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Infanticide rife in guillemot colony

One of Britain's best-known species of seabird is increasingly attacking and killing unattended chicks from neighbouring nests due to food shortages.

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Long-held assumptions of flightless bird evolution

Large flightless birds of the southern continents – African ostriches, Australian emus and cassowaries, South American rheas and the New Zealand kiwi – do not share a common flightless ancestor as once believed.

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Why do conservationists really help wildlife?

Volunteers who take part in conservation efforts may do it more for themselves than the wildlife they are trying to protect, a University of Alberta case study shows.

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Rosella research could re-write ring theory

New research has uncovered how different crimson rosella populations are related to each other – a discovery which has important implications for research into how climate change may affect Australia’s biodiversity.

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UCSF researchers identify virus behind mysterious parrot disease

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, have identified a virus behind the mysterious infectious disease that has been killing parrots and exotic birds for more than 30 years.

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European birds flock to warming Britain

Researchers at Durham, the RSPB and Cambridge University have found that birds such as the Cirl Bunting and Dartford Warbler are becoming more common across a wide range of habitats in Britain as temperatures rise.

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Birdsong not just for the birds

Computer scientists from the University of Bonn, in conjunction with the birdsong archives of Berlin's Humboldt University, have developed a kind of 'Big Brother' for birds. This has nothing to do with entertainment, but a lot to do with the protection of nature.

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Do birds have a good sense of smell?

Sight and hearing are the most important senses for birds - this is at least the received wisdom. By studying bird DNA, however, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, along with a colleague at the Cawthron Institute in New Zealand, have now provided genetic evidence that many bird species have a well-developed sense of smell

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How birds spot the cuckoo in the nest

It's not always easy spotting the cuckoo in the nest. But if you don't, you pay a high price raising someone else's chick. How hosts distinguish impostor eggs from their own has long puzzled scientists. The problem remained largely unsolved while looking at it through our own eyes.

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Birds migrate together at night in dispersed flocks, new study indicates

A new analysis indicates that birds don’t fly alone when migrating at night. Some birds, at least, keep together on their migratory journeys, flying in tandem even when they are 200 meters or more apart.

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How birds of feather flock together

The bird family tree has some surprises tucked away in its branches, according to a new study by Shannon Hackett of Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History and her fellow researchers.

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Early bird project really gets worm

Scientists from the LSU Museum of Natural Science, or MNS, recently participated in a project joining together the most prominent ornithological research programs in the world.

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