A Holiday Filled With Chirps & Cheer—The Christmas Bird Count

Medicine & Technology Dec 21, 2014

When it comes time to the Christmas season, people innately begin counting the birds: four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and whole lot of other species. But if you’re an ornithologist, then the holiday season also marks an important time for bird-watching. Waking up before sunrise and catching a glimpse of the black-necked stilts or the white-tailed kites may be a part of your daily agenda, but when Dec. 14 rolls around you’re ready for day long adventures to camp out and count the local bird species in the skies.

Warblers Flee, As Warnings from Mother Nature Reveal Coming Storms

Dec 20, 2014

In the study of ecology, it’s long been known that animals have a sort of sixth sense above and beyond what humans can perceive. Perhaps through the aid of their keen senses of smell or their abnormally acute sense of hearing, animals such as dogs are able to sense the presence of cancers, the onset of seizures, and even changes in the climate. But in a new study led by UC Berkeley ecologist Henry Streby, it’s birds that are sensing a change. Golden-winged warblers to be exact.

Genomic Study Reveals Pre-Cambrian Explosion of Bird Species, Who Faired Better than Gentle Dinosaurs

Dec 14, 2014

They’re far from the scaled reptilian giants that once walked the Earth, but for decades researchers have sought out an evolutionary connection between our winged bird species of today and the dinosaurs that once took flight in prehistoric times. For the past four years, a team of international researchers have fully developed The Avian Phylogenomics Project, in which they have sequenced genomes of nearly all species of the evolutionary branches including a majority of birds known to man. Now that the research is done, the mapping of 48 bird species genomes has evolved into more than two-dozen articles published in the journal Science, as well as a new understanding of how birds may link to their dinosaur ancestors.