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

Join BirdNote tomorrow, November 30th!

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 Ashley Ahearn

Central Park in New York City

Birds and Glass - At the Wild Bird Fund

Rita McMahon started New York City’s only wild bird rehab center in 2005. Today, the Wild Bird Fund has grown to see more than 7,000 birds each year. What’s the biggest problem during migration season? Collisions with glass. And New York City has a lot of glass. But there's hope -- and new…
White Tern in flight

Charles Darwin and the White Tern

On a stop at the Cocos Islands near Sumatra, the naturalist Charles Darwin described his first encounter with a special little bird. He wrote: “It is a small snow-white tern, which smoothly hovers at the distance of a few feet above one’s head, its large black eye scanning, with quiet…
Striated Heron

Herons Go Fishing

Any fisherman will tell you that to catch a fish, you need the right bait, the perfect spot by the water’s edge, and patience. While they don’t use the traditional line-and-tackle, Striated Herons have mastered these fishing techniques. Today’s show brought to you by the Bobolink…
Oilbirds perched on rocks in cave

The Oilbird's Lightless Life

Nature has produced some exceptionally strange animals. One such creature is the Oilbird of northern South America. The Oilbird prefers a diet of wild berries and fruits, especially lipid-rich fruits like palm nuts and avocados (which leads to fatty young and the Oilbird's name). This…
Wild Turkey

Giblets and Gizzards

A bird’s stomach is divided into two parts. The first part is a lot like our stomach; it’s filled with digestive juices to break down food. But the second part — that’s the bird’s gizzard. It’s a strong, muscular pouch that breaks down hard foods like seeds and nuts. Support for BirdNote…
Spotted Sandpiper

Spark Bird: A Lifetime in Science

When he was just a kid, Gordon Orians kept notebooks about the birds he saw. And then he realized he could make discoveries – he could add to the body of knowledge and contribute to science. That opened a whole new world to him, and he has spent the rest of his life studying birds and the…
Gilded Barbet

Sound Escapes - Find Yourself in Nature

Sound recordist Gordon Hempton thinks our thoughts and our actions echo the place we’re in. So if we’re in a noisy city, we’ll be noisy ourselves. But, Gordon says, “When we go to a place that is nature at its most natural, I think we find ourselves being who we are.” Today, we're on the…
Gilded Barbet

Sound Escapes - Find Yourself in Nature

Sound recordist Gordon Hempton thinks our thoughts and our actions echo the place we’re in. So if we’re in a noisy city, we’ll be noisy ourselves. But, Gordon says, “When we go to a place that is nature at its most natural, I think we find ourselves being who we are.” Today, we're on the…
Zabalo River

Nightfall on the Zabalo

Visit a completely undisturbed ecosystem, where all the creatures we hear are all native to the land, and have coexisted and continued to evolve together for thousands of years. No animal is stepping on the communications of another animal. No two birds sound alike. It’s the final episode…
Zabalo River

Nightfall on the Zabalo

Visit a completely undisturbed ecosystem, where all the creatures we hear are all native to the land, and have coexisted and continued to evolve together for thousands of years. No animal is stepping on the communications of another animal. No two birds sound alike. It’s the final episode…