Sometimes we learn about animals not from their direct presence, but from the signs they leave behind: scat, tracks in the snow and sometimes their dead remains - bones or fur or feathers. A friend ...

Carla Dove and her team at the feather-identification lab at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, study snarge — that's the bird goo that is wiped off an aircraft after it ...

Carla Dove (right) and her team at the Smithsonian Institution’s Feather Identification Lab. Credit: Chip Clark, Smithsonian Collisions between birds and airplanes can result in a range of damage, the ...

There's something unsettling about finding a big pile of bird feathers in your yard, but knowing what to do if you come ...

Bird tails tell tales that help us clinch a bird’s identification. The tail’s shape and hues, as well as the way the bird holds its tail, are identifying characteristics. A bird's tail consists of a ...

One of the main ways to identify birds is physical appearance and once you start looking closer, it becomes obvious that ...

Melanosomes linked with blue feathers are much longer than they are wide Sven Traenkner/Senckenberg Research Institute and Nature Museum in Frankfurt A prehistoric Eocoracias brachyptera bird whose ...

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, ...