Different sounds travel better in different environments. The explosive notes of a Marsh Wren carry well through thick vegetation. A Common Yellowthroat's choppy, repetitive song rattles right through a stand of cattails. An Olive-sided Flycatcher sings from atop a tall tree, its song…

Aldo Leopold, in A Sand County Almanac, described his family's efforts to restore their land to its natural state. Leopold's granddaughter, Susan Freeman, a piano teacher in Seattle, inherited that land ethic. When offered the chance to help restore a watershed on Western Washington's…

Preston Pittman won his first turkey-calling contest when he was only 16, and he makes the sounds with his mouth. Sadler McGraw uses the "friction" technique. He pulls a "striker" - almost like a screwdriver - across a crystal surface. It sounds for all the world like a Wild Turkey, and it…

A Golden Eagle perches on the arm of a Kazakh horseman in the Altai Mountains of Northwestern Mongolia. The horseman and bird are hunting golden foxes, hares, even wolves. It is said that as the man trains the eagle, the eagle trains the man. To quote the writer Dave Stamboulis, hunting…

April is National Poetry Month in the United States, and to celebrate, we're featuring some of our favorite poets who write about our feathered friends. Today, in this extended podcast, we're sharing the work of poet Sidney Wade, professor emeritus at the University of Florida. Her most…

The Northern Mockingbird has a broad repertoire. It can mimic everything from other birds to inanimate objects. And it does so at all hours of the day and night. As poet Randall Jarrell put it: On the willow's highest branch, monopolizing Day and night, cheeping, squeaking, soaring, The…

When a goat puts its head down to graze, its eyes rotate in its head to keep its horizontal pupils parallel to the ground. That gives the goat, a prey animal with eyes on the sides of its head, a panoramic view of its surroundings - and keeps everything right-side up in case it has to…

In the early 1930s, a young English traveler named Patrick Leigh “Paddy” Fermor set out to walk from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul. The account of his journey became a classic of travel writing — including his descriptions of Golden Eagles in the Carpathian Mountains of Czechoslovakia…

For some birds that nest along western streams — including American Dippers and female Harlequin Ducks, like this one — the best way to remain inconspicuous is to hide in plain sight—by looking like just another wet, gray stone. The female Harlequin, resting atop a boulder, is master of…

Not that long ago, Passenger Pigeons filled the skies. Some flocks, with more than a billion birds, took four days to pass overhead. Aldo Leopold called the pigeon "a biological storm." Now they are extinct, gone forever from our world. But other birds remain! This spring, go out and…