A bird beak is the most important resource it has, and every species has one solely designed for survival. Birds use beaks for just about everything: building nests, feeding their young, cleaning ...

We get captivated by a bird’s plumage and may not think to notice its beak, which is critical to the bird’s identity. I’ve often heard people yell “flamingo!” when they see a pink-plumed bird feeding ...

Q I watch birds eating seed from my feeders, and then they land on a branch or even the patio furniture and rub their beaks. Why do they do this? A Birds need to keep their beaks in top condition, ...

Bird beaks come in almost every shape and size—from the straw-like beak of a hummingbird to the slicing, knife-like beak of an eagle. We have found, however, that this incredible diversity is ...

Bird beaks come in all shapes and sizes. The variation allows different species of birds to feed on different things. This can help reduce the need to compete for resources when birds live in the same ...

It was a spirited debate between friends that surfaced every time we got together. It was not about politics, the economy or the weather, but the more significant question, do birds have bills or ...

Look at a bird’s beak to see what family the bird belongs to and the kind of food it eats. Seeing a bird with a long, needlelike beak would tell us it’s in the hummingbird family that probes flowers ...

Every day, scientists uncover startling new information that reshapes our understanding of the ancient world. The latest groundbreaking discovery concerns a bird from the late Cretaceous period with a ...

Confuciusornis was a crow-like fossil bird that lived in the Cretaceous ~120 million years ago. It was one of the first birds to evolve a beak (Fig. 1). Early beak evolution remains understudied.

A 67-million-year-old bird skull has overturned an established theory about how modern birds evolved. Unlike most modern birds, the flightless group that includes ostriches and emus can’t move their ...

Confuciusornis was a crow-like fossil bird that lived in the Cretaceous ~120 million years ago. It was one of the first birds to evolve a beak. Early beak evolution remains understudied. Using an ...