Your guide to the World of Birds and Birding
Since the beginning of modern ornithology, there has been a strong connection between birds and art. Art was used to document and illustrate new species and art still plays a major role in modern day birding and its culture. I’m sure many of you own a field guide or two, chances are, those field guides…
Owls have always held a special spot of interest for people, both birders and nonbirders alike. As they should, this group of birds can be elusive, secretive, adding to their allure. Many are nocturnal, making them a special unexpected surprise for those who don’t purposely seek them out. Owls have evolved so many unique adaptations…
It’s officially 2025! With that, the yearly bird list resets and each bird is a new one for the year. This reset leads many birders to rush out and make the first a big day of birding. I am one of those birders, eager for the new year of new lists and new birds. While…
This post is also available to listen to on the World of Birds Podcast! This is a story of how one of North America’s most abundant birds became extinct. I wanted to start with an excerpt from Aldo Leopold’s writing, On a Monument to a Pigeon, which goes: “The Passenger Pigeon was no mere bird,…
Post available to listen to on your favorite podcast platform on the World of Birds Podcast. Not many birds are as famous as Wisdom, a female Laysan Albatross who routinely nests at Midway Atoll. She has a well earned fame from not only being the oldest banded bird in the world, but also the oldest…
There are few birds more at ease in the air than swifts, streamlined, with unique adaptations for a life on the wing. The swifts belong to the family Apodidae, which consists of 19 genera and 112 species. Here in North America, four species of swifts can be found. In the east, you will see the…
World of Birds Podcast is availible on your favorite listening platform. The male Blackpoll Warbler is a striking bird, clad in a combo of black, gray and white, ending in some bright yellowish-orange feet. The male’s body is marked with a black cap, gray back with black stripes, and with flight feathers tinged with a…
While hoping to hear a rare Chuck-wills-widow that showed up in New York last week, a group of birders and I heard a bird singing in the night. We had no idea what bird species that song came from. But a very knowledgeable birder among us knew what it was, the nocturnal song of the…
Generally, a species is considered the largest group of organisms, where if they reproduce, they produce fertile offspring. An often used example is the breeding of a horse and a donkey, produce a mule, which is non-fertile, proving the two parents are different species. That rule doesn’t apply to all though, which we can see…
Today’s bird family is Passerellidae , which contains the New World Sparrows. The family Passerellidae contains 132 species in 30 generas. Of those, 43 species can be found in North America. Each genera can either contain a single species, like Amphispiza, which just contains the Black-throated Sparrow all the way up to Atlapetes, which contains…