Sunbirds suck nectar with supple tongues

Sunbirds (Nectariniidae) drink nectar from flowers by generating suction with their tongues — the first example of a vertebrate creating suction without changing the shape of its mouth. As they drink, the birds repeatedly press their tongue against the roof of their beak and then release it. This motion flattens and re-forms a v-shaped groove along the length of the tongue, which researchers believe creates suction that pulls nectar into the birds’ mouths.

How did birds evolve?

For more than a century, Archaeopteryx was the earliest known bird genus, and the only one known from the Jurassic period, when birds first evolved. Last year, fossils of a newly discovered genus revealed that Archaeopteryx wasn’t alone: a creature called Baminornis also walked the Jurassic Earth — and flew as well. These two genera of birds are so different that some researchers suggest that the first birds predated them both. The findings are revealing clues about how and why birds evolved, and hint that the evolutionary story of birds has an even earlier chapter than researchers thought.

Has birds’ mysterious ‘compass’ organ been found at last?

Pigeons (Columba livia) seem to be able to sense magnetic fields by detecting tiny electrical currents in their inner ears. Researchers performed advanced brain mapping as well single-cell RNA sequencing of pigeon inner-ear cells. Both lines of evidence point to the inner ear as the birds’ ‘magnetoreception’ organ. Such an organ gives the birds an ‘inner compass’ that could help to explain their navigational nous over long distances.

Crows make expert shape spotters

Carrion crows (Corvus corone) can add geometry to their already impressive list of mathematical skills. Researchers showed sets of six shapes to two crows and tasked them with spotting the odd one out. The birds aced simple tests, picking a crescent moon from a group of stars with little trouble. Even on more difficult tasks — picking out one slightly distorted quadrilateral from a group of otherwise very similar regular shapes — the crows still performed well, even when the shapes were randomly rotated and scaled.

Many birds-of-paradise species emit light through their plumage

Most species of birds-of-paradise are biofluorescent — parts of their body and their feathers can absorb UV or blue light and emit it back out at different frequencies — which makes their colours more vibrant. Of the 45 species, researchers found that 37 showed biofluorescence, with glowing body parts differing between males and females. Researchers theorise that the phenomenon would enhance courtship displays in males, whereas it seems more likely to be a camouflage aid in females.

Fossil sheds light on early bird brains

A remarkably well-preserved three-dimensional fossil has allowed researchers to digitally reconstruct the brain of an ancient bird species, the newly designated Navaornis hestiae. The starling-sized bird lived around 80 million years ago, a period from which 3D bird skulls have been difficult to find. The reconstruction gives researchers a glimpse of a stage of avian brain evolution between the earliest known birds and those alive today, partially filling in what was a knowledge gap of 70 million years.

Chemical swaps give parrots their colours

Dusky lory parrots (Pseudeos fuscata) have a unique genetic change that allows them to sport a rainbow of colours. Pigments in their feathers called psittacofulvins, which are only found in parrots, are made up of carbon chains of varying lengths. These chains have an aldehyde group at one end by default when they’re synthesised, which makes the pigment red. Researchers found a gene in the dusky lory’s genome that encodes an enzyme that can modify the aldehyde into a carboxyl group, which changes the pigment’s colour to yellow.

Wild Birds Gesture ‘After You’ to Insist Their Mate Go First

Japanese tits (Parus minor) flutter their wings to invite their mate to enter the nest first. Scientists who observed eight breeding pairs of wild tits noticed that when one of the birds sat in front of the next box and fluttered its wings, the other would go in first. It’s the first documented evidence of birds using a symbolic gesture: one that has a specific meaning (like waving ‘goodbye’) but isn’t simply pointing at an object of interest.

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Birds behaviourally demonstrate what they want another to do. This is also a way of teaching chicks. See Rainbow Lorikeet Semiosis

Part of sparrow's brain massively expands in preparation for mating

When it’s time to find a mate, the parts of songbird brains that are responsible for singing get bigger — and then shrink down again at the end of the season. But none do it quite like the Gambel’s white-crowned sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys gambelii). In males of the species, a brain area called the HVC nearly doubles in size, expanding from 100,000 neurons to 170,000. How the bird pulls off this feat is still a mystery — but it might one day point to ways of treating anomalies in the human brain.

Earliest bird signs in southern hemisphere

Footprints preserved in the rocks of Australia’s south coast might have been left by ancient birds 128 million years ago — the earliest evidence for birds in the southern hemisphere. The 27 tracks would have been made when Australia was part of the Gondwana supercontinent; this particular bit of land was close to the South Pole. Features such as widely spread toes and a distinctive perching claw suggest the animals were birds, not dinosaurs.

67-million-year-old fossil upends bird evolutionary tree

A 67-million-year-old beak bone has upended the evolutionary tree of life for birds. Most modern birds have flexible bony palates that allow them to move their upper beak independently of their skull. Just a few — including emus, ostriches and kiwis — have fused palates and fixed beaks. It had been assumed that the ancestors of all modern birds were like these ‘ancient-jawed’ palæognaths. But a tiny bone encased in rock suggests that flexible jaws came first.

Hoatzin could reshape avian taxonomy

Hoatzins (Opisthocomus hoazin) present an evolutionary enigma — one analysis of their DNA suggests that the birds’ closest relatives are cranes and shorebirds, and another found that they are closely related to a group that includes tiny, hovering birds, such as hummingbirds. The riddle is forcing biologists to consider whether to rethink the shape of the standard ‘tree of life’ for modern birds.

Fossil of large penguin provides a new window into New Zealand’s long-lost past

In 2006, children from a junior naturalists’ club in New Zealand discovered the fossilised remains of a penguin the size of a ten-year-old child. Standing about 1.38 metres tall, the giant bird turns out to be a new species that was taller than other ancient giant penguins, as well as the tallest modern penguin, the 1.2-metre-tall emperor (Aptenodytes forsteri). Researchers named the species Kairuku waewaeroa; the second part of the name is Māori for ‘long legs’.

Fossil Skull Of Oldest Modern Bird

An extraordinary fossil skull belonged to the oldest modern bird ever found. The duck-sized Asteriornis maastrichtensis lived 66.7 million years ago, just 700,000 years before the asteroid impact that killed off all non-avian dinosaurs. Palæontologists were staggered to discover the skull when they used a CT scan to look inside a rock found in Belgium in 2000 by an amateur fossil hunter.

The parrots that understand probabilities

A group of kea, a type of parrot from New Zealand, have been surprising scientists by passing a series of intelligence tests based around probabilities and social cues. Researchers found that kea can outperform monkeys, showing abilities previously seen only in great apes such as humans and chimpanzees.

Magpies' brain power may be boosted by living in larger groups

Australian magpies that hang out in large groups appear to be smarter and more successful at breeding than those in smaller groups.

Palm cockatoos drum a regular rhythm to attract a mate

Just like a human drummer, male palm cockatoos (Probosciger aterrimus) use drumsticks from branches and seed pods to beat out a steady rhythm. And it appears they use their drumming, along with a complex array of calls and wing-flapping, to attract female birds.

Tropical songbirds raise smaller families

By having smaller clutches than their temperate counterparts, tropical songbirds can feed more food to fewer offspring, enabling their young to grow longer wings before they leave the nest.

Chestnut-crowned babbler becomes first known non-human species to communicate using language

A small gregarious bird that lives in the Australian outback has been found to communicate with one another using a simple form of language – the first species other than humans known to do so. Scientists studying the vocal noises made by the chestnut-crowned babbler have shown that it uses combinations of different sounds that on their own are meaningless but when combined convey a certain message to other members of the species. Although bird songs are known to have different meanings, scientists have not been able to show until now that individual messages can be made by using different combinations of the same repertoire of sounds, much like the phonemes or individual sounds that make up human words.

Bird cries wolf to fool a predator

The little brown thornbill (Acanthiza pusilla) protects its young by using vocal mimicry to trick its predator into thinking that they themselves are under attack.  It does this by mimicking a chorus of other species' alarm calls that are normally used to warn of an approaching hawk.