Dr. Roger Lederer

Wind, Hot Air, and Bluster

November 9, 2020 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

I hesitate to get into politics in these blogs on birds, but the reason bird populations are in trouble are mainly due to various kinds of legislation – on land use, climate change, pesticide use, and so forth, which, of course, was passed by politicians who we elect. And having…

Birds Through an Opera-Glass

November 2, 2020 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

An ancient civilization cooking on a mound of sand discovered glass around 3500 BC but it wasn’t until the 16th century that glass was shaped into the first telescope in an arrangement of glass lenses that magnified objects up to 30 times. Later, double telescopes were created – the first…

The Crow’s Story

October 26, 2020 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

Birds are intelligent, especially parrots and crow relatives – jays, nutcrackers, ravens, jackdaws and others. The Clark's Nutcracker stores conifer seeds in the late summer and fall of each year and retrieves them in the winter and spring. A bird must find more than a thousand seed caches each year.…

Owl Giants

October 19, 2020December 10, 2020 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

West of the Mississippi from Canada to Central America lives the Burrowing Owl. These small, brownish tan-colored owls with bright yellow eyes are the only raptors in North America that live underground in burrows they dig themselves or usurp from a ground squirrel or tortoise. In open habitats like grasslands…

A Brief History of Parrots

October 12, 2020 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

I read about a parrot that testified in court against the wife of his owner. The wife shot her husband and the parrot heard “don’t shoot, don’t shoot” which it repeated in court. The jury convicted her. Could be a good reason to have or not have a parrot at…

Book, Books, Books

October 5, 2020 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

Are you reading a lot these days of social isolation? I read that an average of one bird book a day is published in the U.S. Seems like it because there sure are a lot of bird books out there and they seem to be arriving at an unwavering pace.…

Stool Pigeon

September 28, 2020 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

Earlier, I wrote a blog on pigeons with missing toes. It got me wondering about pigeons in general and especially why we call a police informant a “stool pigeon.” The phrase originally comes from the practice by hunters of tying a dead, stuffed, or replica pigeon to a stool to…

Birds and Smoke

September 21, 2020September 21, 2020 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

There was a recent report (August 2020) of hundreds of thousands of birds found dead in New Mexico. Biologists figure it has something to do with the wildfires that are plaguing the western states. Dead birds are also being found in Colorado, Texas, and Mexico. Many of them were migratory…

Pigeon De-toed

September 14, 2020September 20, 2020 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

A few years ago I received an email from someone in Hawaii wondering why so many pigeons on Maui were missing toes. I had no idea so I emailed the ornithologist at the University of Hawaii and she responded that with many people with long hair lying on the beaches…

Leaf it Be

September 7, 2020 by Dr. Roger Lederer

Dr. Roger Lederer

I was sitting on my garden bench the other day and watched a small flock of Lesser Goldfinches land on my sunflower plants and peck at the leaves. What they were eating I didn’t know so when they left I searched the leaves for bugs. No bugs. Turns out the…

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