BirdNote Daily

In the center of Oakland, California, is Lake Merritt. People row in it, picnic and jog around it, and it's a place of respite within the city. And it hosts waterbirds such as ducks, geese, egrets, pelicans, cormorants, and coots. A beautifully illustrated field guide by Alex Harris, Birds of Lake Merritt, describes the birds found around the waters of Lake Merritt, its history since the Ohlone...

Kelsey Leonard is a leading scholar in Indigenous water governance, climate justice, and Earth law. In the latest season of Bring Birds Back, Kelsey explores the storied relationship between Indigenous people, wetlands, and birds. Kelsey says waterfowl hunters have helped to document that natural history. In many Indigenous hunting traditions, duck decoys are crafted to look so life-like that...

Júlia d’Oliveira is a paleoartist who brings extinct species to life in artwork. For each species she illustrates, she learns everything she can about the species to come up with a realistic portrait. Júlia hopes her paleoart offers something different from the grotesque versions of dinosaurs in movies she remembers from growing up.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org.Want more BirdNote?...

Most birds molt and regrow their flight or wing feathers — one at a time along each wing — to stay in prime condition for flying. But for a Wandering Albatross, with a whopping 10-to-12-foot wingspan, that’s a big job! It takes the large albatrosses a full year to molt, and they have to put off breeding until the next year. It’s one or the other. But they make the birds incredibly efficient...

The ability to fly seems to define birds. But there are more than 50 species of flightless birds throughout the world — from the Ostrich and Kiwi to flightless rails, ducks, and this Humboldt Penguin. Why did they evolve the inability to fly? Many dwelt on islands. Others evolved until they were huge, like the extinct 12-foot-tall Moas of New Zealand. And the penguins? Unlike most flightless...

Kelsen Caldwell drives a bus in and around Seattle for King County Metro. As a bus driver, sometimes there’s downtime if your bus is moving too fast. What do you do with all that extra time? If you’re Kelsen, you fall in love with birds.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org.Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks....

Chickadees are tiny songbirds named for their characteristic song and there are seven species found in North America. You'll find the Black-capped Chickadee across the northern U.S. into Canada. The Carolina Chickadee holds sway in the Southeast. Hear the husky voice of a Mountain Chickadee in the Rockies. Travel to Canada for the Boreal Chickadee. This Chestnut-backed Chickadee calls the Pacific...

Sapsuckers drill small holes in the bark of favored trees, then return again and again to eat the sap that flows out. And hummingbirds, kinglets, and warblers come to the sap wells to eat the insects trapped in the sap. Although a sapsucker (like this Red-breasted Sapsucker) may suck a tree's blood, so to speak, the drilling usually doesn't damage an otherwise healthy tree.More info and...

Most of the bird sounds you hear on BirdNote come from the Macaulay Library, a vast collection of over one million bird calls and songs curated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The library relies on both professional field recordists and dedicated volunteers to capture the sounds of birds all over the world.Support for BirdNote is provided by Marjorie and Ed Ringness from Seattle, Washington —...

Before the high-tech gadgets used to track bird migration today, there was moon-watching: a technique dreamed up in the 1940s by ornithologist George Lowery. Using telescopes pointed at the moon to see the silhouettes of migratory birds, Lowery helped show that birds regularly migrate across the Gulf of Mexico and organized the first continent-wide survey of migration in North America. Learn more...