There are a dozen species of hanging-parrots — also known as bat parrots — in the tropical forests of southern Asia and Indonesia. Clad in bright greens, blues, and reds, they sleep —and sometimes bathe — upside down. No other birds sleep like this. This bizarre behavior probably protects…

It took centuries to match the Cetti’s Warbler, a secretive singer, to its disembodied song. In 1819 Italian naturalist Alberto della Marmora was walking along the River Var, in France, when he heard a song he thought he recognized. One well-aimed shotgun blast later, and he knew for sure…

Among the most feared weapons deployed in World War I, submarines sank almost 5,000 ships, sending 15,000 sailors to watery graves. Scientists and navy men worked to come up with a way to detect enemy subs. One thought was to feed wild gulls from a dummy periscope, in the hope that the…

During the summer of 1818, German ornithologist Wilhelm Schilling was visiting an island in the Baltic Sea. Out of nowhere came a small flock of seabirds he didn’t recognize. He captured one, but the fortunate others escaped. Schilling later told his friend and colleague, Ludwig Brehm…

Sometimes the magic in an archive recording is the person doing the recording. Myles Edward Wentworth North spent his adult life as a civil servant in the British colonies of east Africa. Using equipment loaned by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, he systematically recorded the bird voices…

This Zitting Cisticola is a little brown bird from a big family of fifty-odd species. Its simple but cheerful song is familiar to people around the Mediterranean. In Africa, where most species of cisticolas are found, they occupy just about any open habitat, from marshlands to agricultural…

In April 1778, the explorer James Cook and his crew spent most of the month at anchor in Nootka Sound, off present-day British Columbia. The native people were eager to trade with the Englishmen. According to the British ornithologist Thomas Pennant, Rufous Hummingbirds were among the…

Two hundred years ago, on an African expedition, the French ornithologist Jules Verreaux noticed that turacos - perhaps one like the Lady Ross's Turaco seen here - had a hard time flying when they were wet. So the young explorer grabbed one of the wet, grounded birds by the wing, only to…

When Sir Walter Raleigh wanted to tempt English settlers to the new lands of Virginia, he planned a novel marketing technique: a bird book. He commissioned Thomas Harriot and John White to document the birds on an island in present-day North Carolina. Harriot, a linguist, recorded the…