May/June 2019

BirdWatching

Feel the thrill of finding, attracting, and identifying birds

BirdWatching2 min read
Common Courtesy
No doubt about it, chasing rarities is a big part of the birding culture. When the birding gods drop a way-out-of-range bird in a place that has a fair number of local birders, the news flashes quickly across state listservs, national and local Faceb
BirdWatching2 min read
A Big Win For Conservation
Bird and wildlife conservation in the United States received a significant boost recently when Congress passed and the president signed the John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act, a sweeping bill covering a variety of subje
BirdWatching2 min readNature
Nest Boxes Aid Comeback Of Rare Parrots
In northeastern Brazil’s Baturité Mountains, strategically placed nest boxes are helping to restore populations of one of the world’s most endangered wild parrots. The Gray-breasted Parakeet, once considered a subspecies of the White-eared Parakeet,
BirdWatching3 min readNature
Since You Asked
Q Don’t Ospreys eat only fish? I swear I saw one carrying something with a long skinny tail. — Nora McAllister, Wilmington, North Carolina A About 99 percent of an Osprey’s diet is fish. However, the species has been noted taking a variety of other p
BirdWatching2 min readEnvironmental Science
Earlier Spring, Unpredictable Future
Two recent studies shed new light on the past and future effects of climate change on migratory birds. The first was based on long-term monitoring data from 21 European and Canadian bird observatories and included almost 200 study species. The team o
BirdWatching2 min read
ON THE MOVE FROM eBIRD
Named by Alexander Wilson from an individual collected during fall migration in its namesake state, the Connecticut Warbler is not common there, instead breeding (in June) across a broad swath of the Canadian boreal forest and in southerly extensions
BirdWatching5 min read
Blueprint For A Big Day
Most birders are aware of the notion of a Big Year, but surprisingly many are unaware of another birdwatching institution, the Big Day. While few of us are in a position to carve a year out of our lives and run up a list of North American bird specie
BirdWatching9 min read
DANCE Of The RED KNOT
By dark of night, they howl across Delaware Bay, these winds that reach 60 miles per hour. The gales of a nor’easter — a storm that rarely happens in May — overturn everything in their path. Along Delaware’s Pickering Beach, seaweed washes in with th
BirdWatching10 min readNature
Taking Flight
Contributing Editor Kenn Kaufman, the author of “ID Tips” in every issue of BirdWatching, the originator of the Kaufman Field Guide series, the author of Kingbird Highway and other books, and an acclaimed bird artist, is publishing a new book in Apri
BirdWatching3 min read
Flower Power
When my wife and I moved into our home in 2000 in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, she set out to create a garden that would attract birds, populating it with native shrubs and plants. Later, when we needed to replace a few dead and dying trees, she looked fo
BirdWatching4 min read
A Birder Discovers Butterflies
Birding has long been a passion of mine. Birds lured me into woods at a young age, and I never looked back. I began keeping lists of the birds I had seen, and family vacations always meant new potential species and experiences: Burrowing Owls and Ros
BirdWatching4 min readNature
Snail Kite
Upon hearing that there are birds called “kites,” many people assume they must have been named for the kind of kite you fly on a string. Actually, it’s the other way around. The birds were named first, and the paper contraptions were named because th
BirdWatching1 min read
The New Snail In Town
Historically, Snail Kites in Florida dined almost exclusively on the Florida apple snail, an aquatic species about the size of a golf ball. But in the early 2000s, larger, exotic apple snails, native to South America and escaped from the aquarium tra
BirdWatching9 min readNature
Dream Destinations
You can benefit bird conservation just by thoughtfully choosing vacation destinations. Macaws, umbrellabirds, antpittas.… The nine top birding destinations featured on the following pages could make your birding dreams come true, and by traveling to
BirdWatching2 min read
Lewisville Lake Environmental Learning Area
Two ecosystems meet at the Lewisville Lake Environmental Learning Area: the Blackland Prairie and the dry upland forests of the Eastern Cross Timbers. The Elm Fork of the Trinity River winds through the area as well. Most of the original ecosystems a
BirdWatching1 min read
At A Glance
Prairie, forests, wetlands. More than 6 miles of meandering trails. Spring: Vultures, herons, hawks, Northern Shoveler, Spotted Sandpiper, yellowlegs, Black-chinned Hummingbird, Purple Martin, Tree Swallow, American Pipit, Pine Warbler, Spotted Towhe
BirdWatching1 min readNature
At A Glance
Deciduous forest, shorelines, and wetlands. A three-quarter-mile natural trail circles most of the lake. Easy to moderate in difficulty. Spring: Wide variety of warblers, including Blue-winged, Black-and-white, Prothonotary, Tennessee, Nashville, Con
BirdWatching2 min read
Discovery Center
Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park is one of the largest urban parks in the world, covering 9,600 acres with miles of woodland and riparian trails. But one pocket of the park was closed to the public for 50 years — during which it became a pristine habita
BirdWatching4 min readNature
Learning To Sing
While almost all birds vocalize, only about half of them have musicality. They include wrens, thrushes, warblers, vireos, mimics, finches, and others, commonly called songbirds that are assigned to Passeri (Oscines), a suborder of the perching birds
BirdWatching2 min read
Keys To Attracting Orioles
The stunning beauty of orioles inspires many of us to fashion our backyards into oriole welcome stations. Feeders are the simplest, most effective lure for migrant orioles. The birds occasionally take sunflower seed and suet, but they prefer sweeter
BirdWatching3 min read
8 New Books For You
The Sun Is a Compass: A 4,000-Mile Journey into the Alaskan Wilds, by Caroline Van Hemert, Little, Brown Spark, hardcover, 2019, 320 pages, $27. In this magazine in 2011 and 2012, we reported on studies about chickadees and other birds in Alaska that
BirdWatching2 min readNature
Understanding Wing Feathers
Wing patterns might seem complicated at first glance, but the good news is that the arrangement of wing feathers on all kinds of birds is quite similar (and is nearly identical on all songbirds). So learning the feathers on one bird will unlock a tro

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