Boldly patterned in black, white, and silver, Barnacle Geese are stunning birds. In Europe, huge flocks gather in pastures and mudflats where the geese feast on grasses and moss — but not barnacles. So where did they get that name?

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Found in much of Central America, White-throated Magpie-Jay flocks are family groups led by a dominant female. They include a mate and several female offspring that bring food to the primary female and her young. It’s an example of cooperative breeding, when birds other than the parents help out to raise young.

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Over 130,000 years ago, White-throated Rails migrated across hundreds of miles from Madagascar to the tiny island of Aldabra. Fossil records show that these wayward birds evolved to be entirely flightless, and went extinct when the island was lost to sea level rise. But some 20,000 years later, Aldabra reemerged from the Indian Ocean and a new wave of rails settled in. Today, the Aldabra subspecies of White-throated Rails are flightless once again! It’s a rare example of a phenomenon called iterative evolution.

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