Late one December I found myself among a loose aggregation of birders standing by a roadside in Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Delaware. To our north stretched a field, and somewhere in it there was supposed to be a northern lapwing, a handsome Eurasian shorebird that always makes news when it appears on our […]
How to Identify Bald Eagles, Young and Old Read More »
It was a beautiful sunny afternoon on July 9, 2017, and there, perched high in a tree, resplendent in its first coat of feathers, was a male red-tailed hawk. Only four or five feet away was the huge stick nest it had recently fledged from, inhabited by its three nestmates. But this was no ordinary
Hawks in an Eagle Nest Read More »
It’s that time of year when this Simon & Garfunkel lyric pops into my head, and my eyes start combing the backyard in search of newly arrived sparrow visitors—here in the Midwest, that means dark-eyed juncos, white-throated sparrows, and song sparrows for the most part, with the occasional white-crowned sparrow, eastern towhee, and even a
Sparrows on the Move—Maybe to Your Backyard! Read More »
What mighty force could possibly bring a myriad of agencies (US Fish and WIldlife Service, Ohio State Parks, Ohio Department of Natural Resources, and the US Department of Agriculture’s APHIS division, specifically) to collaborate? A single, solitary piping plover nest. True story: This past summer, a pair of breeding piping plovers successfully hatched four chicks
The Small Miracle of Nesting Piping Plovers Read More »
