Except around Easter, chicken eggs usually come in a predictable range of colors: white, brown, and sometimes pale blue or green. Chickens are descended from the Red Jungle Fowl of Southeast Asia, which has been providing eggs for humans for thousands of years. The final color of an egg…

Crested Auklets are small seabirds that nest on remote cliffs in the Northern Pacific and the Bering Sea. But it’s their smell that really sets these birds apart. They smell like tangerines! Experiments show that females go for males that emit the strongest scents.

Nature has produced some exceptionally strange animals. One such creature is the Oilbird of northern South America. The Oilbird prefers a diet of wild berries and fruits, especially lipid-rich fruits like palm nuts and avocados (which leads to fatty young and the Oilbird's name). This…

The ancient Greeks believed the gods turned two distraught lovers into kingfishers — or “halcyon birds.” Thanks to divine assistance, these birds would enjoy calm weather during their nesting period. Even today, many kingfishers have echoes of this story in their scientific names.

The song of this male Black-headed Grosbeak has been described as that of a drunken or scat-singing robin. Compare the songs of both birds, and draw your own conclusion! Singing Black-headed Grosbeaks can be heard from May well into summer, especially in streamside woods.

High in the mountains of Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico, a male Highland Guan is performing his territorial display. The Highland Guan perches on a tree-branch, whistles, and then glides on vibrating wings. The resulting wondrous sound is like no other. The bird’s display…

In summer, the thick tangles of streamside vegetation in many canyons echo with an uncanny sound — the Yellow-breasted Chat. You may find it in willow thickets, brushy tangles, and other dense, understory habitats, usually at low to medium elevations around streams. The male Yellow…

En lo alto de las montañas de Chiapas, estado en el extremo sur de México, una chachalaca negra ( Penelopina nigra) macho hace su demostración territorial. Esta chachalaca, también conocida como Pajuil, se refugia en una enramada, silva y se desliza mientras aletea. El sonido resultante es…

Bird song caught the ear of Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi. And he even named a 1729 flute concerto for a bird — the goldfinch. The source of inspiration for Vivaldi's Goldfinch concerto, or Il Gardellino, was the European Goldfinch, a tiny bird found throughout much of Europe, where it…

When we watch birds in flight, they’re often seen against a backdrop of clouds. Clouds have many different types and are listed in the International Cloud Atlas. The asperitas cloud was first described by citizen-scientists and has now been incorporated into the official atlas.