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 […]
Blog Tag: wild birds
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Who’s Learning to Sing Now?
Last week I started hearing the first songs of the year from the White-throated sparrows in my garden. The best part about this is that White-throated sparrows, like some other birds, must relearn their songs every year. I had the pleasure of meeting Don Kroodsma, author of “The Singing Life of Birds” several years ago […]