Moving south for the winter isn’t a new idea – we humans were just a little slow catching on. Many creatures migrate to a more comfortable climate each year, but it’s the birds we notice most. Few people who spend time outdoors could fail to notice the disappearance of robins, or the passage of Canada [...]
When we first started birding we went on a migratory hawk watch. Sitting for hours counting tiny specks in the sky, we were amazed when our birding mentors identified birds we could hardly find with our binoculars. “Bet you can’t identify that one,†we were challenged. It turned out to be a joke – it [...]
Turkeys have almost become synonymous with Thanksgiving, but the one that ends up on your dinner plate is not the wild turkey. Unlike the white-feathered prisoner of the poultry farm, the wild turkey is colorful, relatively smart, and … well, wild. Hunters will tell you that turkeys are tough to locate. They have excellent vision, [...]
Don’t even try to imagine lying down on an ant hill. If you think ants should be avoided, it’s a good thing you’re not a bird. Many species of birds occasionally seek out ants for what may be a beneficial procedure – it is called “anting.†They will plop down on an ant hill and [...]
We began tracking whooping cranes in the late 70s, and wrote this article in 1983. But last week we found a wonderful video from National Geographic where you can see how these magnificent birds are “trained†to migrate following an ultra-lite aircraft. There have been great success stories in the whooping crane recovery saga, with [...]
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