A paper published last year in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface described a feather as a masterpiece of engineering, one comprising nine orders of magnitude, from the nanoscale to the meter ...

Contrary to our human perception of bird coloration as extraordinarily diverse, a new study reports that bird plumages exhibit only a small fraction (less than a third) of the possible colours birds ...

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 prohibits possessing native North American bird feathers without a permit. The law, punishable by fines and imprisonment, aims to prevent the killing and ...

A Fork-tailed Flycatcher. Credit: Valentina Gómez-Bahamón, Field Museum Bird feathers have many different functions. Softer down keeps a bird warm and stiffer wing feathers are used for flight.

Have you ever looked at a bird and wondered, how can it be so red or so blue or so intensely yellow? Well, if you have, then you and several researchers have something in common. A new study finds ...