In spring, male sage grouse gather on leks to attract females.Most species of bustard lek, and birders familiar with sage grouse and prairie chicken will find their displays familiar: strutting and stamping, and a lot of inflated air sacs.
So I dutifully downloaded the Merlin App, practiced with my binoculars (to the concern of my neighbors), and spent time with the different quizzes and tutorials on eBird, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s online birding mecca, learning to recognize different birds by their songs and calls.
In the original published version, it’s “4 colly birds” not “4 calling birds.” In England at the time, “colly birds” was a name given to blackbirds.There are hints of our past relationships with birds still among us…sometimes hidden in the lyrics of a popular song.
For an American whose template of “city” birds included pigeons and house sparrows, seeing an ibis strut beneath skyscrapers and menace city workers for a french fry is about as Australian as it gets.And it’s why endangered species captivate our attention, while the ubiquitous pigeon is a trash bird.
© Debbie Leick Into the early 2000’s using a telescope to count birds that flew across the moon was the most common method of nocturnal research.
“I wanted to learn a lot more about a bird species and study it and get to know it,” he says.The Ring Ouzel helps paint that picture, a study of a bird species in a specific place.
Lospalluto / Flickr I’m snowshoeing through Colorado’s Rocky Mountains when I see a small, nondescript bird at the far edge of the creek.American dippers are small and chunky — about the side of a robin — with grey-blue plumage, a brownish head, pink legs, a short tail, and a white eyelid.
© Ashok Biswal The Nature Conservancy in India has been engaging with the local communities and working closely with state government authorities since 2017 to undertake and facilitate cost-effective and pragmatic riparian restoration activities in the selected patches of Narmada riverbank.
To help you make sense of the often bewildering range of choices, here are three of our favorite binoculars, well suited to the beginning, intermediate, and advanced birder.Nikon Monarch 5, Size 10x42 ($330)These binoculars are the perfect upgrade from less expensive, compact models.
Apparently, the same cannot be said for the children who were walking to school while I was taking pictures of cedar waxwings.