BirdNote Daily

The King Eider is one of the most striking sea ducks in the Northern hemisphere. This male King Eider is trying to woo a mate with soft coos and brilliant colors — his beak and feathers are decked out in black, white, green, grey, tangerine, yellow, and ivory. Unlike her showy suitor, the female King Eider is mottled brown — the perfect camouflage for blending into the Arctic tundra. After incubating her nest for nearly 3 weeks by herself, the female eider leads her fluffy chicks to the sea where the ducks spend the winter diving amidst the pack ice in search of t...

The Cinereous Mourner is a small, ashy-gray bird that lives in the forest understory of the Amazon Basin. And it’s taking mimicry to the next level: when viewed from above, lying alone in its cup-shaped nest, its chick is a near match to a highly toxic caterpillar — one that snakes and monkeys won’t eat. The chick even waves its head like a caterpillar, increasing the illusion.

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Dovekie are robin-sized seabirds related to auks and puffins. Their compact, black-and-white bodies are perfect for life on the water. In winter, birders and boaters can sometimes spot flocks of Dovekie as far south as coastal New England. In summer, Dovekie high-tail it to the Arctic where they form massive breeding colonies on rocky islands and cliffsides. Dovekie are one of the most abundant birds in the North Atlantic, but their populations have declined drastically since the 1970s. Like many ocean species, Dovekie face lethal threats from oil spills and chemical pollution. By advocating for clean water and green...

What’s the most colorful bird in the U.S.? The Scarlet Tanager? Maybe the Painted Bunting? Well, consider one more lustrous candidate: the Purple Gallinule. The Purple Gallinule’s feathers are so iridescent that they might not seem real. Despite its bold style, a Purple Gallinule can be hard to spot. The colors create excellent camouflage among the greens, blues and floral highlights of a marsh.

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The cheerful-voiced Chestnut-collared Longspur shares their northern prairie breeding range with grazing cattle. Although heavy grazing can have adverse effects, breeding densities of longspurs jump by two, three, or even 10 times when ranchers graze their cattle responsibly on native prairies. Two centuries ago, the birds were probably more abundant on prairies used by bison than on untouched stands of tall grass.

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For years, scientists debated whether the first flying dinosaurs, the ancestors of modern birds, began by running and making little hops off the ground, or leapt off a tree branch to glide. It’s called the “ground up vs. trees down” debate, for short. But a newer perspective on this mystery suggests that flying dinosaurs tried taking flight from more than one place. Recent findings suggest that the ability to fly could have evolved not just once but three separate times among dinosaurs.

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Birds make a lot of sounds — so many that author and illustrator Becca Rowland had a hard time keeping them straight. That was until Becca began picking up on familiar noises in common bird calls — like when they heard a dog’s squeaky toy in the trees. Now she’s compiled her fun and functional findings in a new guide called, Bird Talk: Hilariously Accurate Ways to Identify Birds by the Sounds they Make.

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Birds have lost many habitats they’ve called home for millions of years, but people can help create bird habitats wherever they live. It all begins with native plants. If you have a yard, or even just a few outdoor plant pots, you can offer native plants to birds, butterflies, and other wildlife. Below, find online tools that show you native plant species ideal for your location.

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J. Drew Lanham is a poet and ornithologist whose work intertwines his lived experience as a Black man in the American south and his love of wilderness. Both have taught him that joy is a source of strength. On Bring Birds Back, Drew describes how he finds radical joy in spending time with birds, like the American Robins.

Hear more from Drew about radical joy in season 7 of Bring Birds Back!

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Millicent Ficken spent her career studying bird behavior and communication. The first woman to earn a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Cornell in 1960, Ficken authored over 100 scientific papers. She discovered that male hummingbirds have a whole repertoire of songs rather than just one, outlined the linguistic differences between penguin species, and showed that chickadees take turns singing in the morning. She was especially fascinated by how birds play, showing that bird play almost always has a pressing purpose — they're practicing a skill they need to survive.

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Circling silently above the earth on broad, black wings, vultures need little introduction. We know them as nature's clean-up crew, dining on dead and decaying animals. A unique range of adaptations allows vultures such as this Black Vulture to feast on food that’s off limits for many other organisms. Vultures also appear to have a remarkable immune system. For them, and for many other organisms, one key to understanding their place in nature is understanding their relationship with other elements in their environment.

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In birding lingo, a lifer — or life bird — is any species you see or hear for the first time. Birders get very excited about lifers. Some even mark the occasion with a special dessert called lifer pie. The tradition started at a birding festival in northwest Ohio — called the Biggest Week in American Birding — where attendees celebrate new life birds at the local tavern over a slice of homemade pie. Any flavor will do! Lifer pie is more about the feeling than the filling – making it easy for anyone to join in.

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In one of the most iconic founding legends of the Americas, a Golden Eagle devouring a serpent atop a cactus marked the spot where the Mexicas would build Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire. Over the centuries, that ancient metropolis transformed into what we now call Mexico City. Though the mythical eagle is now commemorated on the national flag of Mexico, real Golden Eagles need our help through conservation research and habitat protections.

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Solar panels are a popular source of renewable energy, but large groupings of them — called arrays — can take up a lot of space. Chelse Prather, an ecologist at the University of Dayton, wanted to know how wildlife are using the habitats underneath two arrays in Ohio. The first site was a fixed array with panels that are locked in place. The second was a tracking array where panels tilt to follow the sun. Chelse and her students found American Robin nests at both sites, but the tracking array nest looked… weird. In their study published in 2025, the team confirmed that t...

In this episode of BirdNoir, the Private Eye gets a call from his friend Frank, his eyes and ears in the neighborhood. He’s hearing a Red-shouldered Hawk call, but there’s no hawk in sight. Going through the lineup of usual suspects found in backyards, they examine the surprising talent for mimicry found among common birds and finally put the finger on the trickster.

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To out-sip their competition, Sword-billed Hummingbirds have a distinct adaptation: these birds’ beaks are longer than their bodies. Found in temperate forests from Venezuela to Bolivia, these hummingbirds rely entirely on tube-like flowers that other species could never reach. While most birds can use their tongues to clean their feathers, the Sword-billed Hummingbird’s long beak gets in the way – so they use their legs to scratch themselves instead.

This episode is brought to you by Wild Delight Bird Food, which aims to support wild bird populations with clean, nutritious ingredients in every blend. Available at Chewy.com.  ...

Male birds are often the larger, flashier sex that courts choosy females, who in turn raise their chicks. But not always. Female phalaropes -- like this Wilson's Phalarope — challenge each other over territories in which to house a cluster of males half their size. And the males do all the childcare. Other stay-at-home dads include most of the ratites, like ostriches and emus, as well as several species of jacanas.

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Connecticut Warblers nest in the northern boreal forests, migrate through the Midwest, and winter in the rainforests of South America. Even with all that traveling, you rarely see one of these birds. Though their loud, ringing song might be easy to identify, it often seems to emanate from low in a tree when the warbler is perched high in the crown, frustrating birders from Canada to Brazil.

This episode is brought to you by Wild Delight Bird Food, which aims to support wild bird populations with clean, nutritious ingredients in every blend. Available at Chewy.com.  

Most baby birds are adorable little floofs — but not all of them. The tongue and palate of estrildid finch chicks are strangely spotted and ringed. They display these markings while they beg for food. Most species’ chicks have mouth markings in colors ranging from black or white to bright yellow, orange, red or blue. The function of these markings has long puzzled scientists.

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Grammy-winning musician Rickie Lee Jones has performed on stages around the world. At home in New Orleans, she found a new audience: backyard birds! Rickie welcomes wildlife to her yard with feeders and bird baths. She loves watching her feathered friends and learning their calls. You can help songbirds at home by keeping feeders clean, growing native plants, and turning off outdoor lights at night. You can even show your appreciation in song!

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When you go birding, sometimes you’re in the right place at the right time and there are more species than you can count. Other times, not so lucky. Striking out when looking for birds is frustrating. But a bad day of birding can teach you a lot. Try doing some research into the conditions that day and talking to people that know about birds in your area – they’ll probably commiserate with their own stories about striking out.

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The catchy name “Jackdaw” belongs to a European bird that looks like a compact crow drawn in shades of light and dark gray. They are comfortable around people, which helps explain their place in folklore. Some cultures saw the Jackdaw as a predictor of rain, others as a savior of crops. Or possibly an omen of death. They flourish in urban landscapes, making them familiar to many people.

This episode is brought to you by Wild Delight Bird Food, which aims to support wild bird populations with clean, nutritious ingredients in every blend. Available at Chewy.com. 

The amazing vocal organ found in most birds, the syrinx, has two sides, with different sets of muscles and nerves controlling each side.  That lets some songbirds sing two separate melodies at the same time. The Veery, a species of Thrush, can even sing a rising melody and a falling melody simultaneously with the two halves of the syrinx!

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Some of Hollywood’s most iconic beasts owe their signature sounds to the squawks, tweets, and even hisses of birds.

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The American Robin and the Baltimore Oriole both have cheery, upbeat songs. At first, you might think there’s no way to tell these two singers apart. But there are a couple of differences. American Robins usually have a longer song, while Baltimore Orioles usually stop after a phrase or two. Plus, Baltimore Orioles sound sweeter and more melodic than American Robins, who can come across a little screechy at times.

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Scientists have long thought that new species took a very long time to emerge. This thinking has now changed dramatically. On an island in the Galápagos, researchers Rosemary and Peter Grant discovered that a hybrid union of two distinct species of finch produced descendants different from any of the island’s known species — and the speciation happened in just two generations.

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Whistling as they fly, Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks are gorgeous waterfowl with bright pink bills and legs, chestnut necks and backs, and black underparts. Though most whistling-ducks live in the tropics, Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks are found in the U.S. along the western Gulf Coast and Florida. But they’re expanding their range and have been spotted nesting as far north as Wisconsin.

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The Bearded Reedling is a wetland songbird that’s enjoying a boom in both population and popularity. Barely larger than a chickadee, the male reedlings are often photographed with their feathers puffed out to near spherical proportions, earning them the nickname of “the roundest bird in the world”. Reedlings breed across much of Europe and central Asia. But in the United Kingdom — where they’re called Bearded Tits — the little birds were nearly wiped out in the 1940s. Thanks to decades of intensive reedbed restoration — and the bird’s capacity to rear several broods in a season — there are now more than 600...

Any hobby or special interest has its own jargon. You’ll pick up on the silly slang that birders use as you go – like calling the Yellow-rumped Warbler, “butterbutt.” Still, learning a few basics of bird vocab is useful when you’re starting out. It’ll help you ask better questions when you’re confused. Check out the opening pages of a bird field guide for general info about what to call the different parts of a bird, basics on bird behavior, and birding tips.

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Gulls are notorious for snatching french fries from waste bins and flocking to landfills. But one Western Gull’s devotion to trash reached a new level with an 80-mile road trip aboard a waste transfer truck in California. The gull may have gotten trapped in the truck unintentionally, but it delivered her to 216-acres composting facility. And shortly after returning to her colony, she repeated her trek! It’s the first time scientists have documented such an unusual commute.

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Birds have always been a source of inspiration for writers. Edgar Allen Poe, Maya Angelou, and William Shakespeare, to name a few, have all written about birds. But what is it about them that so captures our literary imagination? Words in Flight is an hour-long celebration of contemporary poetry about birds, and what they teach us about ourselves and our world.

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Great Horned Owls excel at nocturnal hunting, thanks to their acute senses and stealth — but their feet let them secure squirming prey. The outermost of their four toes can rotate forward or backward, an advantage that most other birds of prey lack, letting them capture animals as large as raccoons. A four-pound owl can take flight with six pounds of prey.

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It's late winter at Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island, Florida. Many birds have finished nesting, and young birds are everywhere. This morning, wind and tide have conspired to strand schools of fish in backwater ditches. And the birds are taking advantage of it. It's a feeding frenzy! White Ibises, Great Egrets, Snowy Egrets, and American White Pelicans join in. Thanks to the National Wildlife Refuge System, these birds — and many others — can thrive in protected habitats.

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There are 15 species of cranes across the globe, found everywhere but Antarctica and South America. During the winter, cranes forage and rest together by the thousands. Listen in to the voices of cranes from all over the world. Nothing evokes the spirit of the wild like the voices of these majestic birds.

This episode is brought to you by the Bobolink Foundation.

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In Mexico City, 73-year-old Catia Lattouf started a hummingbird hospital — in her apartment! She hosts dozens of hummingbirds as they recover from injuries. Catia, who once ran a French high-fashion boutique, began caring for hummingbirds in 2012, after she survived cancer that was considered terminal. She received her first injured hummingbird, and named him Gucci.

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Boldly patterned in black, white, and silver, Barnacle Geese are stunning birds. In Europe, huge flocks gather in pastures and mudflats where the geese feast on grasses and moss — but not barnacles. So where did they get that name?

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Found in much of Central America, White-throated Magpie-Jay flocks are family groups led by a dominant female. They include a mate and several female offspring that bring food to the primary female and her young. It’s an example of cooperative breeding, when birds other than the parents help out to raise young.

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Over 130,000 years ago, White-throated Rails migrated across hundreds of miles from Madagascar to the tiny island of Aldabra. Fossil records show that these wayward birds evolved to be entirely flightless, and went extinct when the island was lost to sea level rise. But some 20,000 years later, Aldabra reemerged from the Indian Ocean and a new wave of rails settled in. Today, the Aldabra subspecies of White-throated Rails are flightless once again! It’s a rare example of a phenomenon called iterative evolution.

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Do you ever see flocks of birds in your yard that show up in droves one year, but are completely absent the next? Some nomadic species such as Pine Siskins move based on the availability of food and habitat. It’s called irruptive migration, and it sometimes leads to backyards full of siskins. While these flocks are a delight for bird watchers, the dense groups can easily transmit diseases such as salmonellosis.

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Most bird species in North America mate for a single breeding season. Some may team up again the following year, just because both stay in - or return to - the same territory. Fewer than one-fifth of Song Sparrow pairs are reunited. Hawks, eagles, and ravens have wide territories, thus few contacts with the opposite sex. Maintaining a relationship through the winter may assure breeding in the next season.

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