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They wander the world, sleep on the wing and perform astonishing feats of endurance. We humans had until recently become inured to losing track of breeding birds for the duration of their migratory journeys, which we now know can span tens of thousands of miles. When a white stork turned up in Klütz, Germany, in the spring of 1822 with an arrow from Africa dangling from its neck, an awakening began that migratory birds are up to something much bigger than suspected. Solar-powered transmitters using cellular networks can now record a bird’s latitude, longitude and altitude at 30-second intervals. In...

MOSCOW, April 05 /ITAR-TASS/. The Russian Knights aerobatic team marks its 23rd anniversary. The group, the world's only one piloting heavy fighters, Sukhoi-27s, was formed on April 5, 1991. In the early 2000s, the Russian Knights and the Swifts began to fly in the formation called "Kubinka Diamond" of five Su-27 and four MiG-29 jets. The two aerobatic teams almost every day train at their base at Kubinka near Moscow, mastering their piloting skills in the air. Before joining the group, a pilot must undergo two-three-year training. Each of the newcomers is an ace who has logged at least 800...

First collected in southwestern Wyoming in a fossil site known as the Green River Formation, Eocypselus rowei lived about 50 million years ago. It was a small creature about 12 cm long (from head to tail), and weighed less than an ounce... The fossil is unusual in having exceptionally well-preserved feathers, which allowed the researchers to reconstruct the size and shape of the bird’s wings in ways not possible with bones alone. Feathers account for more than half of the bird’s total wing length... The analysis suggests that the bird was an evolutionary precursor to the group that includes today’s...