Laura Erickson's For the Birds

When Blue Jays and chipmunks stash away food, some people call them greedy pigs. They're not.

How can we possibly think we can communicate with non-human life forms from other galaxies when we can't communicate with intelligent carbon-based life forms right here on earth?

Two weeks ago, I transported a crow from my neighborhood and a fawn with neurological damage from our local Wildwoods rehab facility to Wild & Free in Garrison, Minnesota. Now I'm unsettled wondering how the crow is doing.

Even with minimal effort, my backyard habitat is pretty nice!

Back in 1977, Laura made flashcards from the illustrations in her original Golden Guide. She still has them.

This thrush with the ethereal, spiraling song keeps many secrets that scientists keep trying to tease out.

Seeing ourselves as the one species at the pinnacle of evolution is as wrong-headed as seeing our planet at the center of the universe.

To know them is to love them. But first, we have to be aware of them.

Seeing or even hearing one of these rare birds is a matter of the “3 P’s”: Patience, Perseverance, and Providence.

Two warblers were on the official Endangered Species List in 1973. Now they're both off the list, but for opposite reasons.

Last Tuesday, Laura and her friend Bernie found a Wood Thrush at one of Laura's favorite birding spots in Duluth. She hopes it attracts, or already has, a mate. (The blogpost for the program is much longer and more fleshed out, with lots of photos.)

A cute little predator on the Endangered Species List for Wisconsin and Minnesota has been turning up here and there in both states this spring.

On Saturday, Laura went to Ashland County, Wisconsin, to look at a very lost tropical falcon, a Crested Caracara.

BB's fine but somebody isn't.

An unprecedented number of Scarlet Tanagers turned up on Peabody Street this year, and Laura was thrilled.

A beautiful, useful, and engaging tour de force.

It's a red-letter day when we see one of the prettiest woodpeckers of all.

Laura recalls the birds who inspired her baby daughter's second word.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has created two extremely useful apps for birders. Merlin is wonderful and useful, but far from perfect.

Laura sparked unprecedented anger in a listener last week because of a program and blogpost from 2007. (All my blogpost/transcripts have photos, and some are longer than the program itself, but this program's linked transcript/blogpost has a *lot* more information than I could include in the program, along with pertinent photos and a video.)

*The Birds That Audubon Missed* by Kenn Kaufman is a clear-eyed and surprisingly exciting portrait of a time and place that have long ago disappeared, and an important and timely book as well. Laura can’t recommend it highly enough.

Kenn Kaufman has written an important new book. Laura begins her review by talking about her own personal feelings about Audubon and his work before Kaufman's rich and enlightening book gave her a broader, more truthful picture of a deeply flawed yet important human being and his contemporaries.

Laura's been in love with a pretty little sparrow since she first saw it in 1977.

With birds, as with her children, Laura has trouble picking a favorite.

Yet more owls have died, this time in Chicago, from rat poison.

Not much is happening in Laura's yard yet, but things will be popping within the coming week or two. (Lang Elliott recorded the Carolina Wren's rolling trill. Laura recorded the wren's song.)

Chickens haven't established themselves as wild, feral birds in most places in the world, but they're still the most abundant bird on the planet.

If chickens found their way to Hawaii on their own, things would have worked out okay for everyone. Unfortunately, they brought humans along, too.

During spring migration, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds usually arrive a couple of weeks after Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers do, for a very good reason.

Millions of years ago, Hawaii was off to a rocky start.

The rules of counting non-native birds are not always consistent.

The most abundant bird on the planet, feeding billions of humans every day, is the chicken. Laura talks about how they became domesticated and some genetic differences between domestic birds and their wild ancestor, the Red Junglefowl. The recording used in this program is of a wild Red Junglefowl in India, recorded and contributed to Xeno-Canto by Lars Lachmann.

Laura remembers a wonderful eclipse from three decades ago.

Is using energy always the same as squandering it?

Along with Duluth's spring blizzard came redpolls! (In the background throughout, the sound is a recording of the redpolls at Laura's feeder made this past Saturday, March 30.)

New for the traveling birder!

A post-mortem established that Flaco, the famous Eurasian Eagle-Owl whom a vandal released from the Central Park Zoo, was carrying lethal amounts of three anti-coagulants, a pigeon herpesvirus, and even a toxic metabolite of the pesticide DDT. Is anyone actually "free" if they have no alternative but to eat poisoned food?

Laura waxes poetic about a poet.

It's hard watching children, or a Pileated Woodpecker, move on to independence.

The second half of Laura's trip to Hawaii was just as wonderful as the first.

Laura's trip to Hawaii kept getting better.

Laura's trip to Hawaii was wonderful, every single day.

The only constant is change, for better and for worse.

What drew Laura and her husband Russ to Duluth in 1981?

How can it be spring before winter even arrives?

Flaco the Eurasian Eagle-Owl whose enclosure in the Central Park Zoo was vandalized, leading to his escape on February 2, 2023, died Friday.

Laura headed back to Prentice Park in Ashland on Wednesday and this time saw (and got VERY bad photos) of the Fieldfare.

On Tuesday, Laura suddenly noticed a chickadee with a badly overgrown, crossed bill at her feeder.

Last week, an incredibly rare vagrant from Eurasia turned up in Ashland, Wisconsin, sending Laura and Erik Bruhnke on a wild goose chase.

Preparing for a trip can start the fun weeks before I leave. (The accompanying photo is a Nene [Hawaiian Goose] taken by Russ while we were in Hawaii in 2000.)