It’s spring! It is literally time to get out there with the birds! To keep things interesting, especially as avian activity continues to ramp up with spring migration, we offer Bird Bingo! We have designed bingo cards for five regions of the United States: Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Northwest, and Southwest. Click on the PDF for… Read more »
I enjoy watching and photographing bird behavior. Recently I had the opportunity to photograph a white-breasted nuthatch pair as they prepared to nest in my backyard. Nuthatches make their nests in natural cavities, such as a broken limb or tree trunk or perhaps an old woodpecker hole. My nuthatch pair found a cavity in tree… Read more »
A little over a year ago, just as Ohio’s governor was announcing stay-at-home orders, I was packing up my things to do the exact opposite. An unhealthy situation prohibited me from staying in my house any longer. And so, I said goodbye to my home for the past twelve years—the first house I had owned,… Read more »
For the first time in the nearly seven years I’ve lived in this house, birds have nested on my front porch. Not one nest, but two: a robin and a mourning dove. I’ve long expected mourning doves to realize that the tops of the porch–roof support columns are wide enough for a nest, but it never happened until now, and, in fact, it was the robins who chose… Read more »
I’ll always enjoy the coziness of wintertime, but nothing rivals the anticipation of emerging bulbs and plants awakening in the flower beds in my yard come springtime. Last spring, when the pandemic effectively eliminated all of my 2020 travel, I turned to yardwork and improving the “birdiness” of my plants and flowers to bolster my… Read more »
This spring has been rife with reports from backyard birders spotting finches and other feeder birds suffering from red, swollen eyes—the telltale sign of avian conjunctivitis. Bird Watcher’s Digest columnist and wildlife rehabilitator Julie Zickefoose has been treating birds with mycoplasma for many years, and she reports that this is the worst spring she’s ever… Read more »
I don’t use my front door very much anymore. Perhaps I’ll pop in and out of it once per day during the workweek. My pale claws might emerge to pull in a parcel on the days some Gift from the Internet arrives. Before the pandemic, I would fill my two clear acrylic stick-on window feeders,… Read more »
The weekend of February 12–15, unleash your inner citizen scientist by joining the Great Backyard Bird Count. Participation can be as simple as spending 15 minutes (or more!) on at least one of the four days observing the birds in your backyard—or anywhere else—and reporting your findings. Participating is simple for birders of all ages… Read more »
The COVID-19 pandemic and its consequent shelter-in-place orders, work-at-home directives, and social distancing rules have inarguably complicated many people’s lives worldwide. But something we here at Bird Watcher’s Digest observed, amidst all the strife and heartache, was an influx of people becoming interested in birding. Folks restricted to the confines of their apartments and houses have become more aware of what goes… Read more »
With nearly all in-person birding festivals canceled and some of my favorite hotspots closed due to the pandemic, 2020 was a challenging year to find birds to photograph. Since March, I have been working from home. As a result, I’ve spent many lunch breaks and more early evening hours than normal in my backyard, and… Read more »
