Many birds have a sixth sense. No, not seeing dead people: They detect Earth’s magnetic field, an ability that allows them to return to the same sites, year after year, during seasonal migration.

Right: orientation of birds experiencing the simulated magnetic field of a site in Russia while still being at the study site in Austria. Arrows depict the respective mean group direction.

To test whether birds plot their course from takeoff using magnetic fields, we put the Emlen funnels inside a “Helmholtz coil” – a device that allows us to change the nature of the magnetic ...

Finally a story about birds that doesn’t involve them falling out of the sky. We know that robins, like many other animals, uses the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate, but we don’t know how.

U.S. military-funded research on how birds migrate in the winter could one day allow troops to navigate using the Earth’s magnetic fields. The findings, announced last week, could result in a ...

The magnetic fields used were also stronger than the Earth's magnetic field. "It therefore still needs to be shown that this is happening in the eyes of birds" Mouritsen stresses. Such studies are ...

Disturbances to Earth’s magnetic field can lead birds astray — a phenomenon scientists call “vagrancy” — even in perfect weather, and especially during fall migration. While other ...

Life Migrating birds may use slope of Earth’s magnetic field as ‘stop sign’ Eurasian reed warblers migrate to sub-Saharan Africa each year – and they seem to use the slope of Earth’s ...

For four years, Keays' team had been searching for the cellular receptor that allows birds to sense magnetic fields. This ability allows some birds to migrate thousands of miles, ...

Disturbances to Earth's magnetic field can lead birds astray -- a phenomenon scientists call 'vagrancy' -- even in perfect weather, and especially during fall migration. While other factors such ...