By Jason Martin and Robyn Bailey In many parts of North America, handsome male Northern Cardinals are already singing to attract mates. A bird so visible in the winter landscape begs the question, “How does a flame-red bird that nests close to the ground manage to be so common?” Many people puzzle over how this [...]
By Hugh
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Also posted in Birds, citizen science
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Tagged birding, Birds, birdwatching, citizen science, Jason Martin, nesting, NestWatch, Northern Cardinal, Robyn Bailey, science, sexual selection
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February 21, 2013 – 12:55 pm
This post was written by Andrea Alfano, a Cornell University junior. Would you pull over your car just to watch some starlings? A gathering of only a few of these speckled, iridescent-black birds isn’t a very alluring sight—particularly in North America, where these birds are invaders. The European Starling was originally introduced here by a [...]
December 21, 2012 – 11:59 am
The Cornell Lab’s Macaulay Library is the world’s largest and oldest archive of natural sounds and video, and you can browse its holdings online. Though it’s best known for its bird recordings, the Macaulay Library also features insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals—including a recent addition: gibbons recorded in the wild in Thailand. They’re the [...]
October 19, 2012 – 2:11 pm
Thirty-nine of the most gorgeous, outlandish animals in the world—the birds-of-paradise—live only in New Guinea, associated islands, and adjacent tropical Australia. Though they’ve been known for centuries from paintings and specimens, it’s only now that all 39 can be admired in glorious photographic detail, thanks to ground-breaking work by Cornell Lab biologist Ed Scholes and [...]
By Hugh
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Also posted in Birds, conservation, education, science, travel, Uncategorized, video
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Tagged birding, Birds, birds-of-paradise, birdwatching, Ed Scholes, New Guinea, photos, sightings, Tim Laman, tropical fieldwork, video
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October 9, 2012 – 11:50 am
Imagine you walk into the neighborhood coffee house for your morning cup of joe, and on the counter is a tip jar with a sign reading, “$ for wintering warblers” with a photo of a Chestnut-sided Warbler in a tropical forest. You’d drop your change in, right? Any proud bird watcher would do their part [...]
By Hugh
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Also posted in Birds, conservation, Uncategorized, what you can do
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Tagged Bird Friendly, birding, Birds, birdwatching, coffee, conservation, migration, organic, science, shade-grown, songbirds, tropics
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September 13, 2012 – 12:53 pm
On the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, twin spotlights once again shot into the night sky above Manhattan to offer a tribute to the men and women we lost during the 2001 attacks. It was a clear and cool night, almost calm and with a hint of a southerly breeze. In another long-repeated annual event, thousands [...]
By Hugh
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Also posted in Birds, conservation, flight calls, News, science
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Tagged 9/11, Andrew Farnsworth, birding, Birds, birdwatching, conservation, Manhattan, migration, New York City, science, Tribute in Light
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September 4, 2012 – 2:54 pm
Two interns per year get to visit Appledore Island in Maine for a summer of sunrises, monitoring Herring Gull chicks, dodging protective gull parents, and learning every inch of an island you can walk across in 20 minutes. We’ve always wondered what it’s like—so we asked Cornell undergraduate Shailee Shah, who spent the 2012 field [...]
By Hugh
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Also posted in Birds, field reports, science, slideshow, Uncategorized
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Tagged Appledore Island, birding, Birds, birdwatching, fieldwork, photos, Shailee Shah, Shoals Marine Lab
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It’s an exciting time to be in field biology—the naturalists of today have more tools at their disposal than ever before. To learn how to use those tools, a group of Cornell students have been spending this summer in the field; and Abby McBride, a summer writing intern, accompanied them in the field to write the [...]
By Hugh
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Also posted in Birds, field reports, sounds, Uncategorized, video
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Tagged Abby McBride, birding, Birds, birdwatching, David Winkler, Eric Gulson, fieldwork, fledglings, Hilary Yu, Jen Goforth, photos, Scarlet Tanager, sound, sound recording, video
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Studying puffins in Iceland, where the birds are numerous but also vulnerable to changes in climate and oceans, is important work—but it doesn’t always look like it. Researchers like Erpur Hansen who want to know how the breeding season is going have to figure out how to look inside puffin nests dug into the ground. [...]
By Hugh
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Also posted in Birds, field reports, science, slideshow, sounds, travel, video
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Tagged Atlantic Puffin, birding, Birds, birdwatching, fieldwork, Iceland, photos, sound recording, sounds, travel, video
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I’m spending 10 days in Iceland to learn about research on Atlantic Puffins. My host is Erpur Hansen, an Icelandic biologist who has been studying puffins here since 2007. He visits most of the country´s large puffin colonies twice each year to assess their breeding success. And that’s no small task, as nearly half of [...]
By Hugh
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Also posted in Birds, field reports, slideshow, travel
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Tagged birding, Birds, birdwatching, Erpur Hansen, fieldwork, Iceland, puffins, sightings, travel
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