Dr. Roger Lederer

Roadkills

March 24, 2020March 24, 2020 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

Windows and cats are major sources of mortality for our birds but certainly aren't the only major causes. Somewhere between 87 and 350 million birds are killed by vehicles each year in the U.S., although the estimates vary. See this study. Barn owls seem particularly marked for doom. Now threatened…

Bird Festivals and the Pandemic

March 17, 2020 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

Clearly, the normal functioning of the world’s activities has been upset by the coronavirus as I write this blog in mid-March 2020. Stores are closing, meetings are cancelled, travel plans postponed, and the grocery stores that remain open are having their shelves denuded of canned goods and toilet paper. We’re…

Climate Change – redux

March 10, 2020March 10, 2020 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

I receive emails on a regular basis from readers of my blog or visitors to my website, asking questions, usually, or telling me about some interesting observation they made. A significant number of these have to do with the unusual presence or absence of birds. One recent comment was from…

Unusual Coloration in Birds

March 2, 2020 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

I regularly receive reports of birds with unusual coloration. Often it is just partial albinism in which patches of white show up on the bird in various places, or incomplete albinism in which the eumelanin (dark pigment) is diluted instead of absent, so a dark bird might appear gray instead…

Birds Adapt to a New World

February 25, 2020 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

Pale Male in the Big Apple Urbanization is perhaps the most difficult challenge to the survival of birds and will be the major driver of extinction in this century. Only 2.7 percent of the earth is covered by cities yet the majority of the human population lives in them.…

Facial Recognition and Birdwatching

February 17, 2020 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

I heard a podcast the other day that I thought was fascinating, although I’m not sure I totally understood it all. But I’ll do my best to pass it on to you. The Fusiform Face Area There is a part of the human brain that is apparently specialized to recognize…

Those Darned Vultures

February 11, 2020February 11, 2020 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

According to the New York Times on Jan 13, 2020, “Some 300 vomiting, defecating vultures have made a United States Customs and Border Protection radio tower in South Texas their home, coating the tower and buildings beneath it with potentially hazardous excrement as besieged border officials try to stem the…

Albatross Enforcers

February 3, 2020February 3, 2020 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

We have known for a long time that some birds have a good sense of smell, especially seabirds. We now know, or at least strongly suspect, that some seabirds migrate by following certain odors of the ocean. Often, birdwatchers going on a pelagic vessel to observe seabirds far offshore, attract…

Birds of Fire

January 20, 2020 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

Fires in Australia have been big news lately, but there have always been fires, sometimes started by birds!. The following article has been excerpted from Cosmos magazine: Black Kite In the first recorded instance of fire being used by animals other than humans, three Australian birds of prey species have…

Common Names

January 13, 2020January 13, 2020 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

Coppersmith Barbet A scientific name clearly designates a particular bird species, tells you something about the bird’s relationship to other bird species, and usually provides a decent description of the bird. Common names are less useful for the former but apt for the latter. The obvious advantage common names have…

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