Join The Christmas Bird Count

Join the Christmas Bird Count     Make your holiday season extra-special this year and do something important for bird conservation by participating in the Christmas Bird Count. Every year from December 14 through January 5 people around the world get outside and count the birds in their area or even just their yard.  When […]

Fall For Your Own Native Plant Meadow

  To ensure you attract birds, butterflies and other wildlife in Monarch Butterfly Photo Credit: Deborah Rivel abundance to your yard, there is no better choice than planting a meadow with native plants. Not only is a mature meadow a stunningly beautiful sight of waving flowers with butterflies and birds darting in and out, but it’s […]

Travel: Easy Birding in Panama

TRAVEL: Easy Birding in Panama If you are looking for a birding adventure a little farther from home, winter is an exceptionally good time to visit the Caribbean, Central and South America.  If you have been wanting to visit a tropical forest with loads of fabulous birds, one of the best and easiest countries to […]

Your Fall Backyard Tuneup

Your Fall Backyard Tuneup In fall, birds’ needs start changing. The bird houses you set up in spring and which saw a lot of activity are now vacant. Pressure to secure food for hungry mouths in the nest has subsided, and now many birds are bulking up for migration. To create a friendly backyard for […]

Your Summer Backyard

Your Summer Backyard Your backyard in summer is different from the rest of the year. In each season, birds have different needs, and summer can be extreme – both because of the heat and the additional pressure of feeding baby and juvenile birds. You may be providing a lot of food for birds – in […]

Making That First Migration

Making That First Migration Young birds are leaving the nest, and many of them are getting ready for their first trip south. Migration is a hard and risky business for any bird, but the first marathon voyage for many species of birds takes place shortly after they have fledged. How do they do it? Songbirds […]

Radar Birding: What It’s All About

Radar Birding:  What’s It All About Stay on the cutting edge of birding with RADAR data! Meterologists have being using RADAR stations throughout the country to track and predict weather patterns for decades. But recently, birders have been using RADAR technology to track and understand bird movements! Here is a brief guide to getting started […]

Gale Force Migration

Gale Force Migration Bird migration is heavily linked to weather patterns and systems as they move across the country.  In the fall, fast Cormorants migrating moving northwest winds, especially ahead of a front, help speed migrating birds ahead of tempestuous weather.  But fall migration coincides with another huge event in North America —  hurricane season […]

Sitting Quietly….Seeing More

FAMILY FUN: Sitting Quietly…Seeing More Want to see more birds and tune into nature? This summer, why not see the natural areas you usually visit a little differently?  Go to a favorite field, forest, marsh, or beach.  Rather than do what you might normally do there…this time , take some time to sit quietly and […]

A Cozy Warm Bed

Do you ever wonder where birds sleep? On a cold winter night, when the wind is blowing the snow sideways across the light of your street lamps, the chickadees that visited your feeder in the morning are huddling close together. Hopefully they have found a decent cavity to roost in. If your neighborhood is like […]

Where’s the Water?

Right now the northern states are blanketed in snow, and stepping outside can be hazardous. Winter temperatures can dip below zero degrees Farenheit, and the wind chill pushes far below that. We can throw on layers or stay inside, but what do the birds do? How can we help birds brave the winter onslaught of […]

A Cardinal Moment

With the changing seasons our New York City backyard garden has different birds passing through, but among our constant companions are our cardinal family. This beautifully masked male cardinal is the epitome of grace and elegance. In the summer his gorgeous coloring is eclipsed by no other bird in our garden; in the fall, even […]

When Once Just Isn’t Enough

Songbirds who migrate at night have long been thought to migrate north to breed then south again to molt and overwinter. That makes sense, right? But, the times they are a changing. Now researchers from the University of Washington have discovered that there are some birds who make a stop in Mexico on the way […]

Will the Bird Friendly Shade Grown Coffee Please Stand Up?

My husband and I are coffee drinkers. In fact, recently I made the mistake of taking him along to help get a replacement when our old cappuccino machine died. We wound up with a machine so complicated I needed an advanced degree to make it work. But I digress. The reason for my writing about […]