Kiwis don’t like noisy visitors
Loud sounds can generate abnormal behaviour in iconic birds in captivity.
The noises people make when visiting kiwis in captivity – such as talking or mobile phones ringing – can upset the ch...
Birds
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You may have missed...
Stray science stories from last week to cheer up your Monday.
It’s a boy! In new research from the Australian National University, swift parrot mothers are choosing to hatch th...
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Songbirds without a song
Regent honeyeaters lose ability to sing their tune as populations decline.
What’s a songbird without its song? Sadly, we are finding out. Australian regent honeyeaters are failing to learn ...
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Birds thrive in the Murray-Darling
Waterbirds thrive off donated water and traditional water management.
It’s a Murray-Darling bird-breeding party in the Gayini (Nimmie-Caira) wetlands in south west New South Wales, as bir...
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Deceptive smells
Mammal predators can be tricked into leaving vulnerable NZ birds alone.
It’s not only humans who can be fooled with misinformation to change their choices. Animals can be tricked too, it se...
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Wily lyrebirds
The males mimic noisy flocks to boost mating success.
Males are prone to try anything to get lucky, and lyrebirds seem to have it clinched, according to study published in...
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Noisy silence
Study suggests NZ pest-control regime has little impact on birds.
New Zealand’s use of toxic aerial baits to rid the islands of invasive mammal predators has attracted claims that for...
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Birds of a feather
Photographer Søren Solkær used his COVID year to capture one of the most spectacular – but little...
Søren Solkær makes his living photographing fashion and pop culture, but he has a secret love of common starlings – S...
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Tropical birds evolved slowly
Are biodiversity hotspots ‘coldspots’ for new species?
Scientists have uncovered a surprising paradox in species evolution: birds in tropical hotspots evolved much more slo...
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Songs, sounds and the life of birds
They remember their tunes but are disrupted by our noise.
Birds’ affinity for sound has its upsides and downsides, it seems. On the one hand, scientists have found that zeb...
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Bird genome project really takes off
We now know a lot more about the avian tree of life.
Bird lovers can now rejoice in exploring the genomes of nearly all bird families. About 40% of the newly sequenced...
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Wind? That’s barely a breeze
Lily shows how to handle gusty conditions.
Birds can fly easily in winds that would challenge engineered air vehicles of a similar size, and now Lily the Britis...