BirdNote Daily

Great Blue Herons nest in colonies, in adjoining trees or with several nests in one tree. But by autumn, the adults and gangly young have left the nests to take up solitary lives, a pattern that is t…

It’s easy to imagine that putting up a birdhouse or nestbox is a relatively recent practice. But in Turkey, it has a long history. Since at least the 13th century and continuing through the period of…

If you see a wild bird with a small metal band around its leg, that means researchers have given the bird a unique ID to keep track of it over the course of its life. You can report the sighting to t…

Tucked away in southeast Texas is one of the most remarkable enclaves of nature. Known as The Big Thicket, this region is home to ten different ecosystems, including cypress bayous, arid sandylands, …

Thousands of years ago, giant raptors lived on what is now Cuba. Gigantohierax is an extinct genus of eagles whose fossils have been found in local cave deposits and tar seeps. With an estimated weig…

Of the four nuthatch species living in the United States, the most common are the Red-breasted Nuthatch, seen left here, and the White-breasted Nuthatch, on the right. The nuthatch's insistent call m…

California's Salton Sea is hot and smelly - and it's also a Mecca for thousands of wintering birds. This inland sea formed when the Colorado River breached floodgates in 1905, forming a lake 45 miles…

Is there any doubt about the identity of America's best known red bird? Surely it's the cardinal or, as you'll find it in a bird book, the Northern Cardinal. The beautiful bird seen on so many bird f…

Common Poorwills don’t sing much when the mercury drops. But they can do something else that is remarkable. As the winter cold deepens, these petite members of the nightjar family can enter a hiberna…

Most of the bird sounds you hear on BirdNote come from the Macaulay Library, a vast collection of over one million bird calls and songs curated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The library relies o…

Woodpeckers, as a group, eat far more ants than most other birds do. Many other vertebrates tend to avoid ants because of their stings or because of the noxious chemicals they contain, like formic ac…

Dave Mull is not your typical birder — he's a professional skateboarder, or a “skatebirder” as he puts it. He brings binoculars with him when he skateboards and doesn’t mind putting his board down to…

One of the most difficult skills to pick up as a birdwatcher is how to identify birds in flight. You have to sort through a series of visual clues all at once, at high speed: silhouette, wing shape, …

In 2017, Hurricane Maria tore through the island, causing widespread destruction for both people and for birds. The critically endangered Puerto Rican Parrot was devastated by the storm when they los…

Northern Mockingbirds can learn to mimic the sounds of just about any bird. They mimic to show off, not to deceive. But this Thick-billed Euphonia, a tiny songbird in South America, employs what scie…

While it’s still winter in many parts of North America, it’s summer in Antarctica. And the King Penguins are singing! Some form breeding colonies that number in the tens of thousands. When many pairs…

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…

By winter, most warblers have migrated south. But the Yellow-rumped Warbler, which birders affectionately call “butterbutt” is a lesson in adaptation, notes Bryan Pfeiffer, a writer, naturalist, and …

Glenn Albrecht grew up in western Australia, where he became enamored with birds.As he grew up, Glenn witnessed how coal mining devastated the Australian countryside — and the birds that lived there.…

The Canyon Wren makes its home on the steep rocky outcrops and vertical stone cliffs of the coulees and mesas of the West. The birds are found from Mexico all the way through southern British Columbi…