The various species of sparrows, for example, can be tough to distinguish from each other. But the first time I saw a Swallow-tailed Kite, I knew I’d just seen a Swallow-tailed Kite.

At 5.5 inches from head to tail, the hummingbird-size fossil is the first of its kind to be uncovered in South America, and one of the oldest known bird fossils from Gondwana, a supercontinent ...

Scientists have uncovered the fossil of a bird that lived 120 million years ago and it definitely had flair, including unusually long tail feathers. While the feathers probably didn’t help the ...

All to battle an 8-ounce, highly adaptive bird that's colonizing the country -- and leaving behind inch-thick layers of droppings as it goes. The great-tailed grackle, called by some the devil ...

Bird tails are complex structures that give us clues about bird flight and bird behavior. Knowing the variety of tail patterns helps us to identify birds, so let's talk bird tails.

A 120-million-year-old bird sported a long tail and a second, unexpected tail frond, paleontologists suggest. The discovery points to a complicated evolutionary path for the tails we see in birds ...

We asked readers to spend the summer watching birds. Here’s what happened. The saltmarsh sparrow, one of many bird species threatened by sea level rise. Raymond Hennessy/Alamy ...