Image: The Ultimate Bird Drawing Throwdown Showdown Graphic featuring images of David Sibley and H. Jon Benjamin

Join BirdNote tomorrow, November 30th!

Illustrator David Sibley and actor H. Jon Benjamin will face off in the bird illustration battle of the century during BirdNote's Year-end Celebration and Auction!

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Shows With Contributions by Bob Sundstrom

Great Horned Owl in flight toward the camera

The Ferocious Feet of the Great Horned Owl

Great Horned Owls excel at nocturnal hunting, thanks to their acute senses and stealth — but their feet let them secure squirming prey. The outermost of their four toes can rotate forward or backward, an advantage that most other birds of prey lack, letting them capture animals as large as…
Red-bellied Woodpecker perched on the side of a tree trunk, showing its black and white patterned wings and red crest feathers

The Red-bellied Woodpecker and Its Curious Name

Red-bellied Woodpeckers are bold, conspicuous, and vocal, thriving in rural and urban areas east of the Mississippi. Like most woodpeckers, Red-bellieds eat lots of insects. But they also like nuts, berries, and seeds. They can be attracted to back yards with suet cakes, berry bushes, or…
Golden-crowned Kinglet and Common Raven

Songbirds: The Large and Small of It

The group of birds called “songbirds” — the perching birds — is incredibly broad. Half the world’s 10,000 birds are in the songbird group, and their range of body sizes is mind-boggling. One of the smallest songbirds in North America is the Golden-crowned Kinglet, barely larger than a…
A Tricolored Blackbird with its wings outstretched showing the red and white patches on its shoulders

Blackbirds' Strange Music

Blackbird songs have a strange music. The Red-winged Blackbird can be heard in nearly every marsh on the continent — bold, brassy, and piercing. The songs may not seem musical, but they definitely get your attention. Brewer’s Blackbirds, which live in open habitats like farms and…
Black-bellied Whistling Duck standing on grass, with its wings outstretched

Ducks That Whistle

Whistling as they fly, Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks are gorgeous waterfowl with bright pink bills and legs, chestnut necks and backs, and black underparts. Though most whistling-ducks live in the tropics, Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks are found in the U.S. along the western Gulf Coast and…
Bohemian Waxwing stands on a branch of a rowan tree, eating a berry

Bohemian Waxwings – Exquisite Winter Visitors

It's winter, and apples litter the ground. A few still hang, frozen and thawed again and again. Suddenly a flock of hundreds of birds rises from the ground beneath the trees, swarming in tight formation, wing-tip to wing-tip. Bohemian Waxwings are erratic winter visitors from their nesting…
A Tui enjoying flax flowers

The Tui of New Zealand

The Tui is one of New Zealand’s most remarkable birds, intelligent and with iridescent feathers. Its down-curved beak fits perfectly into native flowers. But the Tui is best known for its voice. Each Tui’s complex song is slightly different, a colorful mix of musical notes and offbeat…
Leucistic American Robin stands on wet, muddy grass

Why Is My Robin Half White?

A bird with abnormal white feathers, like this American Robin, may have a genetic condition called leucism. Leucism prevents pigments from reaching some — or sometimes all — of a bird’s feathers. Albino birds are distinctly different and are entirely white with pink skin and eyes. Albinos…
A dark brown bird with wings outstretched as its long slender legs just touch the surface of the water. "BirdNote en Español" appears in the top right corner

Aves marinas en el desierto

El paíño de Elliot es un ave de mar pequeña, de plumaje blanco y negro que se puede observar en las costas de Chile y Perú. Los paíños pasan toda su vida en el mar, excepto cuando anidan, lo que ha intrigado a los científicos por mucho tiempo al tratar de encontrar dónde lo hacían. Una…
Broad-tailed hummingbird hovering while drinking nectar from a coral-colored blossom

The Heart of a Bird

Birds’ four-chambered hearts run larger than those of mammals, relative to body size, and they are coupled with extremely efficient cardiovascular systems. The energy demands of flight require these adaptations. An exercising human has a heart rate around 150 beats per minute. In contrast…