A 247-million-year-old fossil reptile boasted an enormous crest on its back made from feather-like appendages, long before the appearance of feathered dinosaurs ...

Bird feathers have many different functions. Softer down keeps a bird warm and stiffer wing feathers are used for flight. Feathers are also important in communication. Bright plumage can say ‘hey, ...

Feather colour might make a difference to flight efficiency Dark feathers may help birds fly more efficiently. They heat up the animals’ wings and the surrounding air, which might help increase ...

Deep within South America's cloud forests lives the club-winged manakin, a bird unlike any other. Instead of singing, the ...

Small birds -- ones that weigh less than 2.2 pounds and need less power to stay in the air -- shed adjacent feathers. This creates a featherless gap on their wing surface, but because of their ...

Wing Ding: Bird rubs feathers for cricketlike song. Share this: Share via email ... She could feel a kinked wing feather catch on ridges when it scraped against a neighboring feather’s shaft.

These birds fight a lot," said Gómez-Bahamón. "They're very feisty, they're not afraid of anything." The team suspected this high-pitched trilling was coming from the rapid fluttering of their ...

Birds can chirp, birds can fly and now scientists have new evidence that birds can communicate with each other using sound made with their feathers. A species called the fork-tailed flycatcher, or ...

But there's more to bird flight than strong wings and hollow bones. One secret lies in their covert feathers—layers of small feathers that cover the wing’s base and shift during tricky ...