Imagine: Singing for three minutes while soaring to 100 feet in the air, like the Skylark. None of the native birds of North America has such a long song or sings so persistently in flight. Around 1902, Skylarks were brought from England to Vancouver Island, British Columbia, to satisfy…

Over the years, BirdNote has paid tribute to people who improve the lives of birds. We find inspiration in the efforts of stewards such as Jim Brown, who’s preserving important habitat for birds such as this Lewis's Woodpecker, along the Clark Fork River in Montana. In downtown Chicago…

Northern Bobwhite ... Evening Grosbeaks ... Boreal Chickadees ... Common Terns ... and Northern Pintails, like this one ... the populations of all are in decline, mostly due to habitat loss. On Earth Day, join those who are finding ways to conserve the natural resources that sustain the…

Why are some creatures rare and others common? What forces – natural and manmade – cause rarity? Eric Dinerstein travels far and wide for answers. He wonders how different the world could be with a few changes: “. . . what if we started caring about rare wildlife with the same intensity as…

Gordon Hempton, the Sound Tracker, records the sounds of nature in pristine places. Mesmerized by a Winter Wren singing in the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest of the Carolinas, Gordon chased the bird up and down a mountain before capturing its song at close range. But when he listened to the…

Birds provide a lot of inspiration for composer Maria Schneider, whose album titled Winter Morning Walks won three Grammy awards in 2014. One song from that album, “Spring, The Sky Rippled With Geese,” features Ted Kooser’s poem of the same title. Here’s what Maria says about spring: “That…

Except in winter, when it gathers in loose flocks to move to lower elevations, this shy bird prefers solitude. The intricate pattern of color on its wings resembles dappled sunlight on the forest floor. Naturalist Louis Agassiz Fuertes called the song of the Varied Thrush, "... as…

Tony Angell, along with Professor John Marzluff of the University of Washington, wrote the book, Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans. Tony says, "A crow 'funeral' is where the deceased bird is surrounded by members of the same…

Northern Saw-whet Owls reveal we have much to learn about the world of birds. Author and naturalist Scott Weidensaul shares his insight: “Here’s a species that up until the early to mid-1990s was considered to be rare in most of its range . . . It turns out this is one of the most common…

As our climate changes, restoring coastal wetlands will be increasingly important for the welfare of people and birds. As manager of the McKinney National Wildlife Refuge in Long Island Sound, Rick Potvin oversees coastal and island habitat for wildlife. Rick and communities along the…