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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Just last week was the North American Ornithological Conference, a major gathering of ornithologists in Vancouver, British Columbia. Quite a few of our staff and scientists attended, and among them was Wes Hochachka, assistant director of our Bird Population Studies program. When last we heard from Wes, he was extolling the virtues of European warblers—but [...]
Our fourth annual Young Birders Event brought together 10 expert young birders for a long weekend at the Cornell Lab in July. In addition to touring our favorite local birding spots, the high-school-age students met many of our scientists and graduate students to learn about how to turn an interest in birds into a career [...]
For a few weeks now we’ve been looking forward to a major milestone in our eBird project: the addition of our 100 millionth bird observation. It couldn’t have arrived in better style: Liron Gertsman, a keen young birder from Vancouver, British Columbia, reported an American Robin along with 23 other species as part of his [...]
A highly accomplished group of young birders will gather here at the Cornell Lab this weekend for our fourth annual Young Birders Event, sponsored this year by Carl Zeiss Sports Optics. Their agenda is packed with opportunities to go birding—but they’ll also spend time inside, learning about bird-centered careers from professional ornithologists and students here at the Cornell Lab. They’ll get to [...]
Science editor Gus Axelson is just back from a tour of eastern Hungary sponsored by Swarovski Optik. (Look for his story about bird conservation in Hungary to appear in a future issue of Living Bird.) As Gus returned to the world of American Redstarts and other brilliant warblers, he turned his attention to a more [...]
How much of the world we see around us is the result of competition between species? The answer is one of the enduring debates in the field of ecology. Evolution and natural selection are founded on the idea that individuals compete to get the resources they need to survive. It happens within species all the [...]
