In the Pacific Northwest, you might see both Black-capped and Chestnut-backed Chickadees at your birdfeeder. The Chestnut-back (seen here) sounds different from the Black-capped Chickadee. The call of the Black-capped follows the familiar “Chick-a-dee, dee, dee” pattern. But the call of…

The Pileated Woodpecker makes loud, hard whacks, as it leans back and then slams its bill into the side of a living tree. Sounds painful, if not downright disabling! How does the woodpecker's brain withstand it? All woodpeckers have an enlarged brain case, so the brain sits above the level…

Ospreys may log more than 160,000 air miles over a lifetime. One female Osprey in Massachusetts, which researchers tagged in 2008 and named Penelope, headed south in early September, later reaching the Bahamas. After pausing in the Dominican Republic, she traveled to the Island of Birds…

On the summer solstice, birds nesting near Juneau, Alaska take advantage of almost 18 1/2 hours between sunrise and sunset. This day in south Texas is considerably shorter, so the Altamira Oriole has only 14 hours to sing. Seattle's Song Sparrows see 16 hours of daylight; Sacramento's only…

The American Bittern, a member of the heron tribe, spends much of its time in the dense cover of the marsh. Although they are found across the country, you'll seldom see one. Bitterns are masters of camouflage. Their striped plumage perfectly imitates surrounding vegetation, and they…

In 1974, Eurasian Collared-Doves escaped from captivity in the Bahamas and began to breed in the wild. Soon, they colonized southern Florida. They began expanding in a northwesterly direction, and by the year 2000, they had arrived in the Pacific Northwest. They thrive where backyard trees…

The Surfbird - nothing like the "Surfin' Bird" of 1960s Trashmen fame - makes its home along the Pacific Coast. An oddly constructed sandpiper, the Surfbird forages on rocky jetties along the coast. The bird's winter range ranks among the longest and narrowest of any bird, from Kodiak…

If you’re a biologist and you want to save habitat for birds such as this Savannah Sparrow, how do you do it? You talk to people, says Ros Renfrew of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies. And you listen. Ros meets with landowners in Vermont, New Hampshire, and across New England. “We might…

In her book Out of the Woods, Lynn Darling describes an account of way-finding through the thick fog of coastal Greenland. An Inuit hunting party was kayaking close enough to shore to hear breaking waves, but the land was lost in mist. Darling writes: “After hours of steady paddling, the…

The House Wren presents us with a classic bird image. That jaunty tail, twitching sharply as the wren scolds, puts an exclamation point on the bird's perky voice and attitude. The word "wren" comes to us intact from the Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon languages, where it referred specifically to…