Science

My constant companion in the garden is a male House Wren (Troglodytes aedon). Naturalist John Burroughs noted that “Probably we have no other familiar bird keyed up to the same degree of intensity as the house wren.” Indeed, as Burroughs…

The next forum for presentation of evidence on the IBWO will be at the meeting of the American Ornithologists’ Union in late August in Santa Barbara. Presenting papers at conferences of this type are a typical way for researchers to…

As noted in my original post, the New York Times Science section today confirmed the existence of the paper to be published questioning the sightings of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

There have been recent rumors, on the Internet at the Arkansas and Tennessee birding listservs and at least one blog, regarding a paper by several researchers, including a well-known Ivory-billed Woodpecker (IBWO) expert, that will question the validity of the…

(Cross-posted at Transistions, the Evolution of Life) I spend a lot of time in forests. As an ornithologist, I spend a lot of time looking up in forests. With luck, I see the bird I am searching for. If not,…

This must be my Saturniidae summer.

In part 1 of “invisible birds” I described one of the often-heard-but-rarely-seen species I’ve encountered during my breeding bird atlas work, the Yellow-billed Cuckoo. In keeping with the theme of yellow body parts, let me introduce the Yellow-breasted Chat (Icteria…

There’s a good piece in the current (Jul-Aug) issue of Audubon Magazine on the chronic White-tailed Deer overpopulation problem. Ted Williams points out what is obvious to most wildlife ecologists: that deer populations are allowed to grow until they destroy…

You rely a lot on your ears when doing bird surveys, especially in the summertime. Thick foliage obstructs views, females are tending nests or young, and unless they are singing from an exposed perch, males may be hard to locate…