Dr. Roger Lederer

Emotional Support Birds

December 12, 2019December 13, 2019 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

I’m not a fan of caged birds. I understand why people want to keep birds in cages and I don’t have a particular problem with budgerigars, cockatoos, or canaries as they have been raised in cages and bred as pets for many years. But I am opposed to keeping parrots…

Ornithological Art

December 2, 2019December 2, 2019 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

Carolina Pigeons (Mourning Doves, J.J. Audubon I’ve always been an admirer of artists who paint realistic scenes. Whether watercolor, oil, acrylic, woodcut, or anything else, the skills involved are considerable and way beyond me. I took two short painting classes and rapidly realized how out of my league I was.…

Birds: Ornithology and the Great Bird Artists, Continued.

November 26, 2019 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

Alexander Wilson, artist and "Father of American Ornithology" Before artists and naturalists knew much about ecology, they drew their pictures from specimens, not knowing much about them. So birds that inhabited different areas of the world, like a guinea fowl from Africa and parrots from South America were often pictured…

Birds Predicting the Weather

November 17, 2019 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

Continuing a previous discussion of pseudoscientific and simply nonsensical beliefs about birds, let’s talk about the weather. Some of these actually make a bit of sense. “When the fish hawks (Osprey) come north, winter’s over.” “On the eastern shore of Maryland, they always arrive on St. Patrick’s Day.” That is…

Barn Owl Color Variation

November 12, 2019 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

Like many birds, Barn Owls show variation in their plumage coloration. There could be several reasons, but there are at least two that I know of. I’m sure you have driven at night when a white owl flies across the road in front of your car. Often they look bright…

Birds: Ornithology and the Great Bird Artists

November 5, 2019 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

My latest book My latest book, my ninth, just hit the bookshelves. Published by the University of Chicago press and Entitled Birds: Ornithology and the Great Bird Artists, it is about how the changes in ornithology affected art and what influence art had on ornithology from the 16th century to…

Hawke’s Grease

October 29, 2019October 29, 2019 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

I wrote earlier of a paper by M. Cline, published in 1905 in which the author claims that birds are able to fly because they make themselves lighter than air by taking a deep breath. Once in a while they take too deep of a breath and explode, which is…

Birds in Cities

October 22, 2019 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

BIrds over city gate, Jaipur, India A 2007 study of urban birds and their close relatives in the wild in 73 major cities across the world found that the native ranges of urban birds are wider in latitude and elevation than those bird species that have not invaded cities. The…

Cranial Kinesis

October 15, 2019October 15, 2019 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

Often I watch birds just for general relaxation; seeing them flit among branches or hop along the ground or tossing seeds in the air looking for the best parcel of food. But sometimes I focus intently and try to figure out what exactly a bird is doing, why it is…

Forty Years From Now

October 8, 2019October 8, 2019 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

I’m baking bread and looking out my kitchen window at the first migratory visitors to my bird feeder. There’s a White-crowned Sparrow. Resident birds are partaking of the goodies too as the leaves turn, the weather gets cooler and the insects less abundant. Titmice, doves, towhees, jays, and the occasional…

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