By Shailee Shah A chameleon’s tongue, a bee’s flight, a cheetah’s chase, a kingfisher’s dive, a manakin’s “singing” wings—many animals go about their lives doing things in the blink of an eye. There is a whole secret world of the fast-moving that remains to be explored and understood with the aid of high-speed videography. I [...]
Big Days are intense: Last year, our Team Sapsucker spent all 24 hours of April 27 scouring central and eastern Texas for birds. They had three dozen species on their list before dawn broke, and hit triple digits shortly before 8 a.m. They kept going, adding an average of one species every 11 minutes throughout [...]
By Hugh
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Also posted in Big Day, Birds, conservation, travel
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Tagged Big Day, birding, Birds, birdwatching, photos, slideshow, Team Sapsucker, Texas
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UPDATE 2: Owing to public interest, the Fish and Wildlife Service has extended the public comment period. If you have not already commented, you can submit comments here until April 2, 2013. UPDATE: We received many requests from readers for information on how to submit a public comment on the proposed listing of the Gunnison [...]
November 13, 2012 – 3:42 pm
At an event in Washington, DC, this weekend, Cornell Lab directors presented a set of short, crisp, exciting talks about the work that we do. They’re a great introduction to the kinds of exciting research, conservation, and outreach that consume our lives. Lab director John Fitzpatrick kicked things off with his argument that birds really [...]
By Hugh
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Also posted in Birds, citizen science, conservation, News, science, sounds, Uncategorized
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Tagged Chris Clark, Ed Scholes, Gerrit Vyn, John Fitzpatrick, Ken Rosenberg, Mike Webster, Miyoko Chu, Nancy Trautmann, Tim Laman
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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, ecology, education, science, travel, Uncategorized
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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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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, ecology, field reports, sounds, Uncategorized
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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, ecology, field reports, science, slideshow, sounds, travel
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Tagged Atlantic Puffin, birding, Birds, birdwatching, fieldwork, Iceland, photos, sound recording, sounds, travel, video
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This week we saw the first of our three young Red-tailed Hawks leave the nest, with one big step and then a long glide toward the oak trees across the street. The youngster came back the next day, watched one of his siblings fledge, and then took off again—this time looking decidedly more skillful in [...]
The concept of a Big Day is a bold one—a midnight-to-midnight sleepless birding blitz to see or hear as many species as humanly possible. Team Sapsucker—Chris Wood, Jessie Barry, Andrew Farnsworth, Marshall Iliff, and Tim Lenz—took on that challenge in Texas last year, setting the North American record at 264, and then they doubled-down for [...]
By Hugh
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Also posted in Big Day, Birds, conservation, field reports, News, slideshow, travel
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Tagged Andrew Farnsworth, Big Day, birding, Birds, birdwatching, Chris Wood, conservation, endangered species, Jessie Barry, Marshall Iliff, photos, sightings, Texas, Tim Lenz
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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 [...]
