Near the city of Crato in northeastern Brazil lives a critically endangered little bird — the Araripe Manakin. It’s a little larger than a sparrow, it’s beautiful, and it lives on the slopes of a very small area in the Araripe Plateau. And because the Araripe Manakin wasn’t discovered…

Gerrit Vyn is a sound recordist for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. He recently traveled to northeastern Brazil’s Araripe Plateau in search of the Araripe Manakin, a beautiful white bird with dark wing-tips and tail-feathers — and a deep red hood. The Araripe Manakin is critically…

The boreal forest of North America provides breeding habitat for billions of birds, such as this Semipalmated Plover. But the forest is under pressure. Many boreal birds are declining — while development and resource extraction are intensifying. Fortunately, there’s an upside. Conservation…

In his book Welcome To Subirdia, bird expert John Marzluff offers a guide for living in close proximity to birds and other wildlife. His advice includes the following “commandments:” Do not covet your neighbor's lawn; keep your cat indoors; make your windows visible to birds; don’t light…

In “The Lark Ascending,” composer Ralph Vaughan Williams conjures up a bucolic vision of pastoral England. Small fields, hedgerows, an early summer’s morning. And the display flight of a Eurasian Skylark: Alauda arvensis. The lark — not much bigger than a swallow — has been severely…

Evolutionary time is long — the earliest ancestors of birds emerged around 50 million years ago. Against that yardstick, the length of time humans have been living in cities is a blip. But that blip has resulted in huge changes for urban birds, crows in particular, as John Marzluff…

Birds have been living near humans for a long time. But only during the past 5,000 years have birds and humans shared space in cities and towns. “What we’ve done is create a new place where birds are under intense natural selection — from our activities,” says John Marzluff, Professor of…

Gordon Orians, a writer and science advisor for BirdNote, reflects on how he developed an appreciation of birds and science during his youth. “I think I always had some sort of attraction to birds, and then I started going out bird watching with my dad,” he says. By the time Gordon was in…

Nearly half of all the bird species in the United States and Canada – including this Canada Warbler - depend on one amazing resource: the boreal forest. It stretches from the interior of Alaska across northern Canada, all the way to Newfoundland, providing critical habitat for up to three…

We might not always realize it, but our lives are intertwined with the lives of birds. Sometimes in subtle ways, and sometimes directly. Poet Kevin Black explores that relationship in A Swath Uncut, about a Canadian farmer who once depended on the geese he could hunt to feed his family…