birds

Topic description and stories

Birdlife soars on nature-friendly solar farms

13 Feb 2025

Birds across Eastern England's arable landscapes are thriving on solar farms managed with nature in mind.

Artist's impression of Navaornis, a bird from the age of dinosaurs.

Bird brain from the age of dinosaurs reveals roots of avian intelligence

13 Nov 2024

A ‘one of a kind’ fossil discovery could transform our understanding of how the unique brains and intelligence of modern birds evolved, one of the...

Highly-sensitive beaks could help albatrosses and penguins find their food

18 Sep 2024

Researchers have discovered that seabirds, including penguins and albatrosses, have highly-sensitive regions in their beaks that could be used to...

A great tit wearing a radiofrequency identification tag. Photo: James ONeill

Blue and great tits deploy surprisingly powerful memories to find food, a new study shows

03 Jul 2024

Blue and great tits recall what they have eaten in the past, where they found the food and when they found it, a new study shows. In the first...

World’s most threatened seabirds visit remote plastic pollution hotspots

04 Jul 2023

Analysis of global tracking data for 77 species of petrel has revealed that a quarter of all plastics potentially encountered in their search for...

̽��ֱ��largest penguin that ever lived

09 Feb 2023

Fossil bones from two newly-described penguin species, one of them thought to be the largest penguin to ever live – weighing more than 150 kilograms...

Janavis finalidens, the last known toothed bird.

Bird beak evolved before dinosaur extinction

30 Nov 2022

Fossilised fragments of a skeleton, hidden within a rock the size of a grapefruit, have helped upend one of the longest-standing assumptions about...

Madingley aviaries saved from closure

22 Jul 2022

We are delighted to announce that due to a number of generous donations from both members of the public and the scientific community, together with...