Explore how the vulturine guinea fowl’s striking blue and white feathers serve more than beauty. From structural coloration ...

“Birds of a feather flock together.” You’ve heard this phrase hundreds, or maybe even thousands of times — but do you know what it means? Do birds of a feather really flock together in nature, or is ...

It is common to say that something is as light as a feather in order to mean that something doesn’t weigh much at all. A group of researchers, however, has found that while all feathers are pretty ...

Birds boast some of the most vibrant colors among terrestrial animals. Our pretty avian friends have inspired our Democrat and Chronicle photographers for years and captured the imaginations of many ...

Each Canada goose that you see flying around in formation around Lancaster County these days has between 20,000 and 25,000 feathers, most hidden from sight. A typical songbird at your backyard feeder ...

Because birds live outdoors, there's an assumption that they're dirty and harbor many insect pests among their feathers. But this is very wide of the mark: Birds are as clean as cats, spending almost ...

It doesn’t get top billing at the North Museum of Nature and Science in Lancaster. But venture into the basement and behold a world-class bird collection whose origins are full of intrigue and ...

A Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher takes flight on the front cover of the new chapbook "Words of a Feather" with poems inspired by Kansas birds. Many of us have been spending more time outside during the ...

Many feathered dinosaurs couldn’t fly — at least, not like birds do today. But the reptiles’ feathers may have been more birdlike than scientists thought. Yet fossilization can change feather proteins ...

Research assistant James Whatton confirms the feathers in front of him belong to a gray catbird. Credit: Smithsonian In the hallways of the National Museum of Natural History—past the bathrooms, the ...

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 ...

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, ...