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 [...]
Longtime readers of this blog may remember graduate student Nate Senner’s dispatches as he chased, “twinkled,” and banded Hudsonian Godwits in Chiloé, Chile. This time, we’re turning the blog over to one of his field assistants, who has spent the last two summers on the tundra and fens of Hudson Bay following godwits around. Andy [...]
It may not feel like the end of summer where you are, but in arctic Russia, where Gerrit Vyn has been watching endangered Spoon-billed Sandpipers, birds are already headed south. Here’s Gerrit’s description of the closing of the season, complete with a late, surprise encounter with a Spoon-billed Sandpiper and its newly hatched chicks: From [...]
Gerrit Vyn, a producer in our Multimedia program, has been spending the summer in remote eastern Russia filming one of the world’s most endangered birds, the Spoon-billed Sandpiper. In the last post he sent us, he described the plight of this species as well as his first sighting of a Spoon-billed Sandpiper. Here’s his next [...]
In the arctic tundra of eastern Russia, a sparrow-sized shorebird with a one-of-a-kind beak is facing extinction—and a few scientists are doing all they can to save it. In recent years the Spoon-billed Sandpiper‘s population has dropped by a staggering 25 percent per year. Fewer than 200 pairs now remain. So this year, shorebird experts [...]
On an overcast and occasionally rainy day in Cape May, the Cornell Lab Redheads and Anti-Petrels found enough good “gets” to offset the painful misses from a slow day of songbird migration. Both teams won their divisions in the 2011 World Series of Birding: the Redheads won Cape May County with 163 species, and the [...]
(The Redheads and the Anti-Petrels are in southern New Jersey scouting their routes for the World Series of Birding on Saturday, May 14. More info and scouting reports.) Dusk is gathering under the pines at Belleplain. Swainson’s Thrushes and Veeries called off and on through the day, but what’s ruling the airwaves right now is [...]
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 [...]
In Daisy Yuhas’s final post from Ushuaia, Argentina, she welcomes mosquitoes and bids a fond farewell to swallows: A few days ago, for the very first time since I have arrived in Ushuaia, a mosquito bit my arm. I was so stunned and, frankly, happy—these bugs are a staple in Chilean Swallow diets—that I didn’t [...]
As winter settles in up north, Daisy Yuhas is watching Chilean Swallow chicks getting ready to fledge down in Argentina. Summer or no summer, the end of December brought snow and hardship to many swallows, but a few happy surprises as well. Daisy has the story: It has been a bumpy season in Ushuaia. We [...]
