Round Robin » Looks

Did you miss our baby herons hatching? Watch them here! [video]

Hugh — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 17:13:25 +0000

The Great Blue Herons in the nest outside our office have been sitting on five eggs for the last month. Over the weekend, the first pips appeared in two eggs, soon followed by the wavering heads of two fuzzy chicks. Thousands of people watched live on our Great Blue Heron cam, and by this morning there were four chicks wobbling around between their parents’ gigantic feet. The fifth egg could hatch anytime.

In case you weren’t watching while all the drama unfolded, we’ve captured the action and posted highlights as a series of short YouTube videos. In the one above, you can see the moment that the first chick finally raises its head clear of the eggshell. Be sure to watch the rest of the videos in this playlist—you can see earlier shots of the chick struggling to pull its head free of its shell hat (with the father helping a bit) as well as later shots of nestlings two and three. As the birds dry off and get more mobile, it’s amazing to see how long their necks are already, and how fuzzy their feathers are.

With these high-definition and nighttime cams streaming 24/7, viewers are able to follow these herons live, often getting views that scientists rarely see.

“From the very first night, viewers witnessed little-known events, such as herons courting and mating by moonlight,” our director, John Fitzpatrick, said. “They’ve watched live as the herons defended their nest, uttering rarely heard, spine-chilling defensive screams as Great Horned Owls attacked in early morning hours. Even the professionals are gaining new insights from these live cams.”

The nest has survived several Great Horned Owl attacks, as well as a snowstorm that would have buried the nest in snow if not for the parent steadfastly sitting on the eggs. More than half a million people from 166 countries have tuned in so far. Stay tuned for more news, screenshots, and videos as the heron chicks grow. (And if you haven’t seen the hawk chicks over at our Red-tailed Hawk cam, you’ll want to check them out, too.)

Watch Nesting Red-tailed Hawks Live on Bird Cams

Hugh — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 15:14:04 +0000

A new nest camera high above a Cornell University athletic field is streaming up-close views of a Red-tailed Hawk nest via the Cornell Lab’s All About Birds website. The new camera stream puts viewers 80 feet off the ground and right beside the nest, where they can watch the hawks arrive, see them taking turns incubating the eggs, and compare notes on the two birds—the male has a more golden-tawny face and is slightly smaller than the female, which has been nicknamed “Big Red” for her alma mater.

The nest should be active for at least the next two months, and we hope you’ll join us as we watch the young birds hatch and grow. The parents have raised young here for at least the last four years. They began to make brief return visits to the nest site in late January. In February we started to see them arriving with dead sticks and green pine boughs to augment the nest materials left over from last year. As signs of spring began to show the pair began spending more time at the nest, and the male started bringing prey such as squirrels and pigeons to the nest to offer the female.

Last Friday (March 16) at about 2:10 p.m., the female laid her first egg of the season, and the pair took turns incubating it over the weekend. She added a second egg on Monday (March 19), and we’re now waiting to see if they lay a third. (The typical clutch size for Red-tailed Hawks is 2–3 eggs.) It takes 28–35 days of incubation for the eggs to hatch.

To make sure no one misses out on the early stages of this Red-tailed Hawk story, we’ve put together a temporary Bird Cam site where we invite you to watch these magnificent birds. Meanwhile we’re building a full-featured Bird Cams site that will launch in late April. It will feature many more species, including long-running streams from our NestCams project as well as new species such as Osprey, Black Vulture, and Great Horned Owl.

(Images via Bird Cams from the Red-tailed Hawk nest on Cornell University Campus. See live stream.)

Great Backyard Bird Count Photo Winners Announced

admin — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 22:37:56 +0000

The Great Backyard Bird Count is a continent-spanning attempt to count birds over a single weekend in February that draws nearly 100,000 checklists from bird watchers all over the U.S. and Canada. People also send us thousands of pictures for our annual photo contest, which is sponsored by Wild Birds Unlimited and Droll Yankees.

Once again this year the photos were stunning, from an elegant American Tree Sparrow to an acrobatic, snake-snatching Red-shouldered Hawk. Our judges have now made their choices and we are delighted to present the 2011 winners and runners-up, chosen from nearly 6,000 images submitted. The photos are beautiful, and the data from all those checklists help scientists get a picture of bird populations across North America.

This year’s overall winner is Lesley Mattuchio with her American Tree Sparrow image (above, with the other four winners in the Overall category). We judge photos in five other categories, too. This year the winners were:

Habitat: Norm Dougan, British Columbia
Group: Jeannette Tasey, Montana
Behavior: Harold Izenwasser, Florida
People: Donna Salko, Pennsylvania
Composition: Cathy Willis, Texas

Visit the GBBC website to see the top five photos in each of the six categories (my own favorite is the Red-breasted Nuthatch raiding Douglas-fir cones). This annual announcement also serves as a reminder that the 2012 GBBC is less than three months away. Mark your calendars now for Feb. 17–20!

Congratulations to all the finalists and to everyone who took the time to send us photos. Thanks to Wild Birds Unlimited and Droll Yankees for donating great prizes. The bar has been set very high—we look forward to your lenswork for the 2012 GBBC!

(Images are the winners in the Overall category of the 2011 Great Backyard Bird Count photo contest: American Tree Sparrow by Lesley Mattuchio, Common Poorwill by Allan J. Sander, Northern Saw-whet Owl by Nick Saunders, Northern Flicker by Gary Mueller, Pine Grosbeak by Norm Dougan. Visit the GBBC site to see the rest of the winners.)

Birds on Film: 10 Must-See Video Moments

admin — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 23:39:18 +0000

Yesterday we suggested a few good books about birding (and got many more from commenters and Facebook fans—thanks!). But you can’t read all the time—so here are a few moments of video to immerse you in the color, sound, behavior, and diversity of birds. These first five are our own multimedia productions (see more at our YouTube channel):

1. Red-winged Blackbirds occur all over North America. Take a closer look at how and why males use their gorgeous plumage to defend marshy territories.

2. Sometimes your ears are all you need as a birder—especially when the glorious, haunting call of a Common Loon fills a misty summer night.

3. Shorebirds can flummox the keenest of bird watchers—but in this video we’ll walk you through the crowds assembled at a Louisiana beach, and help you recognize who’s who, by watching what they do.

4. At other times, it’s worthwhile to take a little extra time to appreciate a common species. Here’s a video introduction to the Mourning Dove, a widespread bird that may still surprise you.

5. If you’re new to birding or want to practice your skills, we’ve got lots of material to help you. Here’s one episode in our free series Inside Birding, about recognizing birds by their color pattern.

6. The Cornell Lab’s Macaulay Library is the world’s largest archive of natural sounds—and it’s got a growing archive of video clips too. Check out these incredible clips of a dancing Magnificent Riflebird (be sure to watch to at least the 1:00 mark), a group of Harlequin Ducks, and a Mangrove Blue-Flycatcher from the Philippines.

7. The BBC has been making top-notch nature programs for decades. A recent, amazing clip takes you into the air by putting tiny cameras onto the backs of falconers’ birds.

8. Listen to the Superb Lyrebird impersonate kookaburras and camera shutters in one of the BBC’s best-loved clips.

9. Go under the arctic waters as eiders pry mussels from the bottom, then rocket to the surface again.

10. Explore the anatomy of a kingfisher’s dive—from hover to splash to grab. Featuring incredible slow-motion footage.

You can watch many other BBC clips on their website (though not all are available for U.S. viewers). Even apart from the gorgeous footage, watching legendary host Sir David Attenborough appear in the wildest of locations is a never-ending source of enjoyment. Here’s a close encounter with a Wandering Alabatross to start with. Watch Sir David politely fend off an advancing adult without even stopping his sentence.

As with our books list, we had only a limited number of slots to work with—so let us know in comments or on Facebook what your own favorite video moments are.

The Whitest Seabird

admin — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 14:17:44 +0000

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Snow Petrels kept our ship company in the Ross Sea and sometimes landed on the bow
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Sometimes they were just part of the scenery, like dots under a sunlit cloud
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They were undeterred by weather of any kind, and seemed at home in snowstorms
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In fine weather they soared far above the ship, stretching narrow wings across the sky
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In higher winds they weaved across the waves, resting in the wind shadow of our bow
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Up close, you can see how delicate these small birds are
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A Snow Petrel floats out of the lee of our bow, heading into the wind with a shudder.
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Sometimes one came to rest for a few minutes on hard surfaces like the ship's crane tower
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As this one crosses the bow, you can see our orange hull reflected in its white feathers
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Snow Petrels meet the fiercest winds with outstretched wings, turning it to their advantage

You could argue a case for the Ivory Gull, but as far as immaculate whiteness goes, I adore the Snow Petrel. Made all the whiter by its big black eye, black bill, and black feet, this is a bird that belongs in front of icebergs, coursing on the cold black waves of gales.

In big seas, the waves hide rafts of hundreds. They sit there on calm scraps of water amid the rollers and spray, ducking their heads after prey such as krill. Or they just rest and preen, bills tossing water over their backs, wings making small alternating flutters in the washing motions that all birds share. Never mind that the snow is falling horizontally above them and the water surface shifting and tilting around them. They’re at home.

I’m back on land now, though still in Antarctica (waiting for clear weather to fly out). In my month at sea, Snow Petrels were my most familiar companions. These are truly polar seabirds—they occur only as far north as the pack ice of the Southern Ocean, and they nest on cliffs on the Antarctic continent and islands.

They’re common in the Ross Sea. In our 24-hour daylight, I could look out my porthole anytime and have an even chance of seeing two or three white birds dodging waves at eye level, catching up and passing us with scarcely a wingbeat—just minor modifications to the shape of their scimitar wings.

I took to drinking morning coffee on the top deck and watching them play in the eddies that streamed off the ship’s superstructure. A rotation of Snow and Antarctic Petrels would gain on us, sighting on the ship’s smokestack, then drifting up to within a wing’s reach of the loading crane, then on up to the bridge wing (used by the ice pilot to sight his way through thick floes). Once they reached the full wind of the bow they canted their narrow sails 30 degrees to starboard and spun into our wake again, to start the glide back up.

But the best views were when the winds came up and the skies darkened to pearl gray. The cold Ross Sea is the color of obsidian, and Snow Petrels darting about the waves look like whitecaps come to life. In soft light they lose their whiteness and take on the grays and near-blacks of snowfall at twilight. Their wings seem never in motion, but always at work, as they range far off our beam, coast back, and hang for an instant on the plume of air ribboning off the starboard rail. If I stood there long enough, I could get a few close-ups even on my iPhone. So what do you think? The whitest seabird?

(Images by Hugh Powell; see more photos at our expedition site)

iPhoniscoping Belize [slideshow]

admin — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 16:44:14 +0000

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This Vermilion Flycatcher was waiting for us at the airport.
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An aptly named Roadside Hawk just after eating a bright-green katydid
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Fruiting cecropia trees attract many species, and give us warbler neck
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By 7 a.m. our first day we had seen all 3 of Belize's toucans (here, Keel-billed)
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Emerald Toucanet, Belize's smallest and feistiest-looking toucan
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Dim morning light accentuates these Collared Aracaris' splashy colors
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A Pale-billed Woodpecker double-knocking at Cockscomb Basin
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A Mangrove Cuckoo plucks bugs from a drenched Placencia soccer field
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The Northern Jacana and its incredible toes are a longtime favorite of mine
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A tiny Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl sits quietly in woods above the Macal River
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A Blue-crowned Motmot swings its fancy tail outside the Mayan ruin of Xunantunich
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Quiet moment for a feisty Rufous-tailed Hummingbird

Over the holidays I went to Belize, Central America, for a week. I didn’t take a camera, but I brought my phone. And though I’m not an expert iPhoniscoper by any stretch, the tropics offer enough large, colorful birds that even I was able to nab a few pics through my Nikon Monarchs.

It was a great trip—a modest 171 species in 7 days, including 3 days just hanging around (and snorkeling from) the sleepy beach town of Placencia. I had spent the Saturday before my trip on a Christmas Bird Count in western Massachusetts, where we fought 20-degree weather for a Golden-crowned Kinglet and a Winter Wren.

Three days later I had seen three species of toucan before seven in the morning. We also saw all four toucan species, two motmots, a jacamar, four kingfishers, three parrots, both oropendolas, two manakins, a hawk-eagle, a family of howler monkeys, plus subtler delights like Sepia-capped Flycatcher and Rufous Mourner.

I was also amazed to be reminded of how so many of North America’s breeding birds cram themselves into roadsides and forest edges of Central America. Gray Catbirds were the most common species we saw, period. They were in towns, abandoned lots, forest interiors, pastures and plowed fields, along streams, crossing roads at dawn, and on fenceposts at dusk. Usually with a Wood Thrush or two right alongside them. I saw more Magnolia Warblers than I’ve ever seen before, along with 17 other species of warblers and the occasional Rose-breasted Grosbeak.

Belize is a friendly country where English is the main language (spoken with a delightful Caribbean lilt); the food revolves around coconut-flavored rice and beans, spiced with habañero peppers if you like. Large parks and preserves help the country retain more of its forest than in many other Central American countries. The size of the country (60 by 180 miles; about the same area as Massachusetts) keeps its bird list manageable (in the 600 range), meaning it can be a great introduction to tropical birding. Does anyone else have good memories from a trip to Belize?

(Images by Hugh Powell)

Housekeeping Secrets of Swallows

admin — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 21:12:22 +0000

When is a Tree Swallow not a Tree Swallow? When your latitude is reading 54 degrees south, not north, that familiar-looking, blue-and-white bird is a Chilean Swallow (pictured above). South is where Daisy Yuhas is right now, interning in Argentina as a field worker for Cornell professor David Winkler’s Golondrinas de las Americas project.

The project studies nine species in the Tachycineta genus at sites from Canada straight through to Tierra del Fuego. By studying such similar species in different locations, Winkler hopes to learn the basic evolutionary pressures that shape how birds live. Here’s Daisy to describe what the fieldwork is like:

Thanksgiving is a day to keep snug and warm, and so you might think that was what drew me to the southern-hemisphere summer of Argentina, this November.

But at our field site just outside the town of Ushuaia, cupped within the powerful shoulders of blue, snow-capped mountains, the clouds are ominously low. We’re at the tip of South America here—as far south of the equator as Newfoundland is north of it. An icy wind cuts through our clothes as my coworker, Becky Windsor, and I scramble into rain pants and jackets.

Today, Becky and I are visiting a peat farm to check nest boxes of Chilean Swallows, and to install a couple of miniature devices that will give our research project an inside look at secrets of incubation.

These swallows, like their close relatives the Tree Swallows, are migratory birds. Chilean Swallows breed in southern Chile and Argentina and then flee winter’s chill for sunny Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, or Uruguay in the north.

At our first nest box—which we come to after scrambling over a few wire fences and past a peat farmer’s vociferous guard dogs—a pair of handsome Chilean Swallows greets us. Their coloring is similar to other Tachycineta swallows—blue head, back, and wings, with white throat, belly, and rump—but these are a more brilliant, iridescent blue than many of their cousins.

The protective pair give us dirty looks when we slip open the box and peer into their nest.

Inside is a painstakingly layered straw-and-feather nest with a tidy little cup holding four perfect white eggs. So fastidious are swallow fathers in keeping house that when I let a feather fly by in the wind, within seconds he dives after it and restores the feather to his home.

Today, we are making our own contribution to the nest, installing coin-sized devices called iButtons. We use a bit of wire to slither one of the small metallic buttons into the nest’s cup, beside the eggs, and we tack a second against the box wall.

Each has been programmed to record the temperature every two minutes. After 48 hours we’ll replace the device and download its data. The buttons track both the ambient temperature of the nest box and the temperature next to the eggs, so we can deduce the incubation scedules of the parents. These data will eventually flesh out our understanding of incubation, which is a delicate balancing act between eggs that must stay warm enough to develop and parents that must be well-fed enough to stay alive.

The data we collect from these Chilean Swallows becomes one more clue in a larger evolutionary puzzle. By comparing results with other Tachycineta swallows living in South and Central America, the Caribbean, and north to Canada, we can start to learn what kinds of pressures have shaped the meticulous process of incubation in birds in general.

In just a minute or two, we finish with the box. The nervous parents have begun circling just above us, not letting our long predator fingers out of their sight.

“Good job,” Becky tells the swallows. “Keep up the good work!”

(Images courtesy Daisy Yuhas.)

Decorate Your Blog With New Buttons!

admin — Thu, 21 May 2009 20:32:25 +0000

The new version of All About Birds has been up for about a month now, and it’s about time we offered you some new blog buttons to go along with it.

Perhaps you have one of our original warbler buttons on your site already, or you’ve seen them on other blogs. These new buttons work the same way—they’re a pretty way to link to our site, and you can use them yourself as a convenient way to get to our online bird guide, our new Inside Birding video series, or right back here.

To put them on your site, open up a text widget in your blog and add the appropriate code below—or just add it to directly into your web page’s html:

If you want this button	Paste this code

We hope you’ll enjoy these buttons, and that they’ll help you get back to our website so you can get the most out of the birds around you. As always, thanks for your support and participation.