I have blogged about birds flying into buildings and windows before and the problem persists simply because there are more and more buildings and windows. It is especially severe during migration time in the northern hemisphere. Not only buildings and windows but power lines, towers, and wind turbines also pose dangers. Exacerbating the hazards from […]
Lights and Migration Read More »
When I was responsible for my university’s vertebrate museum, federal and state wildlife officers would occasionally seek my expertise in identifying illegally gotten and confiscated animal parts, especially those from birds. There were brass knuckles with eagle claws on them, songbird-decorated table centerpieces, and vests made of feathers. Today, Etsy and Ebay sell real bird
Migratory Bird Act Read More »
I received a comment from a subscriber the other day who asked me to publish a short article in my blog. The piece (if you want to read it) said, in a few short paragraphs, that birds are well adapted for flight with feathers, a light skeleton, and high metabolism, so birds must have been
The Cretaceous, a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago, is the third and final portion of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. In the early Cretaceous, the continents were in very different positions than they are today. There was a major landmass, a supercontinent called Pangaea. By
The Cretaceous Extinction and Beaked Birds Read More »
News Nation Now reported via YouTube a story about birds invading homes in southern California in April by flying down chimneys. One pair of homeowners estimated the flock at 800 birds – which they called starlings and blackbirds. Public comments on the video referred to Eurasian Starlings as invasive pests, as indeed they are, but
Avian Home Invasion Read More »
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
Research in Ornithology Read More »
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
Diseases at Bird Feeders Read More »
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 just had a major election
Wind, Hot Air, and Bluster Read More »
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 insectivorous birds. Live birds were
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 all trying to adjust to
Bird Festivals and the Pandemic Read More »
