More than a decade ago, Douglas Gill, a professor at the University of Maryland, received a telephone call from Harry Sears. After 250 years of human alteration and intense cultivation, had the wildlife habitat on the Eastern Shore of Maryland been ruined beyond recovery? Along with many…

Social, chatty, ubiquitous, the House Sparrow has adapted to living in cities, suburbs, and rural areas. Like most birds, these sparrows enjoy a daily bath. Set out a birdbath, and you can watch them chatter, splash, and shake, sending droplets flying. Birds like very shallow water; an…

In order to survive, birds – like all creatures – need the essentials of life: food, water, shelter, a place to bring forth the next generation. The single name for these essentials is habitat. Fortunately, some high-quality habitats for birds have become “Important Bird Areas” or IBAs…

What do birds smell? Among the many birds of the world, some are, without doubt, prodigious smellers. Turkey Vultures have a supremely keen sense of smell to lead them upwind from great distances to their malodorous feasts. Gray Catbirds may use their sense of smell to help them on…

The Florida Keys extend from the state's peninsula like a string of pearls, and pearls they are, in their uniqueness and value. Stands of hardwood trees rise above the islands' level ground. These trees draw many birds of the Caribbean to the keys' tropical habitat. One of these is the…

Devices called geolocators are giving us new insights into how, when, and where birds migrate. They record daily changes in light levels at different latitudes and longitudes by recording the time of each sunrise and sunset. And by attaching them to migrating birds - like this Red Knot -…

Shakespeare's plays abound with birds. A Midsummer Night's Dream names seven birds in one short song. The Ousel-cock so black of hue, with orange tawny bill, The Throstle with his note so true, the Wren with little quill. ... The Finch, the Sparrow and the Lark, the plain song Cuckoo gray…

During the winter of 2009-2010, thousands of Brown Pelicans washed ashore on Pacific beaches, wet, cold, starving. Fierce storms, thought to be more frequent because of global climate change, probably made it difficult for the birds to feed. And storm-water runoff washed oil and pollutants…

"Peregrine" means "wanderer." And Island Girl, a Peregrine Falcon, has made the 18,000-mile round-trip journey from the high arctic of Canada to southern Chile three times. Bud Anderson of the Falcon Research Group calls her "a master of the air." Using satellite telemetry, he invites…

Despite their seeming abundance, the numbers of Common Grackles have shrunk by 60% in the last 40 years. Grackles prefer open landscapes with scattered trees, and their numbers peaked as eastern forests were cleared for agriculture in the 18th and 19th Centuries. As eastern forests grew…