It has gorgeous green leaves and small blossoms that bloom from ... but what makes the sparkleberry such a bird magnet? First, the shiny black color of the berries is visually appealing to birds.

In 1857, a 28-year-old physician named Caleb Kennerly, who was also a naturalist with the Northwest Boundary Survey, shot a small black bird of a previously undocumented species on the shore of ...

He put the bird headfirst into a black tube that sat on a tiny scale. He called out the weight (35.9 grams, or 1.2 ounces) to volunteer Peggy Sagan, who was writing information down on a chart.

But the birds on each island developed black plumage at different times, from different genetic mutations which moved rapidly through the small island populations. One of these mutations spread ...

I walked out our front door to a noisy screeching. A flock of small black birds were diving recklessly into and zooming through a dense leafy bush about 8 feet high at the edge of the lake in ...