BirdNote Daily

The Northern Mockingbird isn’t the only mimic bird in town. Brown Thrashers also learn songs from nearby birds and add them to their repertoire. The species has been documented singing more than 1,100 different songs: a mix of imitations and invented little melodies. While mockingbirds usually repeat a song or phrase three or more times before moving on, Brown Thrashers tend to repeat a phrase only twice.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Screech-owls are opportunistic diners. In the Pacific Northwest, they’ll prey on small birds, crayfish, large ants, or earthworms. In Arizona, pocket mice and pack rats. And in Ohio, biologists who noticed a fishy smell around Eastern Screech-Owl nest boxes found the remains of dozens of shad. It’s clear that screech-owls may be a consistent nocturnal predator on fish, especially in cooler months, when other prey are dormant. Gotta feed those hungry owlets!More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode of BirdNoir, Michael Stein — Private Eye — gets a call from a friend, Danny, who wants to know why the bluest bird he’s ever seen has vanished. But there are many birds that are blue besides the true bluebirds (which belong to the thrush family). To solve the mystery, the detective needs to know the right questions to ask Danny, finding the relevant information to identify the bird and figure out what happened.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Like an expert angler, a tern can read the surface of the water to find where to catch its next fish. Scientists piloted a drone to track the flight paths of terns on the hunt. The terns sought out turbulent water. A vortex formed by colliding currents traps fish near the surface, where terns can snap them up. Terns fly toward bubbly upwellings to see if the rising water brings prey animals along with it.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Looking at a Canada Goose, you might not think their bodies are designed for fancy flying. But watch as a flock of geese comes in for a landing at a lake and you might be surprised. If the flock comes in too fast or too high above the water, geese have a little trick to slow themselves down for a safe landing. The geese stop flapping and then quickly roll their bodies upside down, while twisting their long necks the right way up. Finally, they rotate again to right themselves just in time to gently splash down. It’s a maneuver called whiffling. It seems to help the geese slow down quickly – but sometimes it might just be for fun.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In winter, many songbirds join flocks made up of multiple species that travel around looking for food, benefitting from safety in numbers. But a bird flock that doesn't move in the same direction soon scatters to the wind. It turns out that the Tufted Titmouse, a small gray songbird, is often the one leading the flock. Researchers studying the flight paths of flocks found that the paths taken by the titmice best reflected the direction of the group as a whole, compared to other species in the group. This was especially true when the flock moved quickly between sites, when staying organized is key.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

To protect our migratory birds, it’s vital that we understand their behaviors both during the breeding season in North America and when they migrate to the Neotropics — a region that includes Central and South America, and the Caribbean. Yet historical and systemic barriers in scientific research have stifled contributions from local Neotropical scientists and conservationists for centuries. Learn more about how to support Neotropical ornithology on the new season of Bring Birds Back.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Birds in flocks almost invariably develop a pecking order. An alpha chicken can peck any other in the flock, and a beta chicken can peck all others but the alpha bird. Juncos and other small birds have a pecking order, too. The pecking order – or dominance hierarchy – of a flock of birds is usually this: males are dominant to females and adults are dominant to young birds. As a flock changes and birds come and go, the pecking order changes. If you feed backyard birds, you will likely notice this pecking order behavior in the flock.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Not long ago, the only hummingbird that someone living in the eastern United States and Canada could hope to see was the Ruby-throated Hummingbird. But things have changed. Today, more and more hummingbird species — such as this Broad-tailed Hummingbird — have been discovered beyond their “normal” ranges. Why is this colorful explosion happening now? Climate change is one possible factor. So are shifts in migration routes. Or it could just be that more people are on the lookout for these relative newcomers.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Many years ago, when writer and musician Ray Young Bear was training his singing voice, he took a kind of vocal lesson from the blackbirds. “They have the most complicated song in the world — high pitches and low notes, and then it smooths out, then it kicks up again,” he said. “I would listen to them and try to imitate their singing.”More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.