image: Front and side view showing how parrotlets assist and extend their long jumps with small "proto-wingbeats," which bird ancestors may have used to develop their foraging flight capabilities.

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You have to jump before you can fly. A species of tiny parrot saves energy by hopping from branch to branch when foraging – a skill that may have helped bird ancestors to first get off the ground.

May 25 (UPI) --While watching parrotlets hop from branch to branch while foraging, a pair of Stanford researchers hypothesized that the earliest winged dinosaurs may behaved similarly. Branch hopping ...

Spectacled parrotlets live in a complex system of individual relationships throughout their lives. The adults form exclusive pair bonds, addressing all friendly and sexual behaviour patterns to each ...

A 75 cm, level flight of a parrotlet, snapshot shown at the start of each downstroke and when it folded in its wings to bound mid-flight. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the May 17, ...