Deep in the labyrinth of the American Museum of Natural History, past the giant suspended blue whale and the first floor’s Alaska brown bears, is an unobtrusive locked door. On it, there is a small sign. “Bug Colony.” Behind the door, accessible only to a handful of museum employees, thousands of flesh-eating dermestid beetles toil…
Elaborate poses, tufts of feathers, flamboyant shuffles along an immaculate forest floor — male birds-of-paradise have many ways to woo a potential mate. But now, by examining prepared specimens at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, scientists have discovered what could be yet another tool in the kit of the tropical birds…
Helen Hays, an intrepid ornithologist who for nearly 50 years led scores of volunteers to Great Gull Island, a postage-stamp islet in Long Island Sound, where they endured dive-bombing birds and fierce ocean storms to help revitalize it as one of the world’s largest nesting sites for common and roseate terns, died on Feb. 5…