Great Horned Owls excel at nocturnal hunting, thanks to their acute senses and stealth — but their feet let them secure squirming prey. The outermost of their four toes can rotate forward or backward, an advantage that most other birds of prey lack, letting them capture animals as large as…

Red-bellied Woodpeckers are bold, conspicuous, and vocal, thriving in rural and urban areas east of the Mississippi. Like most woodpeckers, Red-bellieds eat lots of insects. But they also like nuts, berries, and seeds. They can be attracted to back yards with suet cakes, berry bushes, or…

The group of birds called “songbirds” — the perching birds — is incredibly broad. Half the world’s 10,000 birds are in the songbird group, and their range of body sizes is mind-boggling. One of the smallest songbirds in North America is the Golden-crowned Kinglet, barely larger than a…

Blackbird songs have a strange music. The Red-winged Blackbird can be heard in nearly every marsh on the continent — bold, brassy, and piercing. The songs may not seem musical, but they definitely get your attention. Brewer’s Blackbirds, which live in open habitats like farms and…

Whistling as they fly, Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks are gorgeous waterfowl with bright pink bills and legs, chestnut necks and backs, and black underparts. Though most whistling-ducks live in the tropics, Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks are found in the U.S. along the western Gulf Coast and…

It's winter, and apples litter the ground. A few still hang, frozen and thawed again and again. Suddenly a flock of hundreds of birds rises from the ground beneath the trees, swarming in tight formation, wing-tip to wing-tip. Bohemian Waxwings are erratic winter visitors from their nesting…

The Tui is one of New Zealand’s most remarkable birds, intelligent and with iridescent feathers. Its down-curved beak fits perfectly into native flowers. But the Tui is best known for its voice. Each Tui’s complex song is slightly different, a colorful mix of musical notes and offbeat…

A bird with abnormal white feathers, like this American Robin, may have a genetic condition called leucism. Leucism prevents pigments from reaching some — or sometimes all — of a bird’s feathers. Albino birds are distinctly different and are entirely white with pink skin and eyes. Albinos…

El paíño de Elliot es un ave de mar pequeña, de plumaje blanco y negro que se puede observar en las costas de Chile y Perú. Los paíños pasan toda su vida en el mar, excepto cuando anidan, lo que ha intrigado a los científicos por mucho tiempo al tratar de encontrar dónde lo hacían. Una…

Birds’ four-chambered hearts run larger than those of mammals, relative to body size, and they are coupled with extremely efficient cardiovascular systems. The energy demands of flight require these adaptations. An exercising human has a heart rate around 150 beats per minute. In contrast…