Birds that depend on flies for food have many creative ways of catching their prey. Swallows execute sharp turns and quick changes of speed. Bluebirds watch from a perch, pouncing when the time is right. A Chuck-will’s-widow flies with its scoop-like mouth wide open, engulfing moths and other insects. A Merlin snares dragonflies in its talons. Hummingbirds dart into swarms of midges.

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For birds, learning starts early. Birds listen to their parents’ songs and calls from inside the egg. Recent findings have shown that calls from Zebra Finch parents can even prepare their chicks for warmer temperatures before they hatch. Researchers noticed that Zebra Finches make a special high-pitched call, called a heat call, when sitting on their eggs on hot days. Once out of the egg, chicks whose parents made heat calls grow more slowly in the heat. As adults, they seek out warmer spots for their nests, and even produce more offspring of their own than finches that didn’t slow their growth in hot conditions when they were chicks.

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At the end of summer, the once-bright feathers of a male American Goldfinch look ragged. Growing new flight feathers in a process called molting makes him more vulnerable to predators. Before migrating to wintering grounds, many songbirds stop at a secondary location to undergo the indignities of molting. It’s called molt migration. The places birds go to molt could be important targets for conservation efforts.

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