Two Brazilian researchers doing some recreational bird-watching have made an amazing discovery: the first nest ever found for the critically endangered Stresemann’s bristlefront (Merulaxis stresemanni). One of the world’s rarest birds, the bristlefront has an estimated population of just 15 individuals, all at the 600-hectare Mata do Passarinho Reserve run by Fundação Biodiversitas in the [...]

A global effort to prevent all future species extinctions would cost about $80 billion a year, or $11.42 annually from every person on the planet, according to a study published last week in Science. The study, released in conjunction with eleventh meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) currently underway in Hyderabad, India, is [...]

One of the world’s rarest birds has a little bit more breathing room this week. The Giles–Fuertesi Nature Reserve in the Colombian Andes, home to the critically endangered Fuertes’s parrot (Hapalopsittaca fuertesi), has doubled in size following the acquisition of an additional 144 hectares of neighboring land. The acquisition was a joint effort by Fundación [...]

Sometimes a simple egg hatching can be a victory. That’s the case in the Philippines, where a threatened bird of prey known as the Pinsker’s hawk–eagle (Nisaetus pinskeri) has been bred in captivity for the first time. The Philippine Eagle Foundation (PEF) reports that the Pinsker’s chick hatched on April 2 at its breeding program [...]

Here’s something amazing: a new bird species has been discovered in the U.S. for the first time since 1974. Unfortunately, the discovery wasn’t a live bird. It was actually a museum sample collected in 1963, and the scientists who discovered it fear it may already be extinct or threatened with extinction. The specimen was collected [...]

About 2,700 short-tailed albatrosses (Phoebastria albatrus) currently fly over the Pacific Ocean. The largest seabird in that area of the world, the short-tailed albatross almost went extinct 100 years ago after the birds were overhunted for their feathers. The species is much healthier now thanks to more than 50 years of conservation efforts, but it [...]

As the World Cup launches in South Africa this week, conservationists fear that gamblers looking for a little extra luck will turn to a source those of us in the West might not expect: the practice of smoking vulture brains. The custom stems from the traditional medicine known in South Africa as muti. The vulture [...]

Most birds build their own nests and incubate their own eggs. However, some birds like the cuckoo have managed to get around this inconvenience by simply laying their eggs in the nests of other species and letting someone else do the hard work of keeping the eggs warm and protected until the chick hatches. The [...]

Move over platypus, a recently discovered dinosaur may have bested you for the strangest combination of physical features. Two hundred million years ago, a two-foot- long, beaked biped covered in quills scampered about an area that is now part of South Africa. The dinosaur’s discoverer is paleontologist Paul Sereno, of the University of Chicago. Sereno [...]

The large, big-beaked "terror birds" (Phorusrhacidae) didn’t need flight to snag a Miocene meal. Some of these extinct, flightless fowl likely used their massive rigid skulls and hooked beaks to chomp into prey with strong, successive pulls, concluded a research team after performing a biomechanical analysis of fossilized skulls. More than a dozen species of [...]

Non-avian dinosaurs are long extinct, but paleontological thinking about them, especially the dino–bird specimens, clearly continues to evolve long after they are discovered. For instance, the Anchiornis huxleyi, a small, feathered dinosaur, was described last December and assumed to be a transitional species that existed between dinosaurs and birds. But new evidence—and a much better [...]

Galliforms – gamebirds – are among the most spectacularly flamboyant of birds; the males of many lineages are provided with an abundance of elaborate display structures. I’ve written about turkeys and their snoods, wattles, caruncles and showy feathers before. I like the photo above because it depicts two of the showiest gamebirds – Meleagris gallopavo (domestic [...]

Time for more petrels. Having introduced general aspects of petrel biology, diversity and evolution in the previous articles (part I, part II, part III, part IV), it’s now time to get through the different petrel lineages. As explained in the previous article, recent molecular phylogenetic studies indicate that true petrels (Procellariidae) consist of four major [...]

A few weeks ago, I and the family visited Birdworld in Alice Holt Forest, Surrey (UK). We had a great time and saw a lot of neat birds. It was a scorching hot, very sunny day, and the reason I’m writing this article is because I became particularly interested in the many, many sunbathing birds [...]

A captive parrot in an Austrian research lab near Vienna has started using tools, adding to a complex story that began more than fifty years ago in the forests of Tanzania. “During three years in the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve in Tanganyika, East Africa, I saw chimpanzees use natural objects as tools on many occasions,” [...]

This video (via Al Dove on twitter), which appears to be from Russia, shows a crow (can anybody confirm the identity of the bird?) engaging in an activity that can only be described as play. There is at least some scientific evidence (behind a paywall) that corvids, as well as some species of parrots and [...]

Neuroscience Can’t Explain Wagner (or B.B. King) writes Christopher Shea on the Ideas Market blog at the Wall Street Journal, arguing against the claims that are made in my post from last week about day-old chickens preferring consonant music. I find two problems with his argument: the first concerning methodology, and the second concerning what [...]

You might have more in common with the chicken on your plate than you realize. Sure, you’ve also got two thighs, two legs, two breasts, and two wings (sort of). But new research suggests that chickens might like to rock out to the same tunes you’ve got on your iPod. The kinds of sounds that [...]

From the Petapixel blog, slow motion video from a 1000fps camera of an eagle attack. (Correction: an eagle owl attack)

Editor’s Note: Today’s post, coming appropriately after yesterday’s post on human intuitions about memory, comes from Felicity Muth who blogs at Not Bad Science, and tweets as @FelicityMuth. This post, while it can certainly stand alone, is meant to be read after reading Felicity’s contribution to The Guest Blog. We have known for a number [...]