BirdNote

The cheerful-voiced Chestnut-collared Longspur shares their northern prairie breeding range with grazing cattle. Although heavy grazing can have adverse effects, breeding densities of longspurs jump by two, three, or even 10 times when ranchers graze their cattle responsibly on native prairies. Two

For years, scientists debated whether the first flying dinosaurs, the ancestors of modern birds, began by running and making little hops off the ground, or leapt off a tree branch to glide. It’s called the “ground up vs. trees down” debate, for short. But a newer perspective on this mystery suggests

Birds make a lot of sounds — so many that author and illustrator Becca Rowland had a hard time keeping them straight. That was until Becca began picking up on familiar noises in common bird calls — like when they heard a dog’s squeaky toy in the trees. Now she’s compiled her fun and functional

Birds have lost many habitats they’ve called home for millions of years, but people can help create bird habitats wherever they live. It all begins with native plants. If you have a yard, or even just a few outdoor plant pots, you can offer native plants to birds, butterflies, and other wildlife

J. Drew Lanham is a poet and ornithologist whose work intertwines his lived experience as a Black man in the American south and his love of wilderness. Both have taught him that joy is a source of strength. On Bring Birds Back, Drew describes how he finds radical joy in spending time with birds like

Millicent Ficken spent her career studying bird behavior and communication. The first woman to earn a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Cornell in 1960, Ficken authored over 100 scientific papers. She discovered that male hummingbirds have a whole repertoire of songs rather than just one

Circling silently above the earth on broad, black wings, vultures need little introduction. We know them as nature's clean-up crew, dining on dead and decaying animals. A unique range of adaptations allows vultures such as this Black Vulture to feast on food that’s off limits for many other

In birding lingo, a lifer — or life bird — is any species you see or hear for the first time. Birders get very excited about lifers. Some even mark the occasion with a special dessert called lifer pie. The tradition started at a birding festival in northwest Ohio — called the Biggest Week in

In one of the most iconic founding legends of the Americas, a Golden Eagle devouring a serpent atop a cactus marked the spot where the Mexicas would build Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire. Over the centuries, that ancient metropolis transformed into what we now call Mexico City. Though the

Solar panels are a popular source of renewable energy, but large groupings of them — called arrays — can take up a lot of space. Chelse Prather, an ecologist at the University of Dayton, wanted to know how wildlife are using the habitats underneath two arrays in Ohio. The first site was a fixed

In this episode of BirdNoir, the Private Eye gets a call from his friend Frank, his eyes and ears in the neighborhood. He’s hearing a Red-shouldered Hawk call, but there’s no hawk in sight. Going through the lineup of usual suspects found in backyards, they examine the surprising talent for mimicry

To out-sip their competition, Sword-billed Hummingbirds have a distinct adaptation: these birds’ beaks are longer than their bodies. Found in temperate forests from Venezuela to Bolivia, these hummingbirds rely entirely on tube-like flowers that other species could never reach. While most birds can

Male birds are often the larger, flashier sex that courts choosy females, who in turn raise their chicks. But not always. Female phalaropes – like this Wilson's Phalarope – challenge each other over territories in which to house a cluster of males half their size. And the males do all the childcare

Connecticut Warblers nest in the northern boreal forests, migrate through the Midwest, and winter in the rainforests of South America. Even with all that traveling, you rarely see one of these birds. Though their loud, ringing song might be easy to identify, it often seems to emanate from low in a

Most baby birds are adorable little floofs — but not all of them. The tongue and palate of estrildid finch chicks are strangely spotted and ringed. They display these markings while they beg for food. Most species’ chicks have mouth markings in colors ranging from black or white to bright yellow

Grammy-winning musician Rickie Lee Jones has performed on stages around the world. At home in New Orleans, she found a new audience: backyard birds! Rickie welcomes wildlife to her yard with feeders and bird baths. She loves watching her feathered friends and learning their calls. You can help

When you go birding, sometimes you’re in the right place at the right time and there are more species than you can count. Other times, not so lucky. Striking out when looking for birds is frustrating. But a bad day of birding can teach you a lot. Try doing some research into the conditions that day

The catchy name “Jackdaw” belongs to a European bird that looks like a compact crow drawn in shades of light and dark gray. They are comfortable around people, which helps explain their place in folklore. Some cultures saw the Jackdaw as a predictor of rain, others as a savior of crops. Or possibly

Las aves cantoras nos deleitan con su música, pero a veces pueden sonar repetitivas. Y es que necesitan ensayar su canto para seguir dando lo mejor de sí. Investigadores que estudiaron al diamante cebra ( Taeniopygia guttata) descubrieron que las hembras preferían los cantos de los machos que habían