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
0
160
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
1
570
]New behavioral traits are often the first response of animals to changing environmental conditions. As cities increasingly become habitats of wildlife, researchers have studied behavioral changes in birds and examined how ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 22, 2023
0
16
Daurian redstarts move their nesting sites closer to or even inside human settlements when cuckoos are around. In doing so, they actively protect their nest against brood parasitism, as cuckoos avoid human settlements.
Plants & Animals
Feb 22, 2023
0
97
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
0
300
Brown-headed cowbirds are generalist brood parasites, laying their eggs in the nests of many other bird species and letting the host parents raise their young. A new study seeks to understand the strategies cowbird chicks ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 13, 2022
0
20
Eye size likely plays a role in the contest between avian brood parasites—birds that lay their eggs in the nests of other species—and their hosts, who sometimes detect the foreign eggs and eject or abandon them, scientists ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 28, 2021
0
29
Some birds lay their eggs in the nests of other bird species and let the host parents raise their young. A new study finds that in times of environmental flux, these brood parasites "diversify their portfolios," minimizing ...
Ecology
Aug 21, 2020
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138
Brown-headed cowbirds show a bias in the sex ratio of their offspring depending on the time of the breeding season, researchers report in a new study. More female than male offspring hatch early in the breeding season in ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 24, 2020
1
88
Scroungers and parasites seem to show up in nature wherever life produces something useful, and that includes parental care. Among birds, for example, the practice of laying eggs in other birds' nests is surprisingly common.
Ecology
Oct 9, 2019
1
94
