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

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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 Michael Stein

A male Wild Turkey stands at the side of an urban road, his iridescent feathers shining in sunlight, his bald head and red wattles displayed.

BirdNoir: The Wild Tom Turkey

In this episode of BirdNoir, the private eye gets a call from H. Jon Benjamin about unusual Wild Turkey behavior. A male turkey (known as a “tom”) won’t leave his car alone. He keeps tapping his beak on the car. Then the turkey starts circling the house and looking in all the windows. The…
Northern Cardinal with seed

Beak Meets Seed

Birds like finches, chickadees and Northern Cardinals love sunflower seeds, but each species uses a different strategy to extract the meat. When a finch plucks a sunflower seed from the feeder, it uses its tongue to maneuver the seed lengthwise into a groove on its beak. As it closes its…
An adult Cliff Swallow peers out the opening of its nest, created by carefully placed daubs of mud.

How Cliff Swallows Build a Nest

When Cliff Swallows arrive on the breeding grounds in North America, the dirty work begins. The swallows scoop up mud in their beaks and carefully build a gourd-shaped nest with a tapered opening. They add a lining of dry grass to keep eggs warm. It takes days of work and a thousand…
A bright red male Northern Cardinal with his crest flared out perches on a cactus

The Secret to Singing Like a Cardinal

Northern Cardinals have vocal abilities that surpass even the most accomplished human singers. When cardinals sing, they sweep their voices from the high to low end of their ranges many times in just seconds. The secret is in the clever way cardinals use their two-sided vocal organ, called…
Eastern Screech Owl with its round yellow eyes looking particularly startled as it faces toward the viewer

How Birds Survived the Asteroid

The asteroid that struck the Yucatán 66 million years ago wreaked worldwide ecological damage, spelling the end for most dinosaurs and destroying the world’s forests. Yet a few bird-like dinosaur groups made it through. Scientists believe that these groups were all ground-dwellers. Though…
A Belted Kingfisher flying out from the opening of its burrow nest.

Burrowing Belted Kingfisher

The Belted Kingfisher dashes through the air, warning intruders with its rapid-fire, rattling call. In spring, the best places to see Belted Kingfishers are along sandy banks -- they are busy digging burrows, where they will nest. The holes typically reach three to six feet into the bank…
A Superb Lyrebird with beak open and tail spread and outstretched over the bird's body

Lyrebirds Shift the Earth

Beavers are well known as ecosystem engineers in North America. In Australia, lyrebirds play a big role in shaping their environment when they use their toes to dig in the ground for food. A single lyrebird can shift 11 dump truck loads of soil and leaves — each year! That’s thought to be…
A Northern Mockingbird perched with its back to the camera and head turned to the left, beak open.

Mockingbirds Mimic Frogs

The avian world is full of mimicry artists, but Northern Mockingbirds take it to a new level. Not only can they imitate other birds, they can mimic frogs and toads! Their performances are so convincing it’s hard to tell frog from bird. It’s still unknown how this benefits mockingbirds, but…
Group of four Harris's Hawks perched in tree, seen against background of hills and blue sky.

A Hawk That Hunts in Packs

Most raptors are solitary birds, but Harris’s Hawks of the southwestern U.S. live and hunt in groups of two to six. After spotting a prey animal, the hawks swoop in from various directions to catch the confused creature. If they miss and their prey takes cover, some of the birds try to…
Pine Warbler sitting on a slender pine tree branch

The Warbler That Loves Pines

The Pine Warbler is one of the few warblers that make appearances at bird feeders. They live year round in pine forests of the southeast U.S. and several Caribbean islands. Early spring is a good time to see them migrating through cities in the Midwest and the East Coast. If there’s a pine…