BirdNote Daily

It can feel like there’s nowhere to hide in the shortgrass prairie. But the Thick-billed Longspur calls this place home. The bird’s burbling song helps create the high plains’ soundscape. The species…

You might have heard of the Phoenix, the legendary bird who bursts into flames and is reborn from its ashes. Well, its literary cousin is the Slavic myth of the Firebird, an elusive creature whose fe…

The family of seabirds called alcids is an eclectic bunch that includes puffins and murres. The largest alcids are about the size of a duck, but the smallest — called the Least Auklet — could fit in …

eBird, an online tool for submitting bird observations, allows scientists to keep track of birds around the world. eBird now has over one billion bird observations from more than 700,000 people — mos…

A bird’s crest is made up of a slender array of feathers on top of their head. These feathers are a bit longer and can be spiked up or slicked back, depending on what the bird is trying to communicat…

Sharp-shinned Hawks are swift, bird-catching predators. The male is jay-sized. The female stands a head taller and weighs almost twice as much. Female birds of prey are most notably bigger than males…

Rosemary Moscoe’s latest book is a tongue-in-cheek guide that defines many of the terms that you might hear on a bird outing, like calling a particularly cute bird a "birb" or shortening the word bin…

Greater Yellowlegs — not surprisingly — have bright yellow legs and feet. And why? While foraging through shallow water, a yellowlegs can keep track of its legs by the color, which contrasts with the…

While camping in the mountains, you might see this Canada Jay (formerly known as the Gray Jay — but before that, as the Canada Jay!), boldly swooping into your camp. This handsome jay’s big, black ey…

Writer Amy Tan’s work is known all over the world. And thanks to her latest best-seller, The Backyard Bird Chronicles, she’s now also known for her deep love of birds. Tan not only spends time intera…

Except around Easter, chicken eggs usually come in a predictable range of colors: white, brown, and sometimes pale blue or green. Chickens are descended from the Red Jungle Fowl of Southeast Asia, wh…

Piping Plovers are tiny, sand-colored shorebirds that nest on the beach. They’re threatened in much of their range. But plovers have gotten a boost from something rather surprising: hurricanes. Super…

Although many seabirds utter groans and croaks, the Pigeon Guillemot produces a lovely series of trills and whistles. As part of their courtship, they fly side by side in large circles and loops, a p…

Why are blackbirds black? One possible answer is that black is conspicuous against just about all of Nature's backgrounds. Blackbirds, like this flock of Red-winged Blackbirds and Yellow-headed Black…

Young birds leave their nests in different ways. Some shuffle tentatively along the nearest branch and practice flapping their wings, while others take the "big leap." Which path they take depends up…

Crested Auklets are small seabirds that nest on remote cliffs in the Northern Pacific and the Bering Sea. But it’s their smell that really sets these birds apart. They smell like tangerines! Experime…

Some birds spend most of their lives on the open ocean, only coming to land when it's time to breed. These high-sea specialists are called pelagic birds, which include jaegers, petrels, and albatross…

David Sibley, creator and illustrator of The Sibley Guide to Birds, offers this advice for people learning to identify birds: “Spend time at home, paging through the field guide . . . by flipping thr…

Names are conventions, right? But some names contain something special: a bird! For example, the name Paloma comes from the colloquial name in Spanish for the common pigeon, but as a human name it of…

In the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, June days offer almost continuous daylight to breeding birds, including this Black-bellied Plover. At this high latitude, Black-bellied Plovers can complete th…