A paper published last year in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface described a feather as a masterpiece of engineering ...

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 ...

Birds are some of the most striking creatures on Earth, coming in a rainbow of colors that serve several important functions, such as attracting a mate and communicating with other birds. These ...

Why are some songbirds so brightly colored? A new study finds that a hidden layer of black and white feathers help their colors pop. Have you ever looked at a bird and wondered, how can it be so red ...

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 ...

A Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher takes flight on the front cover of the new chapbook "Words of a Feather" with poems inspired by Kansas birds. Many of us have been spending more time outside during the ...

One of the remarkable abilities that birds possess is their ability to regenerate the feathers that they shed. Unlike human ...

Feathers are a sleek, intricate evolutionary innovation that makes flight possible for birds, but in addition to their stiff, aerodynamic feathers used for flight, birds also keep a layer of soft, ...