A UCLA campus shutdown during COVID revealed rapid evolution in urban birds, as junco beaks shifted with the rise and fall of ...

When the world slowed down during the COVID-19 pandemic, its effects extended beyond humans. A recent study found that it ...

Emily Kwong and Berly McCoy of NPR's Short Wave talk about why swearing might improve physical performance, how birds' bills changed during the pandemic and why scientists are sampling whale breath.

For ecologists, the Covid-19 pandemic has presented a remarkable natural experiment in what can happen to wild animals when humans stay home.

Over the years, scientists have learned about literally thousands of different bird species, and each one sports a distinctive beak shape. But why do bird beaks come in so many different shapes and ...

If you want a fun learning experience, watch the birds at your feeders. Notice the different types of beaks and how their shapes dictate a bird’s dining habits — particularly the way it consumes black ...

It was a spirited debate between friends that surfaced every time we got together. It was not about politics, the economy or the weather, but the more significant question, do birds have bills or ...

ANCHORAGE — Biologist Colleen Handel saw her first black-capped chickadee with the heartrending disorder in 1998. The tiny birds showed up at birdfeeders in Alaska’s largest city with freakishly long ...

We get captivated by a bird’s plumage and may not think to notice its beak, which is critical to the bird’s identity. I’ve often heard people yell “flamingo!” when they see a pink-plumed bird feeding ...

Discoveries about evolution have long been intertwined with bird beaks. The huge variety of beak shapes among finches in the Galapagos Islands became emblematic of Charles Darwin’s theory of natural ...

Look at a bird’s beak to see what family the bird belongs to and the kind of food it eats. Seeing a bird with a long, needlelike beak would tell us it’s in the hummingbird family that probes flowers ...