BirdWatching

In late 2018, BirdLife International and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature announced they had updated the conservation status of 93 bird species around the world on IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species. The Red List, dubbed the

An individual Stresemann’s Bristlefront, one of the world’s most endangered birds, was recently observed in Brazil after months of fruitless searching. Sightings of the female bristlefront on December 12 and 14, 2018, in fragments of habitat in Bahia

Black-and-white Warbler is distinctive in several ways, from its striking black and white streaks to its unusual (for a wood-warbler) foraging behavior, in which it creeps along trunks and large tree branches, probing like a nuthatch. In January, dur

I have been in the environmental trenches for 42 years now, striving like so many other ardent defenders of nature to move the agenda forward. The question is always the same: How do we engage Society’s Rank and File, make them advocates of this verd

On a spring evening in 1966, biologist Al Geis took Columbia, Maryland’s founder, Jim Rouse, to a clearing in the woods. They hunkered down. As the embers of daylight faded, they witnessed the acrobatic, shuffling, twittering showcase of the American

Stretching along Lake Erie’s northern shore for more than 350 miles is Canada’s most temperate region, one that can aptly be dubbed “Canada’s Riviera.” The similarities of the area to the Mediterranean seacoast are surprising. Both lie along a latitu

I lay in a darkness diminished by subtle hints of the impending dawn, listening intently as an unfamiliar world came to life around me. A beautiful, melodic song — cheerful, insistent, persistent — that of a thrush, perhaps, led the morning chorus. A

Overall color. Quite drab. Midwestern birds show olive on back and yellow wash on flanks, while southwestern birds are grayer. Wing pattern. Two very narrow whitish wingbars, the upper one often quite faint. Face. Weak pattern with broken eye-ring, s

When I learned that just outside of my backyard I could find a quarter to half the world’s Sanderling population along with a variety of threatened species such as Piping Plover, I jumped at the chance to tour the area of Chaplin during spring migrat

When I learned that just outside of my backyard I could find a quarter to half the world’s Sanderling population along with a variety of threatened species such as Piping Plover, I jumped at the chance to tour the area of Chaplin during spring migrat

The success of individual birds is measured by their contribution to the gene pool determined by the number of surviving offspring they produce. To determine the rate of offspring production, population biologists study fecundity — the number of eggs

One autumn morning a few years ago, when I was birding at the “Magic Hedge,” a rare-bird magnet in Chicago’s Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary, I found a lovely collection of birds feeding on the ground in a flower bed. Panning with binoculars, I identif

Beginning birders quickly learn the concept of habitat preferences. It’s a pretty straightforward idea — each species seeks out a place with a particular set of conditions and spends its time there. This is helpful for identification at a very basic