For centuries, birds have inspired the abiding interest of writers, and it’s easy to see why. Birds are one of our most accessible muses. Although not every person of letters will spot a fox, bear or ...

“Awkward” would probably be the most benevolent word I could use to describe the explosive launch into flight of the California quail. Certainly, the words graceful or athletic do not come to mind. A ...

The Wright Brothers studied bird flight before they designed the first airplane. Now modern aircraft fly higher and faster than any bird, yet no manufactured device matches the graceful movements and ...

Find out how the shape of a bird of prey’s wings will explain why they live where they live. Can you guess where a bird of prey hunts based on the shape of its wings? Major Funding by the Laura Moore ...

Modern birds capable of flight all have a specialized wing structure called the propatagium without which they could not fly. The evolutionary origin of this structure has remained a mystery, but new ...

A lovely fresco painted about 3,500 years ago on the island of Santorini, Greece, shows a pair of swallows dancing in the air, their beaks about to touch as they whirl around. It is spring, and the ...

A 75th anniversary rereading of "The Maltese Falcon" provokes this surprisingly under-explored question. Distinguished biographers and memoirists such as Diane Johnson and Lillian Hellman have spilled ...

Charles Darwin once posited that birds might flap their wings to communicate, not just to fly. However, this has always been pretty tricky to test. Now, 150 years later, researchers have discovered ...

Bird wing shape -- a proxy for long-distance flying ability, or dispersal -- is a trait that influences biodiversity patterns on islands around the world, according to biologists. You can know a lot ...

“Awkward” would probably be the most benevolent word I could use to describe the explosive launch into flight of the California quail. Certainly, the words graceful or athletic do not come to mind. A ...