The Magellanic Plover is known for being a bit of an oddball. These shorebirds have a round body like a dove and even feed their young with milk produced in a part of their digestive system called the crop — a rare trait they share with doves. But genetic data revealed that Magellanic…

While many birds have hollow bones that make flying a breeze, diving birds are built differently. The bones of divers such as Common Loons are denser than those of songbirds and other expert fliers. With a lightweight skeleton, they’d be too buoyant to dive and chase fish. Instead, loons…

Project FeederWatch is a community science project studying over 100 species of birds that spend their winters in North America. From November through April, people count the birds they see at a bird feeder, whenever and wherever they’re able, and submit their bird list to the project.

Vahé Alaverdian of Falcon Force, along with his Harris’s Hawk named PacMan, have partnered with the San Francisco Municipal Railway to deter pigeons from El Cerrito del Norte Station, where the situation had gotten dire. This form of pest management involves having a trained bird of prey…

An organization called Journey North consists of a network of community scientists who observe local animal migrations – everything from monarch butterflies to Gray Whales to birds. Observing these seasonal changes can help make you a well-rounded community scientist, attuned to life’s…

Most of the bird sounds you hear on BirdNote come from the Macaulay Library, a vast collection of over one million bird calls and songs curated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The library relies on both professional field recordists and dedicated volunteers to capture the sounds of…

eBird, an online tool for submitting bird observations, allows scientists to keep track of birds around the world. eBird now has over one billion bird observations from more than 700,000 people — most of them community scientists who care about their local birds. And as more people in more…

Just off the southern coast of Iceland, the Westman Islands are home to many of the country’s several million Atlantic Puffins. When puffin hatchlings, known as pufflings, get confused by the lights of the city, volunteers of all ages search for wayward pufflings on the street and bring…

The alpine forests of Australia’s southeast are home to an iconic pint-sized gray parrot with a bright red mohawk, and a call that’s been described as a “flying creaky gate”. The Gang-gang Cockatoo has seen significant habitat loss in recent years, especially after the 2020 wildfires. It’s…

The poet Ray Young Bear writes in both English and Meskwaki, his first language. He says that the task of passing on Indigenous languages feels especially urgent now as linguistic scholars predict the loss of languages. The Meskwaki language is rich with bird names, like Tti Tti Ka Kwa Ha…