What does a Blue Jay symbolize? The old records make the jaybird the devil's Friday errand-runner, with a few luck and rain omens; Native American stories make it a watcher and boaster; Thoreau and ...

Why the Mourning Dove is called that, what American folk beliefs said about its call (rain, love, luck and death), its names in Cherokee, Navajo and Nahuatl, the doves of the Bible, and what modern ...

A Goldcrest's song is a very high, thin run of notes rocking between a higher and a lower pitch, ending in a short flourish; the calls are thin and high. Listen to recordings from Britain, see them as ...

The Red Junglefowl is the wild ancestor of every domestic chicken on Earth — a bird whose crow, cluck, and scratch have shaped human civilisation more than any other. Males are spectacular: a cascade ...

Velvety black from crown to tail, with a bill patterned in orange-red, yellow, white, and black — the male Surf Scoter carries the most ornate bill of any North American duck. Hunters nicknamed it the ...

No gull on Earth travels further than Sabine's Gull — up to 39,000 km each year between its Arctic breeding grounds and the cold upwellings off Peru and South Africa. With its bold tricoloured wings, ...

Perched on a fence post with its bill tilted skyward, the Western Meadowlark delivers one of the most celebrated songs on the North American continent — a rich, bubbling, flute-like melody that ...

Blue Jays eat nuts more than anything else, above all acorns, plus insects, corn and fruit, and a little of almost everything else. Here is what stomach studies found month by month, why jays are so ...

What birds eat in the wild and what to put out for them: diet guides for garden birds, birds of prey, waterbirds and more, ...

A female Northern Cardinal is pale tan-brown with red in her crest, wings and tail and the same red-orange bill as the male. How to identify her, how she differs from the male, why her song matters, ...

Those familiar with the fairytale “The Ugly Duckling” by Hans Christian Andersen may remember how the ‘ugly duckling’ in the story was actually a baby swan and not a duckling at all! In real life, ...

fastest-running birds on the planet. Both extant species of Ostriches are endemic to the African continent, although you can see these incredible flightless birds in zoos, farms, and other captive ...