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
|
Posted in Big Day, Birds, conservation, travel, video
|
Also tagged Big Day, birding, Birds, birdwatching, slideshow, Team Sapsucker, Texas
|
January 18, 2013 – 6:41 pm
This year’s Great Backyard Bird Count is happening Feb 15–18. Last year’s count set a new record for participation, netting more than 100,000 checklists. This year could be even bigger, because for the first time ever, the GBBC is going global. Drawing on the international reach of eBird‘s online checklists, we can now accept entries [...]
By Hugh
|
Posted in Birds, citizen science, News, slideshow, Uncategorized, what you can do
|
Also tagged birding, Birds, birdwatching, citizen science, gbbc, great backyard bird count
|
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
|
Posted in Birds, conservation, ecology, education, science, travel, Uncategorized, video
|
Also tagged birding, Birds, birds-of-paradise, birdwatching, Ed Scholes, New Guinea, sightings, Tim Laman, tropical fieldwork, video
|
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
|
Posted in Birds, ecology, field reports, science, slideshow, Uncategorized
|
Also tagged Appledore Island, birding, Birds, birdwatching, fieldwork, Shailee Shah, Shoals Marine Lab
|
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
|
Posted in Birds, ecology, field reports, sounds, Uncategorized, video
|
Also tagged Abby McBride, birding, Birds, birdwatching, David Winkler, Eric Gulson, fieldwork, fledglings, Hilary Yu, Jen Goforth, Scarlet Tanager, sound, sound recording, video
|
On a recent trip to Hungary, science editor Gus Axelson got a chance to test out a new line of Swarovski Optik ATX spotting scopes, which were officially announced today. Although Gus was pretty new to digiscoping, he found this scope’s innovative design to be incredibly easy and intuitive for bird viewing, and for hassle-free [...]
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
|
Posted in Birds, ecology, field reports, science, slideshow, sounds, travel, video
|
Also tagged Atlantic Puffin, birding, Birds, birdwatching, fieldwork, Iceland, sound recording, sounds, travel, video
|
This is Part Two of a post about searching for the 12 endemic birds of northeast Queensland’s Wet Tropics World Heritage Reserve, with the help of many of the region’s wonderful guides and lodges. Part One of the story is here. Part Two introduces six endemic species not mentioned in Part One: Grey-headed Robin, Bridled Honeyeater, Bower’s [...]
By Hugh
|
Posted in Birds, field reports, slideshow, sounds, travel
|
Also tagged Australia, birding, Birds, birdwatching, Del Richards, endemics, Kingfisher Park, sightings, sound, travel, tropical fieldwork
|
With breeding season in full swing, birds are in a flurry of nesting—that means it’s time for another Funky Nests in Funky Places contest held by our Celebrate Urban Birds project—and you could win prizes for yours. Birds don’t always build in the places you might expect. People have discovered bird nests in boots, grills, flower pots, [...]
With hordes of migrant songbirds fluttering in the bushes of southern New Jersey on Saturday, two Cornell teams posted strong finishes in the 29th annual World Series of Birding. The student Redheads team scored 168 species with their new lineup, enough to take second place in the Cape May County division. And the bicycle-powered Anti-Petrels [...]
