Explore how the vulturine guinea fowl’s striking blue and white feathers serve more than beauty. From structural coloration ...

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.

“Birds of a feather flock together.” You’ve heard this phrase hundreds, or maybe even thousands of times — but do you know what it means? Do birds of a feather really flock together in nature, or is ...

It is common to say that something is as light as a feather in order to mean that something doesn’t weigh much at all. A group of researchers, however, has found that while all feathers are pretty ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

It doesn’t get top billing at the North Museum of Nature and Science in Lancaster. But venture into the basement and behold a world-class bird collection whose origins are full of intrigue and ...

Research assistant James Whatton confirms the feathers in front of him belong to a gray catbird. Credit: Smithsonian In the hallways of the National Museum of Natural History—past the bathrooms, the ...

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 ...

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 prohibits possessing native North American bird feathers without a permit. The law, punishable by fines and imprisonment, aims to prevent the killing and ...

Many feathered dinosaurs couldn’t fly — at least, not like birds do today. But the reptiles’ feathers may have been more birdlike than scientists thought. Yet fossilization can change feather proteins ...