Audubon Magazine

Every autumn the largest congregation of Bald Eagles on the planet flocks to the northern Alaskan panhandle to feast on spawning salmon in the Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve. As many as 4,000 of the imposing raptors hunch in frosty trees, dropping grand

MAY I ASK SOMETHING OF YOU as we head into a new year? Would you make a resolution to be the very best advocate for birds you can possibly be? It’s an election year, and Audubon, and its partner organization the Audubon Action Fund, will be working h

Standoff Nate Chappell captured this image of a tense encounter between two African Penguins and a Blacksmith Lapwing and entered it in the 2019 Audubon Photography Awards. You can discover what’s happening in this shot and 11 others that feature fas

FOR SALMONSTATE CAMPAIGNER Rachel James, as for many Alaskans, an announcement in 2014 brought a wave of relief: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would, in effect, block a sprawling copper- and gold-mining project vehemently opposed by commer

MARGARET ATWOOD IS ON message. Not, mind you, about The Testaments, the acclaimed new book she’s promoting, a sequel to her most famous novel and Emmy award–winning TV series The Handmaid’s Tale. In fact, Atwood does not seem all that interested in s

DECADES AGO THE CAT ISLAND chain in Lake Michigan’s Green Bay was a bird haven. The archipelago sheltered waterfowl-rich wetlands from waves and provided habitat for an array of migratory shorebirds and the greatest diversity of colonial nesting spec

Scientific name: Aphelocoma insularis Range: Restricted to Santa Cruz Island. Perhaps formerly occurred on Santa Rosa Island. Habitat: Primarily in scruboak-dominated chaparral and in oak woodland. Status: Recent estimates suggest only about 2,000 in

Crowding around a computer screen in a cramped hut, Lyons, director of conservation science for Audubon’s Seabird Restoration Program, and his Chinese colleagues are trying to pick out their target via a live stream. They swivel the mouse to scan the

Anyone who birds a favorite park over and over knows intuitively why they keep going back: It just feels good. Being in nature—pausing in it, sitting with it, discovering its wonders—brings a sense of calm and renewal. Now science is backing up our i

ONE DAY DEBI SHEARWATER, WHO was then named Debi Millichap, walked onto the porch of her parents’ house in Chester, Pennsylvania. There she found her 12-year-old brother Scott Millichap sitting with a baby House Sparrow that had fallen out of its nes

BINOCULARS ARE AN ESSENTIAL TOOL FOR BIRDERS, but with so many models on the market, it can be daunting to find the perfect pair. So we asked a small army of dedicated birders and professional ornithologists to test a wide array of optics at various

CALVING GLACIERS, WHALES, SEALS, AND EXTRAORDINARY BIRDS, including nine types of penguins, beckon intrepid travelers to the Great White Desert—5.5 million square miles of ice at the bottom of the world. This time of year, the austral summer, offers

ALTHOUGH THERE HAS NEVER BEEN an indigenous human population on Antarctica, there is now a bustling international community. In summer, some 4,000 researchers, studying everything from albatrosses to zooplankton, bunk at more than 60 scientific stati

Three photographers do their best work where the sun doesn’t (often) shine—and you can, too. Gloomy Gray On the Oregon coast in winter, it’s often raining or about to rain, says conservation photographer Jaymi Heimbuch. That doesn’t deter her. She su

IN PREPARATION FOR HIS GREAT CORMORANT ASSIGNMENT, Berlin-based illustrator Martin Haake examined many other John James Audubon paintings to refamiliarize himself with the artist. “He is so great at catching a certain moment in the life of a bird,” h