The Illinois Department of Natural Resources issued the recommendation Thursday. Their advice is to halt use of bird baths and bird feeders through the end of May.

Bird flu cases have been identified in commercial chicken and turkey farms or in backyard flocks in 29 states, according to the USDA. Spread of the disease is largely blamed on the droppings of infected migrating wild birds.

Monty the piping plover has once again seemingly defied physics and returned to Chicago a mere day after reportedly leaving his wintering grounds in Texas.

The DuPage Forest Preserve District board, which operates and funds the center, approved a plan for a new clinic that meets 21st century needs and standards and promises to be the district's first net-zero building. 

Chicago-area birds are nesting and laying eggs earlier than ever before. A mysterious meteor burns up over Papua New Guinea. A fossil could rewrite the history of the evolution of life on Earth. And a disturbing finding about microplastics.

NextEra Energy subsidiary ESI Energy pleaded guilty to three counts of violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act during a Tuesday court appearance in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It was charged in the deaths of eagles at three of its wind farms in Wyoming and New Mexico.

Brookfield Zoo is celebrating the arrival of an adorable baby porcupine. We had to know: How do mama porcupines give birth safely? 

The cub was born March 15, with its sex still unknown. Mom Zari and dad Jabari both arrived at the zoo in 2021 for the opening of the Pepper Family Wildlife Center.

Climate scientists at the University of Michigan looked at 15 different plant pollens in the United States and used computer simulations to calculate how much worse allergy season will likely get by the year 2100. It’s enough to make allergy sufferers even more red-eyed.

Skunk cabbage is one of the first native plants to emerge from the frozen winter ground in the Chicago area. Its powerful aroma isn’t the only quirky thing about this plant.

Field studies over the past few weeks — a collective effort known as the “Winter Grab” — were intended to boost knowledge of what happens in the five lakes when they’re covered partially or completely with ice.

Though the Save Bell Bowl Prairie coalition earned a temporary reprieve for the natural area through March 1, the group remains at a stalemate with the Greater Rockford Airport Authority.

The Urban River Otter Research Project recently launched in Cook County. One of the early goals is to gather otter sightings from the public in order to get a sense of the extent of the animal’s presence in and around Chicago.

The snowy owl is being treated at Willowbrook Wildlife Center, where a bald eagle is recuperating from the same issue. Anticoagulants in rodenticides can be deadly to the birds of prey that eat poisoned rats, mice and other rodents.

The gypsy moth has been going by its mouthful of a scientific name — Lymantria dispar — since July, when scientists scrapped the insect’s derogatory common name and began weighing alternatives.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has allocated $225.8 million to the Brandon Road Lock and Dam invasive carp barrier. The funds will complete the planning and engineering phase of the project.