I received another email yesterday about birds falling out of their nests. The emailer didn’t say where he lived but indicated that he was picking up several young birds that he assumed fell from their nests. Well, as I have said so many times in so many places, young birds rarely fall from their nests; …
Mrs. Gould’s Sunbird of the Himalayas and the Gouldian Finch of Australia were named after Elizabeth Gould (1804-1841), bird artist of the early 19th century. Elizabeth Gould married John Gould, also a famous taxidermist and bird artist of that time. She designed, lithographed, and painted over 640 plates for birds of the Himalayas, Europe, Australia, …
I don’t always think about the environmental issues surrounding food purchases, mainly because it’s too complicated. When I buy a head of cabbage, I don’t think about where it is grown and how much diesel fuel it took to get to the grocery store or how much pesticide or fertilizer was used to grow it. …
The Townsend’s Solitaire, not a familiar species to most, is a bird found year- round in the mountains of the western U.S. and Canada during the breeding season. Wintering at 5000 feet elevation in northeastern California at the shores of Eagle Lake, I studied them over four winter seasons. From about New Year’s Day to …
The other day I received an email from a person who swears he saw three giant eagles as big as men on a roadway a few years ago. He went on to describe them – yellow eyes, yellow legs, rusty-rainbow colors on the shoulder, large beak like a big toucan- a good description of Great …
You often hear the word “research” related to someone looking up new information – researching a new car, researching a term paper, researching a recipe, etc. Here is example of what real field research is in ornithology, based on one of my research subjects, Yellow-headed Blackbirds. At a field station site in the northeastern part …
I’ve noted before the occasional conflicts between birdwatchers and photographers and I’ve received stories from readers regarding experiences with rude picture-takers. There’s the one about the professional photographer who aggressively pursued a rare Kirtland’s Warbler in front of a group of birdwatchers. He chased to bird out of its hiding place in a bush and …
Over the last few years there have been sightings of rare birds in Central Park in New York City. Birders were obviously excited to see the Mandarin Duck, Barred Owl, and recently, a Snowy Owl. Of course, the word gets out and avid birders of all types show up to look for these rarities. Perhaps …
The British naturalist James Fisher wrote that the first person recorded as feeding wild birds was the 6th-century monk Saint Serf of Fife who tamed a pigeon by feeding it, but the first indication of bird feeding in United States came from Henry David Thoreau who fed birds on Walden Pond in 1845. The first …
The Emu, another ratite, is the second-largest living bird after the Ostrich and the largest bird species in Australia where it is found almost all over. Officially, the Spotted or Larger Emu, it is generally just called the Emu because there is only the one species. An adult Emu stands 60-76 inches tall and weighs …
