The brown-headed cowbird is nothing short of a nightmare for its hosts: If they eject the brood parasite's eggs from the nest, it punishes them by destroying their entire clutch. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute ...
Plants & Animals
May 18, 2016
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315
The American coot is a somewhat drab water bird with gray and black feathers and a white beak, common in wetlands throughout North America. Coot chicks, however, sport outrageously bright orange and red feathers, skin, and ...
Plants & Animals
Dec 30, 2019
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570
If you are raised by other species, then how do you know who you are? Although heterospecific foster parents rear brood parasitic brown-headed cowbird chicks, juvenile cowbirds readily recognize and affiliate with other cowbirds. ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 18, 2017
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190
As many humans prepare to unwrap their Easter eggs, scientists have solved one of nature's biggest criminal cases, an egg forgery scandal two million years in the making. Their findings suggest that the victims of this fraud ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 11, 2022
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160
A new study has found that birds build hanging-nests, particularly those with extended entrance tunnels, to help protect offspring against nest invaders like snakes and parasitic cuckoos.
Evolution
Dec 20, 2022
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300
(Phys.org) —New research has solved a mystery as to why some birds choose not to reproduce, and instead help to guard the nests of their close relatives. This occurs in about nine percent of all bird species.
Plants & Animals
Dec 20, 2013
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0
Brown-headed cowbirds have a reputation for being deadbeat parents: They lay their eggs in other birds' nests and then disappear, the story goes, leaving the care and feeding of their offspring to an unwitting foster family. ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 9, 2015
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168
(Phys.org) —William Feeney and Naomi Langmore, researchers with Australia's Research School of Biology, have found that fairy-wrens learn to distrust cuckoos by watching other nearby fairy-wrens react to them. In their ...
Brood parasites are reproductive cheats that evolve ways of duping other birds into raising their young. Examples such as mimicry of host eggs, chicks and fledglings by brood parasitic eggs, chicks and fledglings are amongst ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 9, 2015
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76
(PhysOrg.com) -- Only a few days old and still blind and naked, chicks of the African greater honeyguide kill their newly hatched foster siblings in order to eliminate competition for parental care, new research from the ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 7, 2011
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