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 ...

In Christian art the Goldfinch stands for Christ's Passion, and it appears in hundreds of devotional pictures, Raphael's Madonna of the Goldfinch among them. Here is what it meant, where those ...

A Collared Dove's song is a soft three-note coo, the middle note the longest, repeated over and over from roofs and wires. Listen to recordings, see the coo drawn as a spectrogram, and learn why ...

A flash of sky-blue streaking across the western mountains signals one of North America's most eye-catching songbirds at work, hovering like a kestrel before diving for insects in the alpine meadows.

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 ...

Most Blue Jays stay put in winter, but some migrate, by day and in loose flocks, mostly to the south and southwest. Here is what banding shows about which jays go and where, the huge flights along the ...

Baby peacocks - which are actually called peachicks - are the chicks of any of the three species of peafowl; the Indian peafowl, Congo peafowl and Green peafowl. Peacocks are actually just male ...

Flamingos are an iconic breed of bird, recognised by most people the world over, but actually seen in the flesh by far fewer, due to the locations of their habitats. There are in fact six species of ...

An outing to the countryside is a lovely way to spend the day, but bird watchers in the UK don’t need to leave home to enjoy some fantastic wild bird species. The United Kingdom is blessed with a host ...

Ducks are noisy, sociable birds, frequently seen swimming together in close-knit groups bobbing in sync on the water, not totally unlike rubber ducks on a fairground Hook-a-Duck stall. But what’s the ...

Birds are well-known for their incredible and ornate mating displays and rituals, ranging from the careful planning and insane plumage of the male Lyrebird to the aerobatic feats of various male ...