitude, from the nanoscale to the meter ...

What is heavier: 1 kilogram of feathers or 1 kilogram of steel? Whilst the answer to this classic riddle is that they both weigh the same amount, it may be surprising to discover that the color of a ...

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.

Have you ever looked at a bird and wondered, how can it be so red or so blue or so intensely yellow? Well, if you have, then you and several researchers have something in common. A new study finds ...

Birds are some of the most striking creatures on Earth, coming in a rainbow of colors that serve several important functions, such as attracting a mate and communicating with other birds. These ...

Because birds live outdoors, there's an assumption that they're dirty and harbor many insect pests among their feathers. But this is very wide of the mark: Birds are as clean as cats, spending almost ...

Lined with endless rows of white cabinets, Harvard’s Ornithology Collection is imposing — even mausoleum-like — upon first glance; it’s only after opening the drawers that the true colors of the ...

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 ...