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I learned how valuable an experienced guide can be in 1982, when Russ and I brought our 6-month-old baby, Joey, to Las Vegas, where Russ had a professional meeting. PHOTO (COLOR): Contributing Editor Laura Erickson and her husband Russ take in the scenery of Denali National Park and Preserve during a stop on a bus tour of the park with a birding tour group in June 2022. FEATURES IN June 2022, my husband, Russ, and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary with a big adventure, a two-part birding trip organized and guided by Victor Emanuel Nature Tours (VENT): "Grand Alaska: Nome Pre-Trip" and "Grand Alaska Part II: Anchorage, Denali, and the Kenai Peninsula", both led by super birders Barry Zimmer and Erik Bruhnke. Barry and Erik excelled at finding and helping everyone see the birds. [Extracted from the article]

I took a walk in mid-June a couple years ago and came upon a Cedar Waxwing feeding upon berries in a pretty little serviceberry tree. The fruit must have been [...]

Hummingbirds are the tiniest birds in the world, and among the most popular. I saw my first Ruby-throated Hummingbird of the year at Merritt Island in Florida in January, but [...]

By the first of March, those of us in the North hungrily search for the vanguards of spring. I know it's easy to feel discouraged when robins are nowhere to [...]

When Editor Chuck Hagner asked me to write this column, I was thrilled. Contributing regularly to my favorite bird magazine is a huge honor. I'll focus primarily on backyard issues, [...]

Berry bushes and fruit trees also harbor waxwings. Researchers discovered decades ago that waxwings have a sense of smell and may detect the odors of aromatic hydrocarbons in the air about fermented berries. Unfortunately, during freezing conditions, fermented berries don't exude many smells; that's when waxwings start having difficulties. [Extracted from the article]

When I started birding in Michigan in 1975, I spent hours poring over the pages of my Golden field guide, mesmerized by the gallery of species I'd never before imagined [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I've been a birder since 1975, but it wasn't until 2001 that I made my first sound recordings of birdcalls and songs. I don't know why I waited […]

Single-lens-reflex cameras with long lenses are best for taking professional-quality bird photos, and some tiny point-and-shoot models are great for taking pictures through a spotting scope (digiscoping). But not all […]

From the moment on March 2, 1975, when I saw the very first bird on my life list through my very first binocular, I've been in love with optics. That […]

Peent! That raspy call fills the evening--loud enough to be heard over New Orleans street music or Chicago Loop traffic yet soft enough to be tuned out, unlike the insistent […]

Acorn and Red-bellied Woodpeckers * Jays * Eastern and Western Bluebirds * Robin * Catbird * Northern Mockingbird * Brown Thrasher * Starlings * Cedar Waxwing * Yellow-breasted Chat * […]

One of the jolliest, spunkiest, handsomest, and yet most controversial of all regular feeder birds is the Blue Jay. When a jay flies into a feeding station, other birds scatter. […]

For most backyard birds, feeders are like vegetarian restaurants, designed for those who eat seeds, nectar, or fruit. Many feeding stations also offer suet, which chickadees, nuthatches, and woodpeckers enjoy, […]

FEATHER TERMINOLOGY Carotenoids: Fat-soluble pigments obtained from a bird's diet that confer color to plumage in most bird species. Every feather pigment absorbs all the wavelengths from blue through the ultraviolet end of the spectrum, and so colors in this range must be produced via the microstructure of feather barbs. Oddly, when the carotenoids were removed from red breast and orange belly feathers, both reflected blue-green as a structural color, though when the researchers removed the carotenoid pigments from red feathers on the Northern Cardinal, they found no structural color at all. [Extracted from the article]

FROM THE EXPERTS OUR BACKYARD CHICKADEES are common, everyday birds that fill me with wonder. Medical researchers have learned that every autumn, a great many chickadee brain neurons die, to be replaced with new ones right when they are caching food at the highest rate. Small wonder warblers, vireos, kinglets, and other birds migrating through unfamiliar areas gravitate to chickadees. [Extracted from the article]

The first robin of spring! How many of us look forward to that annual milestone, hungry for evidence that spring is really here? And when we hear our first robin […]

Natural selection would obviously favor physiological and morphological modifications protecting woodpeckers from concussions and long-term brain damage. FROM THE EXPERTS ATTRACTING BIRDS ONE OF THE great pleasures of winter is listening for drumming woodpeckers. One of the most-read articles on the BirdWatching website, written by the late Eldon Greij in 2013, is titled "Why woodpeckers can hammer without getting headaches", an overview of the ways scientists have speculated that woodpecker anatomy protects the brain. [Extracted from the article]

FROM THE EXPERTS JUST ABOUT ALL of us have photographed birds through a window at one time or another to verify an identification, document a rare bird, or create a keepsake of a cool sighting. Here are a few tips for taking usable photos through window glass: • If you have an ideal window for viewing birds, keep the window screen off except when you want to open the window for fresh air. There's no trick to taking photos through an open window, but if the window is closed when a good bird appears, opening it risks scaring the bird away, and some windows don't open. [Extracted from the article]

At least 20 Baltimore Orioles, 30 or more Cape May and Tennessee Warblers (both eat more fruit and nectar than other warblers), and even an out-of-range Summer Tanager crowded into my jelly feeders. So, I'll continue to offer jelly every May and will keep bringing in my jelly feeders when migration is over. FROM THE EXPERTS ATTRACTING BIRDS OF ALL THE bird-feeding items I write about, none is as controversial as grape jelly. [Extracted from the article]

Bathing birds shed ectoparasites, eye and nostril secretions, and droppings in the water even as they and other birds take a drink. We were asked to report sick and dead birds, but without testing, there was no way of knowing whether a bird had avian flu or one of the more regular diseases of early spring. Many birders who use eBird for birding excursions don't bother keeping daily checklists of their backyard birds except to add new species. [Extracted from the article]