Longtime baseball announcer Red Barber often described a player in a winning situation as "sitting in the catbird seat." So what is "sitting in the catbird seat"? And what is a catbird? The Gray Catbird is a cousin of the mockingbird, and it does sound a little like a cat. During breeding…

The Steller's Jay is a jay... and it's blue. But it's not a true Blue Jay with a capital "B." The bona fide Blue Jay is primarily a bird of eastern North America. Blue Jays and the Steller's Jays have similarly raucous personalities. Like their larger cousins, the crows, ravens, and…

The male hummingbird leaves the female to build the nest and raise the young alone, but other father birds are more involved. A Peregrine Falcon father shares duties almost evenly with the mother. (Stewart, pictured, nested on a Seattle skyscraper for many years.) But the male Emu of…

Happy Mother's Day, from the whole BirdNote team! Avian motherhood is a mixed bag. Peregrine Falcon mothers share duties fairly equally with Peregrine dads. At the other end of the spectrum is the female hummingbird, which usually carries the entire burden of nesting, incubating, and…

En muchas tradiciones, los cuervos son considerados como embusteros. Pero el cuervo común tiene un lado más tierno. Durante el cortejo, la pareja suele sentarse una junto a la otra, a veces acicalándose mutuamente las plumas. Y durante ese ritual, uno o ambos pueden emitir suaves gorjeos…

Traveling "as the crow flies," eating "like a bird," and being "free as a bird" are just a few of the sayings we use to describe everyday human actions and feelings. But these often don't take into account the birds' real activities, relative to their size.

Put your winter garden to work as a haven for birds. Leaves and brush left to compost provide foraging and roosting places, smother this year’s weeds, and feed next spring’s plant growth. Watch for juncos and towhees in the leaf litter and wrens in the brush. Maybe even a Song Sparrow…

Just because a young bird appears to be alone – whether on the ground or squawking loudly from a bush or tree – doesn't necessarily mean it is sick or injured. In June, young birds, including this juvenile Northern Flicker, are leaving their nests. And most likely, a parent is near-by and…

Birding is often best in the least likely places. At sewage treatment plants, watch for ducks and gulls – and raptors keeping watch over them all. Another place might be your local landfill or dump. The Brownsville, Texas dump was, for years, the only place in the U.S. you could find this…

The strange wading birds known as jacanas are nick-named "lily-trotters" for their ability to walk on lily pads. In Jamaica, they're known as "Jesus birds," because they appear to be walking on water — a feat made possible by their long toes. But that's not the only cool thing about…