How Utah's Smallest Birds Help Uncover Their Own Mysterious Life

Every summer, Utah hums with life, in no small part because of hummingbirds.

One moment a flower hangs quietly; the next, there's the unmistakable buzz of wings moving so fast they're almost invisible. A hummingbird hovers for only a few seconds before darting away to the next bloom.

That brief visit is part of a remarkable journey unfolding across Utah.

I Befriended My Neighborhood Crow. You Can, Too.

By the time the crow showed up literally at my doorstep, I had been trying and mostly failing to befriend one for several years. A pair of American crows had largely ignored my persistent attempts to lure them with unshelled peanuts; they fled the moment I was anywhere in the vicinity. After a while, I resigned myself to admiring the birds from afar. But in summer 2024, I started noticing a fish crow (his nasal, staccato vocalizations set him apart from his American comrades) who often seemed to hang around.

How to Attract Woodpeckers: Easy Tips to Bring These Birds to Your Yard

Woodpeckers are a common and beloved group of birds, but they’re often overlooked when people think about their backyards. Many people put out seed to attract finches, sparrows, doves, and other common backyard birds, but few realize that woodpeckers are just as easy to attract. It’s worth a little effort. There are multiple species of woodpeckers in America, and though they’re all different they share characteristics such as beautiful plumage and loud, charismatic vocalizations.

More Than Half of Earth’s Migratory Bird Species Are Declining – Here’s How We Can Still Save Them

Every year, billions of migratory birds connect the world’s continents, oceans and ecosystems as they undertake epic journeys between their foraging habitats and their breeding grounds. A bobolink (Dolichonyx oryzivorus) leaves its breeding grasslands of North America for the Pampas of South America. A Newell’s shearwater (Puffinus newelli) spends months soaring across the North Pacific before returning to the Hawaiian Islands to breed.

12 Native Plants That Will Turn Your Yard Into a Year-Round Bird Haven

If bird-watching is your favorite hobby or you just want to help your local ecosystem, adding native plants to your garden is a great way to attract winged creatures and keep them thriving. You can start small with a few blooms, like asters or echinacea, which provide seeds in the winter. Or you can transform your outdoor space with specific trees, shrubs, grasses, and flowers that will support a wide variety of birds throughout the year.

From Truth to Fake: The Threat of AI to Media Archives

Community-driven science projects such as eBird, the Macaulay Library, and iNaturalist are seeing a rapid uptick in AI-manipulated and AI-generated photos. A new publication in Nature has recently highlighted the threat of AI photos to these projects, leading to some popular news articles. We want to raise awareness and inform the community of how AI reduces the scientific value of photos.

Campaigns to Protect Birds and Their Habitats

With the accelerated growth of human development within the last century, threats to the survival of birds and other wildlife have increased significantly. According to a 2019 study published in the journal Science, North America has nearly 3 billion fewer birds today compared to 1970 – that’s a loss of more than one quarter of North American birds in the last 50 years! Causes include habitat loss due to development, insect declines due to widespread pesticide use, changes in climate cycles that affect food availability, and threats such as window strikes and outdoor cats.

Raptors: On Top of Their Game

Raptors are some of the most impressive birds found in North America. The word "raptor" refers to birds of prey that hunt other animals using their sharp talons, hooked beaks, and excellent eyesight. The term raptor comes from the Latin rapere, meaning "to seize and carry off." Common American raptors include Bald Eagles, Red-tailed Hawks, Peregrine Falcons, Osprey, vultures and Great Horned Owls. These apex predators play an important role in the environment by helping control populations of rodents, fish, rabbits, and other small animals.

Dr. Emily Doolittle on the Music of Birds

As a composer and zoomusicologist, Emily Doolittle combines two loves by studying the links between human and animal music at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. In October she and biologists at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany, published an analysis of the musician wren—whose song sounds eerily human—in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies. We caught up with her by phone at her home in Seattle.

A Complete History of Collecting and Imitating Birdsong

From field recordings to bird box automata and clocks, humans have been reproducing and utilizing bird sound for centuries.

Since literature began, poets and naturalists have coined words and phrases which attempt to replicate the sounds birds make. Their legacy is a glorious vocabulary of thousands of unique words, from the aaaaw of the black skimmer to the zzzzzd of the lazuli bunting.

Macaulay Library the Muse: An Exploration of Bird Song in Art

Birds and their sounds have been a part of the arts for centuries. In 1924 Ottorino Respighi requested that a recording of a nightingale be played in his composition The Pines of Rome. Respighi’s artistic choice was controversial at the time; his contemporaries thought it more appropriate to use the orchestra to imitate bird song than an actual recording. Respighi, however, was determined to use a real bird’s vocalizations—his bird had to speak for itself.

Birds Through the Lens of Art

I struggle to recall the exact moment in my childhood when I started drawing. Making art has always just been something that I do as part of who I am. Some of my earliest memories are of myself drawing. A common theme could be found in most of my drawings: creatures. I remember vividly how my best childhood friend and I would pour over books filled with photos and illustrations of wild animals to find one that we wanted to draw. Ocelots, nightjars and dinosaurs, they all made their way onto the many pages of paper..

Black Oystercatcher

So here we have another bird naming conundrum. Despite its name, the Black Oystercatcher rarely eats oysters! It might better be named the mussel catcher. Mussels and limpets are their primary food. They locate open mussels and disable them with a quick jab to the adductor muscle. With the mussel stuck in the open position, the oystercatcher can pull out the contents with the tip of its chisel-like bill. Oystercatchers often forage in the wave zone, because mussels that are splashed by waves open more frequently.

Momentary Meditations are published every Monday to awaken what Rachel Carson called “the sense of wonder” and what Albert Schweitzer called “a reverence for life.” Looking deeply into our interdependence with all life on earth helps us know what we must do. In our harried world, these meditations are meant to serve as a renewable resource for compassion and love.

Morning Stillness - What a surprise. There, only a few feet outside my window, on a low tree branch, a Cooper’s Hawk perched. Its alert stillness and beauty drew me into a wonderfully quiet moment.