Safer Glass + Fewer Lights = Safer Migration Migration is pretty challenging to begin with. But there are some additional man-made risks that birds have to contend with and they are often deadly. courtesy Sara Sharf/FLAP Canada Colliding with glass poses a serious threat to birds. It is estimated that nearly 300 million to 1 […]
Blog Tag: birdwatching
Where to See Migration Right Now!
Where To See Migration Right Now! Fall is here and that means songbirds are on the move. Heading south for their annual fall migration, millions of songbirds follow ancient routes called migratory flyways. There are four flyways across the United States: the Atlantic, Central, Mississippi and Pacific. No matter where you are in the country, […]
Baby Birds of Summer
Baby Birds of Summer Many species of birds have finished breeding and are starting south again. But some chicks are just hatching or are very young now. If you are talking a walk in the woods, now is a good time to be looking for baby turkeys, known as polts. Depending on where you are, wild […]
UPDATE On Piping Plovers and Moonbird
UPDATE On Piping Plovers and Moonbird It isn’t easy being a Piping plover. At a NJ beach where we follow the birds, there were 11 chicks hatched but just 2 that have fledged. Not a great success rate for an endangered species. A major factor is too much human disturbance, including dogs on the beach, […]
Update on Moonbird and Ospreys
UPDATE on Moonbird and Ospreys Great news on a few birds we have been following! That superhero Red knot, B-95 has been seen in NJ and Delaware gorging on horseshoe crab eggs again this season. This marks over 20 years that scientists know he has been making an annual 18,600 mile journey roundtrip. Against all […]
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 […]
Peregrine on the Beach
Why do Peregrine falcons sitting on the beach seem so unnatural to me? Seeing them soaring over the city or swooping over flocks of shorebirds on migration is how I think of them. Their drives into flocks of shorebirds create changing elliptical masses of birds intent on confusing their attacker. The shapes the shorebird flocks […]
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 […]
Tiny Bird With a Big Story
Hummingbirds have many challenges – they are tiny and yet need to be some of the toughest birds out there. They live in conditions where eeking out a living can be a challenge – especially when you have to feed at frequent intervals just to keep going. In the cloud forests of Peru, there is […]
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 […]
OK in the UK
According to a recent survey from the RSPB published on the BBC website, some of the more rare species of birds in the UK are seeing increases in their populations while some of the more common birds are seeing declines. The increased numbers of rarer species (including the Osprey and Avocet that are seen in […]
Sounds of Nature
Nature configures itself in interesting ways that have meaning and speak to us where we are. So it was for Jarbas Agnelli, a Brazilian musician, who saw music in the pattern of birds on wires. Letting the visual pattern the birds made on the wires be the notes, the outcome of this one photo frame […]
Backyard Migration
The storms this week that brought rain and cooler weather also brought a lot of migratory birds into our city garden. Today was a busy day in the early afternoon for about an hour when one bird after another came to grab some food and a drink from our fountain. At one point the fountain […]
The Anxious Garden
There’s a lot of stress in my garden. This is not a good sign for a garden, but it’s the birds who are causing it. It took me awhile to figure out what was happening, but after listening to a day’s worth of anxious chirping by a female cardinal, I looked to see if there […]
More Hope for New Species – New Songbird Species Found in Laos
As the old axiom goes “You learn something new every day.” Well, in parts of Asia, there may be the new axiom, “You discover something new every day.” Just a few days ago, researchers Woxvold and Duckworth discovered this unusual new songbird – the Bare-faced Bulbul – in a specific area of Laos. What’s particularly […]
Raptors on the Roof
I was having breakfast on our roofdeck this morning with my husband and we were enjoying a gorgeous summer day. Directly across from us on the next building there was a lot of commotion. A mockingbird was doing aerobatics flying at another bird on the roof. We got our binoculars to see what it was […]
Lessons From A Birding Trip to a Barrier Island
I had the pleasure of visiting Little St. Simon’s Island again this year. A barrier island off the Georgia coast, even with a small lodge, it remains a wild place and offers great birding. Right now it is a wonderful place to hone shorebird identification skills. I find shorebirds daunting to identify and so I […]
Building Bird Nest Boxes
Spring is a time when lots of people turn their attention to creating nest boxes for breeding birds. Many birds use next boxes – from wrens to owls – and as we lose nesting habitat, nest boxes create an opportunity that might otherwise be lost for some birds to find a safe place to raise […]