BirdWatching

In 2015, BirdWatching reported on a study that said climate change would adversely affect dozens of species of shorebirds by reducing breeding, stopover, and wintering habitat. Now, researchers at the Universities of Bath and Sheffield say that shore

You’re already a fan of birds, and by the time you finish this article, you’ll likely also be a fan of the Milwaukee Bucks pro basketball team, too. In a worldwide first, the team’s Fiserv Forum — a new 17,500-seat sports and entertainment arena — ha

A chunky, often confiding, finch of northern forests, the Pine Grosbeak is best known and most likely to be seen during its infrequent southerly irruptions in some winters. In June, Pine Grosbeak occurs in boreal forests at high latitudes from Alaska

Insect-eating birds that depend on the availability of high-calorie, high-protein cuisine — namely caterpillars and spiders — during the breeding season to feed their young are finding the menu severely lacking in backyards landscaped with even a sma

Birdwatching has a great deal to do with birds, but it has everything to do with people: the camaraderie, the shared experiences, the extemporaneous block-party atmosphere that comes of converging on a smoking-hot rarity. I think this is why hawkwatc

If you’ve seen the film The Big Year, you might recall a scene in which characters played by Steve Martin and Jack Black rent a helicopter to find one of the most elusive birds in North America — the Himalayan Snowcock. The segment depicts a hair-rai

I’m awakened by groups of revelers dancing through the cobblestone streets of Otavalo, a small town two hours north of Quito, Ecuador. Inti Raymi, the solstice festival of the sun, is hailed each year in late June with the pounding of drums, the invo

The glossy black creature that stepped off the road into the dense rainforest was something that I’d never seen before, but I needed no field guide to identify it. It stood 6 feet tall on two powerful legs, and its naked, red and blue face and neck h

Of all the ducks that reach the far north, the one that best symbolizes the Arctic is the King Eider. This hardy duck breeds on tundra along some of the northernmost shorelines in the world, including Arctic Russia, the northernmost Canadian islands,

South America is home to 15 puffleg species scattered around the Andes of Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. They are divided into two genera, Eriocnemis and Haplophaedia. Both sexes of all 15 species sport the feather tufts

A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve covers more than 3.2 million acres and features more than 1,000 tidewater and terrestrial glaciers. Despite being accessible only by plane and boat, the park is visited by more than h

When birds gave up their teeth and traded their “hands” for wings, obtaining food may have become challenging. But through evolution, birds developed an ingenious assortment of bill shapes to enable them to keep eating. In my column in the July/Augus

Sunflower is the single seed best for bird feeding — at least, that’s what I’ve been telling people since I first started feeding backyard birds in 1981. It attracts a wide variety, from chickadees and sparrows to jays and grosbeaks. Sunflower’s high

Extreme cold is one of the toughest conditions for birds to handle. With a small body mass and high body temperature, they have to rely on their feathers for insulation. A layer of feathers less than an inch thick is all they have to separate their 1