Birds are some of the most striking creatures on Earth, coming in a rainbow of colors that serve several important functions, such as attracting a mate and communicating with other birds. These ...

Long before Britain’s National Physical Laboratory first developed a super black coating for its instruments to absorb stray light photons reflected from surfaces, birds invented it through the magic ...

Blackbirds, it turns out, aren’t actually all that black. Their feathers absorb most of the visible light that hits them, but still reflect between 3 and 5 percent of it. For really black plumage, you ...

Researchers examined dozens of bird species in museum collections looking for differences in the feathers and bodies between birds that can fly and birds that can't. They found that when birds evolve ...

Some birds of paradise really know how to work their angles. Tilted, microscopic filaments in some of the showy birds’ black feathers make that plumage look much darker than traditional black feathers ...