BirdNote Daily

Birds like male turkeys or barnyard roosters have a wrinkly, bumpy flap of red skin called a wattle. But what are wattles for? Birds can’t sweat, so wattles help release excess heat. Wattles are also…

Many jays, including this California Scrub-Jay, store food for sustenance in harsher seasons. An individual bird may cache nuts, insects, and even worms in several thousand spots. If jays visit your …

Red Warblers only sing on sunny mornings during the breeding season — so hearing their song is as good as checking the weather forecast. Weighing less than a triple A battery, Red Warblers are endemi…

A fine woodworker has a chest full of tools, each designed for a specific task. Birds also have highly refined tools-their bills. The size and shape of a bird's bill match perfectly the food they see…

The Red-backed Fairy-Wren, a tiny songbird living the Australian scrublands, is highly territorial and promiscuous. The male can’t be sure the eggs in his nest are his own. One way to help avoid this…

If a young American Robin survives its first winter, its chances of survival go up. But robins still don’t live very long. The oldest robins in your yard might be about three years old (although than…

When BirdNote’s Executive Director Nick Bayard joined BirdNote, he knew it would involve sharing the joy and wonder of birds with our listeners, but he didn’t expect it to inspire his kids to become …

Listeners are always curious about the origin of BirdNote's theme song. In this show, learn how Grammy-Award winning artist Nancy Rumbel and the BirdNote team created the theme. BirdNote is an indepe…

BirdNote is an independent nonprofit organization, and this week, we’re asking you to support BirdNote with a donation at birdnote.org. But today, rather than tell you all the great things about Bird…

It takes a lot to bring you the rich sounds of birds yodeling, cooing, and screeching to you each day. It's a meticulous process of researching, writing, fact-checking, editing, recording and sound d…

Songbirds in winter flocks benefit from having other birds nearby. They can recognize warning signals from other species and follow them to sources of food. We think of BirdNote’s audience as our flo…

Loggerhead Shrikes are found across much of the United States in open country, like pasture and sagebrush. Male shrikes are well known for impaling their prey on thorns, creating a larder that may he…

In some years, tawny-colored thrushes called Veeries cut their breeding season short. Researchers discovered that Veeries tend to stop breeding early in the same years that the Atlantic hurricane sea…

Some of the tiniest birds in the world have impressively loud voices. The Ruby-crowned Kinglet — that bright-headed sprite of the treetops — would be downright deafening if it were just a little bigg…

Common Potoos are champions of camouflage. In the daytime these nocturnal creatures perch perfectly still on branches: heads pointed upward, bodies outstretched, and eyes closed down to tiny slits. I…

From chickadees to Cooper’s Hawks, most birds love a good bath. Some birds get the fluids they need from their food, but many birds need a drink at least twice a day. Water is essential for birds, an…

Striped Owls are known for their diverse vocalizations. Their repertoire includes deep hoots, eerie screeches, and a range of calls that help give an otherworldly ambiance to  tropical rainforests fr…

PhD student Mikko Jimenez and his colleagues are using machine learning to improve our ability to forecast bird migration. Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence that can find patterns…

What does the Pacific Wren hear in a song? It's a long story. What we hear as a blur of sound, the bird hears as a precise sequence of sounds, the visual equivalent of seeing a movie as a series of s…

Next time you’re in the city, look up. When pigeons are wheeling, you might just see a different bird in pursuit. The Cooper’s Hawk, once known as the “chicken hawk,” used to be in steep decline due …