BirdNote Daily

An evening baseball game isn’t the only thing illuminated by the bright stadium lights. High in the air, countless flying insects are drawn to them. And those insects are a perfect snack for the game’s avian attendees! Common Nighthawks swoop with their wide mouths open to hoover up the flying insects under the lights, performing aerial stunts over the athletes on the ground. This episode is...

At midday, it might seem like the birds that were so active in the morning have gone silent, maybe even vanished. But cormorants rally in the afternoon, offering a second chance to see and hear them. During the breeding season, Double-crested Cormorants have two peaks of fishing activity: the first around 9 a.m., and the second around 3 p.m. Their efficient fishing lets them spend most of the day...

Just a few weeks past the solstice, and the real heat of summer is yet to come. Some shorebirds are already on their way south, but most songbirds will be here for a while longer. What's the best time of day to look for them? Many birds are most active in the early morning, taking advantage of the abundance of insects at that hour. Midday heat sends people inside, and birds take a siesta, too....

Zoos can be great places to see birds, and not just in an aviary – wild birds sometimes feel right at home in these urban green spaces. For example, Black-crowned Night Herons love nesting near bodies of water where they can catch fish, frogs, and other prey. They may find that the pond within a crocodile exhibit is also the perfect spot for a rookery! Next time you visit a zoo near you, keep an...

Bearded Vultures have lived alongside humans for thousands of years. Though these majestic raptors are mostly found in Asia and Africa today, they were once abundant in Europe, too. While Bearded Vultures have vanished across much of their original range, their nests remain like time capsules of a bygone era. Researchers analyzed historical nests in southern Spain where the birds haven’t been...

In the black water of a Louisiana bayou, the water ripples where a slender form glides just beneath the surface. It appears to be a snake, but look closer at the long, narrow spike of a beak. It’s a snakebird, a colloquial name for the Anhinga, swimming with just its head and neck above the water. An Anhinga hangs motionless in the water or swims slowly just below the surface, its neck crooked,...

When a pair of Western Grebes decides it’s time to mate, they call loudly and approach one another. Each bird curves, then straightens, its long neck gracefully. They then face each other, necks on the water’s surface, their bills flipping up drops of water. If attraction prevails, they rush together and off they go across the water, running on the surface side by side. Standing straight up with...

This Osprey looks similar to other birds of prey. But the species is truly unique among raptors. For example, the Osprey is the only raptor with oily feathers. And the Osprey’s long, slender, arched wings help it clear the water as it takes flight after catching a fish. The Osprey we see today — just one species worldwide — has changed little since tens of millions of years ago, suggesting that...

When wildlife conservationist Olya Weekley was a little kid, she noticed something incredible from her grandmother’s kitchen window: a pair of House Martins had built a mud nest in the eaves of their third floor apartment. That experience sparked Olya’s life-long love of birds. Now she leads the nestbox program at Tucson Bird Alliance, which designs nestboxes for desert birds and helps people...

One of Hawaii’s rarest forest birds is this ‘akiapola’au. Some of the roughly 1,000 'akis left on earth live and breed in kipukas on the lower slopes of Mauna Loa, Hawaii’s largest active volcano. A kipuka is an island of native forest surrounded not by water but by recent lava flows - a green oasis in a sea of black lava. Kipukas are critical areas of native habitat. And the ‘akiapola’au is...