Everyone loves to watch hummingbirds—tiny, brightly colored blurs that dart about, hovering at flowers and pugnaciously defending their ownership of a feeder. But to the scientists who study them, ...

Birds are all around us, and as such, we don't necessarily think about how incredible they are. These are creatures that descended from therapods, a group of two-legged dinosaurs to which the ...

Quick Take Ruby-throated hummingbirds migrate about 2,000 miles annually from North America to the Yucatan Peninsula and back. Up to 70% of juveniles and 40% of adults perish along migration due to ...

Hummingbird bills — their long, thin beaks — look a little like drinking straws. The frenetic speed at which they get nectar out of flowers and backyard feeders may give the impression that the bills ...

Soldiering through nightly suspended animation, a (nearly) all-sugar diet, backwards flight and long migrations, the birds’ tiny physiques prove mighty. By Bob Holmes / Knowable Magazine Published Sep ...

Hummingbird bills -- their long, thin beaks -- look a little like drinking straws. But new research shows just how little water, or nectar, that comparison holds. Scientists have discovered that the ...