Hacker News with Generative AI: Birds

How a hawk learned to use traffic signals to hunt more successfully (frontiersin.org)
A Cooper’s hawk, a medium-sized raptor native to North America, appears to have learned how to adapt its hunting strategy and strike at a flock of birds precisely when cars at an intersection lined up after traffic lights switched to red, having been alerted by a sound signal that the red phase would last longer than usual.

Animal Behavior, Wildlife, Science, Urban Wildlife, Birds

463 points by layer8 31 days ago | 145 comments

'Turbocharged' Mitochondria Power Birds' Epic Migratory Journeys (quantamagazine.org)
Weighing in at a single ounce, the white-crowned sparrow can fly 2,600 miles, from Mexico to Alaska, on its annual spring migration, sometimes traveling 300 miles in a single night.

Birds, Animal Behavior, Biology, Migration

108 points by rbanffy 37 days ago | 82 comments

'Turbocharged' Mitochondria Power Birds' Epic Migratory Journeys (quantamagazine.org)
Weighing in at a single ounce, the white-crowned sparrow can fly 2,600 miles, from Mexico to Alaska, on its annual spring migration, sometimes traveling 300 miles in a single night.

Biology, Animal Behavior, Migration, Birds

78 points by pseudolus 39 days ago | 17 comments

The Neglected Abundance of Your Backyard (noemamag.com)
It started with a thump, the grim sound of a bird hitting the window of my little office shack. When I ran outside to check, I found the first hermit thrush that I had ever seen in our yard, lying dead in the grass.

Nature, Observation, Backyard Ecology, Birds

11 points by marojejian 40 days ago | 1 comments

Why Is the Kiwi's Egg So Big? (audubon.org)
The flightless kiwi is so unbirdlike that many biologists call it an “honorary mammal.”

Biology, Birds, New Zealand, Evolution

77 points by repost_bot 57 days ago | 54 comments

Hooded pitohui, one of the only toxic birds (australiangeographic.com.au)
This is one of the only known birds to be toxic. Its feathers contain one of the most potent toxins known to science – but why?

Animals, Science, Birds, Toxicology

11 points by thunderbong 64 days ago | 3 comments

New study of birds shows citizen science can be trusted (ucdavis.edu)
Platforms such as iNaturalist and eBird encourage people to observe and document nature, but how accurate is the ecological data that they collect?

Citizen Science, Ecology, Birds, Research

48 points by gnabgib 66 days ago | 29 comments

Bird Went Extinct and Then Evolved into Existence Again (vice.com)
The Aldabra white-throated rail, a flightless bird that lives on its namesake atoll in the Indian Ocean, doesn’t look like anything special at first glance. But the small bird has big bragging rights, because it has effectively evolved into existence twice after first going extinct some 136,000 years ago.

Evolution, Biology, Extinction, Birds

11 points by MrBuddyCasino 67 days ago | 3 comments

How to Recognize Woodpeckers by Their Drumming Sounds (allaboutbirds.org)
One of the first indications of springtime in North America is the rat-a-tat sound of woodpeckers drumming.

Birds, Spring, Sound, Nature, Identification

108 points by jamesriso 80 days ago | 31 comments

Intelligence Evolved at Least Twice in Vertebrate Animals (quantamagazine.org)
Humans tend to put our own intelligence on a pedestal. Our brains can do math, employ logic, explore abstractions and think critically. But we can’t claim a monopoly on thought. Among a variety of nonhuman species known to display intelligent behavior, birds have been shown time and again to have advanced cognitive abilities.

Intelligence, Evolution, Animals, Cognition, Birds

247 points by rbanffy 81 days ago | 184 comments

Parrots and humans share a brain mechanism for speech (sciencenews.org)
When it comes to speech, parrots have the gift of gab. And the way the brains of small parrots known as budgerigars bestow this gift is remarkably similar to human speech, researchers report March 19 in Nature.

Neuroscience, Animal Behavior, Language, Birds

6 points by gmays 85 days ago | 0 comments

The Hole Story: How Woodpeckers Make Homes for the Rest of the Forest (allaboutbirds.org)
Woodpecker nest holes are valuable pieces of real estate that may be used by hundreds of other species over many years. Researchers are using the concept of "nest webs" to understand how this valuable resource passes from one owner to the next.

Wildlife, Ecology, Research, Birds

4 points by hn_acker 91 days ago | 0 comments

A Few of the Birds I Love (wordpress.com)
Whenever you feel that there is no joy in the world, you must go to a place with swallows. Few things are more euphoric than a swallow in flight.

Nature, Birds, Joy, Poetry

101 points by moultano 119 days ago | 46 comments

Flashy exotic birds can glow in the dark (arstechnica.com)
Found in the forests of Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and Eastern Australia, birds of paradise are famous for flashy feathers and unusually shaped ornaments, which set the standard for haute couture among birds.

Animals, Biology, Nature, Birds

11 points by cratermoon 124 days ago | 3 comments

Birds have developed complex brains independently from mammals (phys.org)
Two studies published in the latest issue of Science have revealed that birds, reptiles, and mammals have developed complex brain circuits independently, despite sharing a common ancestor.

Evolution, Neuroscience, Biology, Birds, Mammals

32 points by ftrobro 134 days ago | 6 comments

Let's talk about bird tongues (2014) (toughlittlebirds.com)
You don’t have to look at many birds to realize that they are very variable in appearance: hawks look different from hummingbirds, and both look different from peacocks. You can spend a lot of time looking at birds, though, before you realize that they are hiding a lot of variation inside their mouths: long tongues, short tongues, spiky tongues, curly tongues, forked tongues, frayed tongues, brush-like tongues.

Zoology, Birds, Anatomy, Biology

71 points by quuxplusone 166 days ago | 6 comments

Bird Buddy Launches 'Wonder' Camera for Watching Insects (macrumors.com)
The creators of Bird Buddy, a camera-equipped bird feeder, today showed off two products that are designed for watching insects, flowers, birds, and other flora and fauna.

Wildlife, Technology, Photography, Birds

4 points by Tomte 172 days ago | 2 comments

Oldest known wild bird lays egg at 74 (bbc.co.uk)
The world's oldest known wild bird has laid an egg at the approximate age of 74, US biologists say.

Animals, Biology, Nature, Birds

238 points by GeoAtreides 203 days ago | 110 comments

Bird brain from the age of dinosaurs reveals roots of avian intelligence (cam.ac.uk)
A ‘one of a kind’ fossil discovery could transform our understanding of how the unique brains and intelligence of modern birds evolved, one of the most enduring mysteries of vertebrate evolution.

Paleontology, Evolution, Birds, Dinosaurs, Neuroscience

124 points by gmays 221 days ago | 6 comments

Wren (wikipedia.org)
Wrens are a family, Troglodytidae, of small brown passerine birds.

Birds, Taxonomy, Nature

22 points by keepamovin 231 days ago | 1 comments

Listening in on the Mysterious Marbled Murrelet (hakaimagazine.com)
The marbled murrelet is an elusive creature. At sea, the stubby seabird dives at the first sign of predators. On land, it lays its eggs high in the mossy branches of the Pacific Northwest’s old-growth forests—a fact only serendipitously discovered by a utility-company employee climbing trees in the 1970s.

Nature, Birds, Conservation, Pacific Northwest, Wildlife

7 points by ohjeez 237 days ago | 0 comments

How did birds survive while dinosaurs went extinct? (yahoo.com)
Today's news

Paleontology, Evolution, Extinction, Birds, Dinosaurs

28 points by isaacfrond 271 days ago | 8 comments

Krishna Bhusal: Time to highlight South Asia's less-studied vultures (mongabay.com)

Conservation, South Asia, Birds, Endangered Species

4 points by PaulHoule 300 days ago | 0 comments

Eating the Birds of America: Audubon's Culinary Reviews of America's Birds (usbirdhistory.com)

Birds, History, Food, America

154 points by Morizero 305 days ago | 95 comments

From Bede (731) to BONE (1991-2004): A sparrow's flight through the ages (thijsporck.com)