When vertebrates moved onto land, long ago, some of them eventually became airborne, way after the insects did. There are three groups of vertebrates that have used powered, muscle-driven flight: ...

While studying some of the birds feeding in my backyard, I saw a small woodpecker that acted and looked like a Downy. The ...

At our cabin in Pebble Creek Valley north of Silverthorne, located at 9,450 feet in elevation, we have several platform ...

Their long narrow curved wings give fast wingbeats and rapid flight. In the early days, these resourceful birds nested in hollow trees, but as settlers built they began roosting in chimneys ...

Bill and I have studied birds for many years (me since I was a child), so when we moved to our new house, I was curious as to what we ...

They start as a downy ball of fluff on a remote New Zealand island. Then they fledge across the Pacific. Only a handful have ...

Barelegged swans are a bit like baseball players without caps. But as the art form confronts its history of racial ...

At first glance, it was hard to tell exactly what we were looking at. It almost seemed out of place — just a tall, brown ...

A moth found in northern Australia and South-East Asia has an astonishing camouflage trick: it creates an optical illusion to look like a three-dimensional leaf, complete with a raised midrib ...

There’s nowhere on earth quite like the Outer Banks, a string of wild but well-loved barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina. Learn more about our 2025 Vacation of the Year.

“These nanostructures create a shiny wing surface that mimics the highlights found on a smooth, curved leaf surface ... for the moth’s survival. Birds, its primary predators, rely heavily ...