10 Things You Can Do For Birds

Start by providing the five basics: clean water, plants with flowers for nectar and insects (songbirds feed insects to their young), fruit-bearing plants to provide fuel for migration and winter, layers of plants for cover and thermal protection, and nesting habitat and materials. Native plants are key—their architecture, flowers, fruits, and scents are ideal for restoring the communities and relationships birds depend on. Yards that mimic surrounding natural plant communities not only attract more kinds of birds, they could help reverse the loss of urban biodiversity, according to new research.

Tell Congress to Save Birds from
Plastic Waste

Every year, 17 billion pounds of plastic enters the marine environment. Despite efforts to promote recycling, less than nine percent of plastics in the U.S. are actually recycled. Birds are particularly vulnerable to plastic pollution. Many seabirds, like Laysan Albatross, are seriously injured or killed when they ingest or become entangled in plastic trash.

Take action today: Contact your U.S. Representative and Senators and ask them to pass the Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act.

As Extinction Risk Escalates, American Bird Conservancy Launches Emergency Fund to Save the Rarest Bird Species

Species extinction rates are accelerating across the globe. In the Americas and U.S. Pacific Territories alone, 20 bird species have gone extinct in the wild since 1968. And just last year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed taking 11 bird species off of the Endangered Species list due to extinction — eight from Hawai‘i alone. Many more are in danger of the same fate: 263 bird species in the Americas and U.S. Pacific Territories are listed as Endangered or Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List.

How Climate Change is Muting Nature’s Symphony

From warbling loons to chirping toads, rising temperatures threaten some of the Earth’s most iconic sounds. When Jeff Wells, vice president for boreal conservation at the Audubon Society, first encountered the call of the common loon on a pond near Mt. Vernon, Maine — about an hour and a half north of Portland — he thought he may have heard a ghoul. “I leaped out of bed and ran into my parents’ bedroom, like, ‘What is that?’” he told Grist, describing a melancholy wail that has made loons famous far beyond the birding community.

Bird Nests. What You Need to Know.

Most bird nests are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA). This law says: “No person may take (kill), possess, import, export, transport, sell, purchase, barter, or offer for sale, any migratory bird, or the parts, nests, or eggs of such bird except as may be permitted under the terms of a valid permit…”  Under the MBTA it is illegal to destroy a nest that has eggs or chicks in it or if there are young birds that are still dependent on the nest for survival. It is also illegal for anyone to keep a nest they take out of a tree or find on the ground unless they have a permit to do so issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Whoo Are You? The Lure and Lore of Owls

Some people love owls and others fear them. But one thing is certain, owls occupy a unique space in the human psyche.

We identify with owls unlike other birds partly because they are the only bird with eyes that face forward like ours. They are hunters belonging to the raptor family, the same family of birds as hawks, eagles, kites, vultures and falcons. Unlike other raptors, owl generally hunt at night using their powerful talons to catch and kill prey.

Here’s How Drastically Birding Has Changed Over the Past 50 Years

On the 25th anniversary of his book "Kingbird Highway," Kenn Kaufman reflects on the many ways the hobby has transformed since he first hitchhiked across the country chasing birds in the 1970s. It was 25 years ago this month—July 1997—that my Kingbird Highway was published. If you haven’t heard of it, that’s okay. The book describes my adventures as a teenager hitchhiking around North America in the early 1970s, in a single-minded search for all the birds I could find.

Rebuilding an Iconic California State Park With Birds and Wildfire In Mind

In 2020, a blaze consumed Big Basin Redwoods State Park, incinerating cabins, blackening ancient trees, and imperiling endangered murrelets. Staff now want to reimagine the park to better ensure the seabird’s future.

People who love Big Basin Redwoods State Park remember it as a refuge. A place cool and damp and dark, crowned with frequent fog and layered branches of redwood, Douglas fir, oak, and madrone. But now there’s little shelter to be found here.

Bird Behavior Influenced by Human Activity During COVID-19 Lockdowns

For birds that inhabit developed areas of the Pacific Northwest, the reduction in noise and commotion from COVID-19 lockdowns may have allowed them to use a wider range of habitats in cities, a new study finds. A new University of Washington study led by Olivia Sanderfoot reports that many birds were just as likely to be found in highly developed urban areas as they were in less-developed green spaces during the peak of the COVID-19 lockdowns. The paper was published Aug. 11 in the journal Scientific Reports.

Three Billion North American Birds Have Vanished Since 1970, Surveys Show

Even common birds are in steep decline, spurring a hunt for causes. North America's birds are disappearing from the skies at a rate that's shocking even to ornithologists. Since the 1970s, the continent has lost 3 billion birds, nearly 30% of the total, and even common birds such as sparrows and blackbirds are in decline, U.S. and Canadian researchers report this week online in Science. "It's staggering," says first author Ken Rosenberg, a conservation scientist at the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology.