Birdnote

Great Blue Herons nest in colonies, in adjoining trees or with several nests in one tree. But by autumn, the adults and gangly young have left the nests to take up solitary lives, a pattern that is the reverse of many other species. After all the "togetherness" of the nesting colonies, the Great Blue Herons spend the off-season by themselves.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.

It’s easy to imagine that putting up a birdhouse or nestbox is a relatively recent practice. But in Turkey, it has a long history. Since at least the 13th century and continuing through the period of Ottoman rule, birdhouses were placed on all sorts of structures: mosques (like this one – the Yeni Valide Mosque in Üsküdar, Istanbul, Turkey), schools, libraries, houses, tombs, bridges, and palaces. In this culture, birdhouses were viewed as an expression of love and compassion for animals. The Ottomans even endowed charities to provide food and water for birds and to care for sick birds.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.

If you see a wild bird with a small metal band around its leg, that means researchers have given the bird a unique ID to keep track of it over the course of its life. You can report the sighting to the Bird Banding Laboratory, a part of the U.S. Geological Survey that studies banded birds across the continent. Analyzing where and when banded birds are seen helps biologists figure out bird lifespans, migratory routes, and how their populations are changing.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.

Tucked away in southeast Texas is one of the most remarkable enclaves of nature. Known as The Big Thicket, this region is home to ten different ecosystems, including cypress bayous, arid sandylands, palmetto thickets, pine forests, marshes, and grasslands. The variety of natural landscapes provides habitat for a broad array of birds, including this Prothonotary Warbler.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.

Thousands of years ago, giant raptors lived on what is now Cuba. Gigantohierax is an extinct genus of eagles whose fossils have been found in local cave deposits and tar seeps. With an estimated weight of nearly 30 pounds, Gigantohierax suarezi, the larger of the two named species, would’ve been the biggest raptor known from the Americas.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.

Of the four nuthatch species living in the United States, the most common are the Red-breasted Nuthatch, seen left here, and the White-breasted Nuthatch, on the right. The nuthatch's insistent call matches its aggressiveness. As it works its way down a tree trunk, the nuthatch can spot-and eat-all the tasty morsels missed by the rest of the birds working their way up the tree.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.

California's Salton Sea is hot and smelly - and it's also a Mecca for thousands of wintering birds. This inland sea formed when the Colorado River breached floodgates in 1905, forming a lake 45 miles long. The lake has diminished in size and greatly increased in salt concentration, but a single introduced fish - the African tilapia - persists in abundance. Seabirds visit the Salton Sea to feed on them. The smell comes from occasional massive die-offs of the fish, so abundant that their bones make up the shoreline. Every winter, the salty waters support hordes of water birds, including shorebirds, herons, cormorants, pelicans, and waterfowl. Check it out!More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.

Is there any doubt about the identity of America's best known red bird? Surely it's the cardinal or, as you'll find it in a bird book, the Northern Cardinal. The beautiful bird seen on so many bird feeders takes its name from the cardinals found in the Vatican, whose hats and robes are red. Only the male cardinal — seen right here — is red; females are a tasteful olive-brown with red highlights. Share this show with someone who likes cardinals. Thanks!More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.

Common Poorwills don’t sing much when the mercury drops. But they can do something else that is remarkable. As the winter cold deepens, these petite members of the nightjar family can enter a hibernation-like state — and stay like that for hours — or even weeks! Scientists call it torpor. It happens when an animal slows its body functions to conserve energy and heat.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.

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 birds all over the world.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.

Woodpeckers, as a group, eat far more ants than most other birds do. Many other vertebrates tend to avoid ants because of their stings or because of the noxious chemicals they contain, like formic acid. But woodpeckers just love them. A Pileated Woodpecker’s diet may be up to 50% ants!More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.

Dave Mull is not your typical birder — he's a professional skateboarder, or a “skatebirder” as he puts it. He brings binoculars with him when he skateboards and doesn’t mind putting his board down to check out a bird. But the birds aren't really a distraction for Dave. Tuning into his surroundings, including the birds, helps him stay in the zone and provides inspiration for tricks.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.

One of the most difficult skills to pick up as a birdwatcher is how to identify birds in flight. You have to sort through a series of visual clues all at once, at high speed: silhouette, wing shape, how fast it flaps, and patterning. An experienced birder will take in all these and other clues that are hard to put into words — and might say something like: “Look! A hawk! Must be a Cooper’s Hawk — it has that giss.” In other words, it has all the telltale signs. But where did this bit of birdwatching slang originate? More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.

In 2017, Hurricane Maria tore through the island, causing widespread destruction for both people and for birds. The critically endangered Puerto Rican Parrot was devastated by the storm when they lost their food sources. However, the Puerto Rican Parrot Recovery Program helped save the birds in the wild with feeding stations. The program is working to boost the species’ numbers through captive breeding.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.

Northern Mockingbirds can learn to mimic the sounds of just about any bird. They mimic to show off, not to deceive. But this Thick-billed Euphonia, a tiny songbird in South America, employs what scientists call “deceitful mimicry.” When frightened by a predator near its nest, a Thick-billed Euphonia imitates the alarm calls of other birds nesting nearby. This stirs them into action as they rush in to harass the predator. The euphonia, meanwhile, sits tight while others do the dirty work.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.

While it’s still winter in many parts of North America, it’s summer in Antarctica. And the King Penguins are singing! Some form breeding colonies that number in the tens of thousands. When many pairs of these colorful birds tip their heads back and sing, it sounds like the world’s largest kazoo band.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.

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 places join in, eBird becomes an even better way for researchers to understand birds. In this show, learn how you can make your birding more useful to science.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.

By winter, most warblers have migrated south. But the Yellow-rumped Warbler, which birders affectionately call “butterbutt” is a lesson in adaptation, notes Bryan Pfeiffer, a writer, naturalist, and educator who lives in Vermont. “In winter, when most of their kin are enjoying insects in the tropics, Yellow-rumps are finding food across parts of the West, the southern U.S. and north into New England,” he says. “With insects in short supply, the Yellow-rump turns to fruit . . .”More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.

Glenn Albrecht grew up in western Australia, where he became enamored with birds.As he grew up, Glenn witnessed how coal mining devastated the Australian countryside — and the birds that lived there. He’s since become an environmental philosopher. He’s developed a new vocabulary to describe human relationships with the natural world.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.

The Canyon Wren makes its home on the steep rocky outcrops and vertical stone cliffs of the coulees and mesas of the West. The birds are found from Mexico all the way through southern British Columbia. They live among the rocks all year long, nesting in rock piles and beneath overhangs, their songs bouncing off the sheer rock faces.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.