#bird-behavior

#bird-behavior

"It's the way they walk. That's what the main attraction is," said self-described amateur birder Sheeba Garg, who traveled to Bryant Park specifically to see the American woodcock during its migration.

"They didn't even try to fly away. They just feebly made noise," a woman told the Santa Barbara Independent on Saturday after spotting over two dozen dead or dying cormorants near Goleta Beach. "A few were on their stomachs, wings spread [and] gasping for breath.... Heartbreaking."

During major floods, thousands of tiny fish convene at Luvilombo Falls in the upper Congo River Basin to undertake a peculiar vertical migration, described for the first time today in Scientific Reports.

A study by researchers at the University of California Berkeley has found that ethanol is surprisingly common in floral nectar, the sugary fuel that keeps pollinators alive. Yeast feeding on those sugars produces trace amounts of alcohol, and in this study, it showed up in 26 of the 29 plant species sampled.

When faced with a choice between a box with eyes painted on it and a plain box, the gulls were slower to approach the box with eyes and less likely to peck at it.

A comprehensive analysis of Google search patterns related to birds explores what species people seek information about most frequently. The investigation spans six interconnected analyses examining bird variety, taxonomic classifications, information sharing behaviors, birder sighting correlations with search trends, regional popularity differences across states, and temporal patterns in search interest.

Frogmouths have another life that few people see: like vampires, they wake at sunset and night-hunt until dawn. These stolid creatures turn into zephyrs that silently swoop, catching prey on the ground and in the air.

Researchers found that the inclusion of cigarette butts in nests led to significantly elevated hemoglobin and red blood cell concentration, indicating improved physiological condition.

Around a third of UK gardeners use pesticides, and our studies found that house sparrow numbers, for example, were nearly 40% lower in gardens where the pesticide metaldehyde was used. By reducing pesticide use, you can actively encourage birds back into your outdoor spaces, as they rely on invertebrates such as slugs and snails as natural prey.

Nearly half of the 261 species studied showed big enough losses in numbers to be statistically significant and more than half of those declining are seeing their losses accelerate since 1987, according to Thursday's journal Science. The study is the first to look at more than the total bird population by examining the trends in their decrease, where they are shrinking the most and what the declines are connected to.

Between 1940 and 2020, the average body mass of birds in 10 Indigenous and local communities on three continents declined by up to 72%. For the Indigenous communities who were interviewed, birds often hold immeasurable symbolic and ceremonial significance. Thus, ritual dances, songs, and place names are at risk of being lost in the face of this loss of biodiversity.

Previous research has shown that people feel better in bird-rich environments, but Christoph Randler, from the University of Tubingen, and colleagues wanted to see if that warm fuzzy feeling translated into measurable physiological changes. They rigged up a park with loudspeakers playing the songs of rare birds and measured the blood pressure, heart rate and cortisol levels (a marker of stress) of volunteers before and after taking a 30-minute walk through the park.

On a quiet Montreal street of low-rise brick apartment buildings on one side and cement barrier wall on the other, a crowd has gathered, binoculars around their necks and cameras at the ready. A European robin has taken up residence in the neighbourhood, which is sandwiched between two industrial areas with warehouses and railway lines and, a few blocks away, port facilities on the St Lawrence River.

Many people look up to admire the silhouette of raptors, some of the planet's largest birds, soaring through seemingly empty skies. But increasingly, research shows us that this fascination runs both ways. From high above, these birds are watching us too. Thanks to the development of tiny GPS tracking devices attached to their bodies, researchers are getting millions of data points on the day-to-day lives of these apex predators of the skies, giving us greater insight into where they hunt and rest.

Recently, two unexpected examples by a wild wolf and a domesticated cow named Veronika attracted global attention and once again opened the door for experts and others to weigh in on the question, "Are these really examples of tooling?" Many people are eager to know more about the nitty-gritty details of tooling, so I am thrilled that Dr. Benjamin Beck, an expert in this area, could answer a few questions about this fascinating behavior.