Nearly every field guide to trees that I’ve seen lists carvings on the trunks of American Beech trees (Fagus grandifolia) as a field mark. In my urban area, virtually every beech tree is inscribed with carved initials and declarations of…
Science
An interesting paper in the most recent issue of the Condor, the journal of the Cooper Ornithological Society: Miller, M. W. 2006. Apparent effects of light pollution on singing behavior of American Robins. Condor 108:130-139. The author recorded the initiation…
I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about millipedes, even though there are an estimated 80,000 species on earth (only 10,000 named), with about 1,400 in the U.S. As a gardener and someone who is fond of peeking under…
I’ve been looking forward to reading Avian Conservation and Ecology, a new open-access electronic scientific journal sponsored by the Society of Canadian Ornithologists and Bird Studies Canada.
Over the weekend, an Ivory Gull (Pagophila eburnea) was found near Point Pelee, Ontario. The sighting of one of these birds in the United States always creates a sensation, because it is a bird of the high Arctic, and fewer…
crisp brown leaf, wind-blown flake of bark, falling from tree nope, wrong: brown creeper The diminutive Brown Creeper (Certhia americana) is notorious for being unobtrusive. Even the creeper’s sweet, clear, musical song can be frustratingly difficult to hear due to…
This past week I participated in one of several Christmas Bird Counts that I do annually. I’ve done counts here in Michigan on sunny, cloudy, snowy, rainy, raw, and balmy days, but never on a day that included all of…
The Auk is the journal of the American Ornithologists’ Union, and it publishes some pretty dense material. The last few years, it has featured an increasing number of papers on phylogeny, taxonomy, and genetics. This stuff tends to sail right over my head like a frigatebird on a stiff wind. A genetics paper by Edelaar […]
I am, at long last, concluding the cowbird/ Kirtland’s Warbler series: what is the future of Kirtland’s Warblers?
An introduction to Michigan’s signature bird.