Flaco, the escaped Eurasian Eagle-Owl in Central Park, NY. Photo by Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons I recently received an email from podcast listener David McArthur from New York, who writes:  As you may have heard, a Eurasian Owl named Flaco has escaped into Central Park. He is now living wild in the woods across from my house. I saw him yesterday and I am wondering whether it would be legitimate to include him on my life list. Thank you in advance for your expert adjudication. I guess I AM sort of an expert in what is “countable” or not, because ..read more

At this very moment, people in my neck of the woods are digging out from a foot of new snow, with even more predicted later this week. Nevertheless, it is March and birds are on the move. In my dotage, I’m not as eager to get out birding when it involves winter driving as I used to be, but my good friend Erik Bruhnke, young and peppy, drove me to Superior, Wisconsin, yesterday in advance of the storm, to see three Eurasian Tree Sparrows that have been hanging around since December. En route, we spotted a small group of Trumpeter Swans in the St. Louis River. Many days this winter, I was seein ..read more

Every year I celebrate March 2 as “Chickadee Day," the anniversary of my seeing my first chickadee in 1975. This year, several people expressed surprise that I still remember the exact date I saw that first chickadee, but that’s the day I started my life list, and I'd honestly never noticed a single chickadee in the 23 years before then.   Most birders, including those who are most diligent about keeping lists of the birds they’ve seen, saw chickadees and other common birds long before they started keeping a bird list. Before the eBird app, a lot of people checked off the birds ..read more

There may be a couple of feet of snow on the ground and more in the forecast, but ornithological spring has sprung. As of March 1, the birds we’ve been seeing are considered spring rather than winter birds, even though the species mix in my own yard is exactly what it’s been through January and February.    The species may be the same, but their behaviors aren’t. When I hear crows yelling in winter, or see several at the same time, it usually means there’s an owl in the neighborhood. But now crows are getting into courtship and nesting mode, family groups and neighbors of mated pair ..read more

One of my favorite poems is Robert Frost’s The Tuft of Flowers, especially the lines:  ‘Men work together,’ I told him from the heart. ‘Whether they work together or apart.’  We all love stories about families who enjoy doing the same things together, but really, how often are all the members of any family of five, or even just four or three, equally contented doing the exact same thing? That’s why many of my birding friends put aside birding during the years their children were little. I was too addicted. Most of the time that was fine—even though I always had my binoculars aroun ..read more

Ruffed Grouse often bury themselves in deep snow for the night. Yeah, it's cold, but on frigid nights the temperature under thick snow is higher than the air temperature and there is zero wind down there.  My son-in-law, still adjusting to life in northern Minnesota, plays on an outdoor curling team. His game has been cancelled three weeks in a row, two weeks ago because it was double-digits below zero, the following week because it was so warm the ice was melting, and this week because it was raining. At this very moment, as I write this, temperatures are back below zero but are ..read more

The relationships between birds and plants are wonderfully complicated. Just about every bird I’ve ever seen in my yard has spent at least a little time in my conifer trees.  But a few birds are so specialized that they require conifers —sometimes even a single species of conifer—during an essential part of their annual cycle.    For example, Kirtland’s Warblers are extremely tied to jack pines. On their wintering grounds in the Bahamas, during migration, and even on their breeding territories they find plenty of insect food from a variety of plants, but they nest exclusively o ..read more

When I started putting together my book, 100 Plants to Feed the Birds, the title was written in stone—Storey Publishing intended it to be third in a series that already included 100 Plants to Feed the Bees and 100 Plants to Feed the Monarchs, but it never occurred to me to limit myself to plants that produce seeds, nuts, fruits, nectar, or other vegetal matter that birds eat directly. Most of the birds who do feed on those items also eat a lot of insects that plants support, and birds also use plants for nesting, roosting, and hiding out in; for nest-building fibers; and more. I knew I’d star ..read more

This photo is from 2007, when Archimedes and I were in Larry Meiller's studio. This time I'll be remote.  I don't usually promote my own stuff, but if you're interested, tomorrow (February 8) I'll be Larry's guest on the Larry Meiller Show on Wisconsin Public Radio, talking about my new book, 100 Plants to Feed the Birds.  On February 5, I was a guest on Ray Brown's Talkin' Birds (Program #920), talking with Ray about my book. That program is archived here.  Thursday, February 9 at 7 pm CST, I'll be giving a talk for the Duluth Audubon Society about my 2016 trip to Cu ..read more

At this very moment, in the predawn twilight at 7:10 am on January 30, 2023, exactly 25 minutes before sunrise, the temperature is 13 below zero and the westerly wind is blowing steadily at 11 miles per hour. I’m looking out my home office window, watching a female cardinal down in my big platform feeder, a Dark-eyed Junco feeding on the ground beneath it, and a fluffed-out chickadee pecking at a sunflower seed from a boxelder branch. At 7:13, a male cardinal chases the female off the platform feeder. At 7:15, seven juncos are on the ground and in the lilac bush. One flies into the white spru ..read more