Seabird poop, known as guano, has been used to enrich soil, to make gunpowder, and believe it or not, as a skin treatment. Bird poop is a valuable commodity. South America's Pacific Coast has some of the world's largest deposits of guano, from species including the Peruvian Pelican, the…

For 20 years, Julia Parrish of the University of Washington has been studying seabirds on the Pacific Northwest coast. During this time, the population of Bald Eagles has rebounded. What does the growing eagle population mean for Common Murres? When an eagle flies over a nesting area of…

Paul Bannick, naturalist and wildlife photographer, gives this advice: Most of the work of taking a photograph is done in advance, and it involves both research and field work. Learn as much as you can about the habitat. Pay attention to the landscape, where the light comes from. And…

When it's time to pick their four acres of wine grapes, Carl and Rita Comfort would rather the birds didn't beat them to it. Without some form of bird control, they could lose about 10% of their harvest. So at their vineyard, Comforts of Whidbey, they broadcast the distress calls of birds…

Urban light creates a fatal attraction and disorients migrating birds, which often fly around until exhausted and drop to the ground. Or they may strike a building or window. To prevent these needless deaths, the city of Toronto has created a "Lights Out Toronto" program. Lights go out in…

The celebrities of the Whooping Crane world have to be the Lobstick family, named for the Lobstick marshes where they nest in Canada. The Lobstick male, at 33, is the oldest Whooping Crane in the wild whose age we know for certain. And Tom Stehn of the US Fish and Wildlife Service tells us…

Every day in October 2011, nearly 3.5 million hours were spent playing Rovio's award-winning game, "Angry Birds." We don't know of too many birds whose eggs are stolen by pigs, but no bird is happy when its eggs are stolen. You might hear an American Robin, sounding its alarm. An angry…

In late September 2011, three California Condors were released near the Grand Canyon. Eddie Feltes of The Condor Recovery Project says: "We open up the gates from a blind and watch those birds take to the sky." The first few days are the most crucial in the birds' life, because they've…

Imagine a heat wave, and your body covered in down and feathers. How do birds cope? Well, Saltmarsh Sparrows use their bills to shed excess heat. The late Russ Greenberg, once head of the Migratory Bird Center of the Conservation Biology Institute at the Smithsonian, discovered that these…

In January 2011, a pair of Short-tailed Albatrosses produced their first chick on Midway Atoll. Never before had this endangered bird bred outside of Japan. But in March, while the parents were foraging at sea, the tsunami that struck Japan also reached Midway, washing the chick off its…