As I occasionally like to do, here’s a little natural history of an interesting bird group, this time the Lyrebird, either of two species of ground-dwelling Australian birds of the genus Menura and the family Menuridae. They are notable for their superb ability to mimic natural and artificial sounds from their environment, and the striking […]
In 1938, the feature film Tarzan and the Green Goddess contained a call from the Laughing Kookaburra even though Tarzan’s adventures occurred in Africa where there are no kookaburras; but the bird came to represent jungle calls in various movies. The call is heard in The Wizard of Oz (1939), The Treasure of the Sierra
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. The Caledonian Crow learns how
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 and deserts, they eat rodents
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 attract other birds. It wasn’t
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 sunflower leaves were full of
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. By the year 2050, as many people will live in cities
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According to theNew 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 deteriorating situation. In a notice on
Those Darned Vultures Read More »
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 them by dropping oil, ground
Albatross Enforcers Read More »
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 of course exaggerated as the
Birds Predicting the Weather Read More »
