Blogs

The two people who pleaded guilty in the 2009 shooting of Whooping Crane 17-02 (shown here with her mate, 11-02) each received one year of probation, were charged approximately $550 in legal fees and court costs, and were fined $1 for the crime. Wade...

Pictured here is the oldest known wild bird in the Northern Hemisphere — a Laysan Albatross known as Wisdom. She is at least 60 years old, and as the photo shows, she is a new mother. The bird was spotted a few weeks ago with a chick by John Klavitter...

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service confirmed today that Wisdom, the Laysan Albatross that's at least 60 years old , survived the devastating tsunami in the Pacific Ocean. As shown above, the world's oldest documented wild bird was seen feeding...

The only wild flock of Whooping Cranes experienced its worst winter on record in terms of bird deaths this year, according to Tom Stehn, Whooping Crane coordinator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Stehn is based at the Aransas National Wildlife...

The number of bird species in the world has just grown by one with today's announcement of a newly discovered songbird in Laos. The twist on this already intriguing news is that the bird is bald — a trait rarely seen in songbirds. Scientists named...

You gotta love Google Maps. Yesterday, I created an interactive map of all of our Hotspots Near You . It plots the locations of the 76 top-notch, easy-to-get-to birding destinations we've profiled, and it allows you to zoom in and out, scroll around...

Last week, I noted that the Golden-winged Warbler is being considered for protection under the Endangered Species Act . Today, I'm happy to share extraordinary photos from our friend Lloyd Spitalnik that illustrate one of the threats to Golden-wings...

This Whooping Crane, known as L10-10, was shot and killed in Louisiana. Photo courtesy Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Two Whooping Cranes in the new Louisiana flock were shot and killed last week, and authorities say the suspects are...

As the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, our thoughts turn to turkeys -- the big, wild kind, not the birds you bring home frozen from the grocery store. Visitors to our website have uploaded many great photos of the noble Wild Turkey to our galleries ...

Our forthcoming February issue reports on the deaths of hundreds of warblers and other birds at a wind-power facility in West Virginia, and it includes an article about researchers who are working to protect Golden Eagles in eastern North America from...

Two groups of scientists studying museum specimens and sightings of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker have reached the same disappointing conclusion: The iconic bird is extinct. Each team described their findings in papers in the February 2012 issue of the...

If you've whiled a few minutes (or hours) enjoying the thousands of photos in our galleries, you've surely seen the work of MiaM , one of our most prolific and talented contributors. Since joining the website in November 2009, she has posted more...

This photograph and blog post come from Contributing Editor Laura Erickson. Laura's column "Attracting Birds" -- about attracting, feeding, sheltering, and understanding the birds in your backyard -- appears in every issue of BirdWatching...

Smart-looking waxwings typically show up in a flock, descending onto backyard trees en masse, then departing as quickly as they arrived. In the photos below, you can compare Bohemian and Cedar Waxwings. We chose the pictures from our galleries . Share...

One of the best things about birdwatching is getting to visit beautiful places. The amazing scenes below are examples. Visitors to our website submitted them to our People and Places gallery . We hope you enjoy them! Submit your photos to our galleries...

If chickadees seem friendly and cheerful at regular backyard feeding stations, you should see what happens when you start offering mealworms! The ones in my neighborhood in northern Minnesota tap on my window when the feeder goes dry. Many of them take...

It can happen to you: You see a bird. The shape is familiar. The size looks right. Even the song matches what you expect. But the color? Take a look at this selection of unnaturally white birds from our online photo galleries . Click on the photographer’s...

The Department of the Interior on August 4 granted Royal Dutch Shell conditional approval of its plan to begin drilling exploratory wells in the Arctic Ocean next summer. The proposed drill sites, four in all, are located in the Beaufort Sea about 20...

Ten days ago, we learned that one of this summer's two wild-hatched Whooping Crane chicks in Wisconsin had died. Now, the second chick appears to have died. According to the Whooping Crane tracking and monitoring team, the chick, which was hatched...

December 9, 2009: Whooping Crane shot, reward offered Joe Duff, co-founder and lead pilot of Operation Migration , said today that the hangar used by the pilots and crew in Necedah, Wisconsin, has been vandalized, and many of its contents were destroyed...

At the risk of giving credibility to a possible hoax, here's what we know about the latest report of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker sighting. If Daniel Rainsong has photos of a living Ivory-billed Woodpecker, as this press release claims , he has not...

This is Part 3 of my three-part interview with Contributing Editor David Allen Sibley , author of The Sibley Guide to Birds, about his new book, The Sibley Guide to Trees . In Part 1 , Sibley explains how long it took to produce The Sibley Guide to...

Contributing Editor David Sibley (right), author of the groundbreaking Sibley Guide to Birds , has been busy lately. Last fall, he published his Sibley Guide to Trees , which explains what to look for to identify 668 native and commonly cultivated trees...

A new report released today by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows one of every five Americans watches birds, and in doing so, birdwatchers contributed $36 billion to the U.S. economy in 2006, the most recent year for which economic data are available...

Every new book by Kenn Kaufman -- author of Kingbird Highway and Lives of North American Birds , originator of the Kaufman Field Guide series , and contributor of "ID Tips," our regular column on bird ID -- is worth noting. But a new edition...