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Birds: Stories and Lore
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Feathered Fire Feathered in stone-cold black, grey, and white, the white-breasted nuthatch is a ball of metabolic fire. Its furious metabolism allows it to survive outdoors through the freezing night of a northern winter. |
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Soft-hearted Tree Great crested flycatchers nest in the hollows that woodpeckers have excavated in dead or dying tree. Read about it in "The Secret Life of the Soft-hearted Tree." |
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The Eye of the Sharpie Sharp-shinned hawks don't eat carrots. The author comes to terms with a sharpie hunting small birds at her feeder. |
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House Wrens Do Yard Work This cover story for Bird Watcher's Digest, July, 2005, profiles the cocky, prolific house wren. It also tells how a family of wrens make good brocolli. |
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The Singing Life "Looking Deeper into Bird Songs" is the story of how one birdwatcher discovered a whole new level of listening to music of birds. |
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Tough Titmouse One morning last year, a certain titmouse began a quarrel with my living room window. It went on for nearly a year. His saga reveals something about the social structure of the tufted titmouse. |
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Bluebirds Love Mealworms They're crazy about them. The author offered mealworms on top of the birdhouse, and a few days later the bluebirds were nesting there. Here's a story of communication between bird and woman. |
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The Calculus of Spring At a certain moment in March, spring will arrive. Few events in life are so satisfyingly mathematical. But by my reckoning as an Iowan, spring begins with the first song of an American robin. |
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Storm of Woodpeckers Red-bellied Woodpeckers enjoy the abundance of the oak grove and face its hazards as they raise their young. Here is the story of one nest in one grove in one spring. |
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The Precocious Killdeer Some birds hatch with their running shoes on. Seeing baby killdeer is one of the keenest pleasures of summer. Here's how to find them by watching the behavior of the adults. |
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What Good Is a Life List? Many birders note down the date and place each time they spot a species for the first time. The list becomes a chronicle of one's life. Here the European robin embodies a girlhood hitchhiking trip in England. |
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Stars of Navigation Indigo buntings, like many other birds, migrate at night, navigating by the stars. How do they learn to do that? We may never know the whole mystery, but here is part of the answer. |
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Jewel Birds Here's a little something about ruby-throated hummingbirds, and where they've been when they return to your garden in spring. There are also some suggestions on attracting them. |
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Spotted Owls The spotted owl, which has stirred so much controversy over logging on public lands in the Pacific Northwest, is rare and hard to find. Here's a personal encounter with the subspecies that lives in Arizona. |
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Episode from a Life List It wasn't cold enough at home in Iowa, so a group of birders headed for Minnesota in the midst of winter, in search of snowy owls, spruce grouse, and memories to warm them till spring. |
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Raptor Rapture Fall is raptor time in much of the United States, and the best time to see migrating hawks. Stand with the author by the edge of a river and watch a peregrine falcon hunt for a meal. |
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Eastern Meadowlark Some birds live in the trees, some by the shore. But the meadowlark loves wide open spaces. The male is entirely golden when he faces the female to impress her at mating time. |
