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WATCHING BIRD BEHAVIOR By the time you read these words, you will likely be aware of those so-called "virgin births" of two California condors. So, I immediately wondered whether these two female condors had miraculously stored sperm in their bodies from some earlier copulations with male condors. When examining condor DNA data recently, the biologists got a wee surprise upon discovering that two condors, SB260 and SB517, had not been sired by a father and instead had acquired all of their DNA from their respective mothers. [Extracted from the article]

The battle over which birds in the world are the most intelligent goes on! The parrot fans are convinced that their birds are the smartest, largely due to the great work of Irene Pepperberg, now at Harvard University, and her captive African gray parrots, beginning with the amazing Alex (RIP). [Extracted from the article]

Whenever I get a phone call describing a brownish bird with black spots feeding on the ground, I know right away that the bird is a flicker. Their brown coloration dotted with numerous black bars, the red patch on the nape of eastern flickers, and especially the large white patch on the rump, make them a distinctive bird indeed! Northern flickers are one of my favorite backyard birds, if only because they are amazingly easy to identify from a distance. [Extracted from the article]

While they still have a way to go to be as common in backyards as Cooper's and sharp-shinned hawks - mainly because these two raptors frequent bird-feeding operations - merlins are certainly making their presence known in many of our North American cities. Even though merlins do prefer to capture house sparrows because of their predominance in suburban habitats, they do occasionally take some of the more beloved backyard birds. City merlins have also been known to hunt waxwings cooperatively, with one falcon flushing the birds from a canopy to another merlin flying behind. [Extracted from the article]

I mean, just about everybody recognizes the caw of a crow, but did you know that some 23 different calls have been described, and that crows can mimic the whine of a dog, a human voice, the squawk of a chicken, and other sounds? When researchers played crow alarm calls, there was nary a crow to be seen within seconds. Crows are not welcome in most people's backyards mainly because of two behaviors: They are noisy early in the morning; and they often kill and eat other birds, including eggs and young. [Extracted from the article]

This action pulls open the bill enough to create free space between the beak tip and the wood at the bottom of the punctured hole to allow the woodpecker to retract its beak. This past May, I was in Fer-nie, British Columbia, visiting my first grandchild, a wee lad named Lochlan who, at the time, was fast approaching 11 months of age. Woodpeckers' Amazing Bills I have always said that had I not chosen birds of prey to study over the four decades of my career, I would have likely picked woodpeckers. [Extracted from the article]

The latter, with their somewhat weaker feet, usually hunt mice, reptiles, and amphibians, whereas Cooper's hawks are mostly bird-hunters, taking only the occasional squirrel or rabbit. For example, one bird-lover was watching a bright red male cardinal singing its heart out at the top of a tree in bright sunshine, but also in the presence of a young Cooper's hawk perched in a nearby tree. Cardinals Speaking of Cooper's hawks: With more folks engaging in feeding birds in their yards and spotting Cooper's hawks, I am getting more and more inquiries about these clever predators. [Extracted from the article]

The bird is even attempting to teach other members of its own kind to engage in similar behavior; so far Marilyn has seen only one bird take up the offer. If putting out a loud wind chime or a humongous wind spinner in one's yard actually kept birds away, then airports, yacht clubs, and other places afflicted by "nuisance birds" would be installing them everywhere. Ravens and crows are social birds, and in my book, they are the most intelligent of all birds, even surpassing the parrots. WATCHING BIRD BEHAVIOUR Some folks like to list birds, some like to count birds, some like to study birds, some like to feed birds, and some like to watch their behavior. [Extracted from the article]

The mew call of the spotted towhee is apparently analogous to the chewink call of the eastern towhee, and is described by some as whining or mewing, nasal, slurred, or catlike. The eastern towhee is commonly parasitized by the brown-headed cowbird, more frequently in some parts of its range than others, while the spotted towhee is now feeling pressure from this brood parasite expanding in numbers in the West. One wild male eastern towhee lived for just over 12 years in South Carolina, while a male spotted towhee made it to almost 11 years in California. [Extracted from the article]

To my absolute delight, I quickly discovered that one of the most common raptors, along with turkey vulture, crested caracara, and red-tailed hawk, is the American kestrel! I am not sure whether the person who named the northern mockingbird was simply referring to this bird's remarkable skill to imitate the songs of other birds, other non-avian wildlife, and mechanical sounds, or to its penchant for using that ability to constantly ridicule birders and even nonbirders by causing confusion. As a loud vocal mimic, the northern mockingbird can not only copy the songs and calls of a large variety of other bird species but they can also imitate all kinds of mechanical sounds, with the best example being a car alarm. Because mockingbirds are limited to copying shorter units of sound, which they repeat several times before moving on to a new sound, the songs and calls of some birds, like the Carolina wren, can be effectively imitated, but the more complex songs of species like the song sparrow prove to be more difficult. [Extracted from the article]

When I read last fall's headlines that North America has lost nearly three billion birds over just the past five decades, I was not surprised. All of the bird report cards released in this past year dwelt upon the loss of birds from the 12 bird families, but not as much attention was given to the incredible successes enjoyed by waterfowl and birds of prey. Allow me to provide some examples from the raptor world, e.g., big raptors affecting little raptors. It is not too much of a stretch to think that non-raptorial birds are behaving in the same manner by avoiding areas where bird-eating raptors are prominent or at least making themselves less conspicuous in their habitats by singing less. [Extracted from the article]

I dedicate this column to the memories of Bill Thompson, III, and his mother, Elsa Thompson. Bill was a staunch ally of both birds and bird lovers alike, and he is already sorely missed. Birds also harbor microscopic ectoparasites known as feather-busting bacteria, which were discovered by Dr. Edward Burtt, a professor of ornithology at Ohio Wesleyan College in Delaware, Ohio. [Extracted from the article]

According to the State of Canada's Birds 2019 Report, the first released since 2012 by the North American Bird Conservation Initiative (NABCI-Canada), which shows population changes from 1970 to 2016 for 449 Canadian bird species, goose populations are up by a whopping 300 percent. Well, if you watch Canada goose flocks closely, you will occasionally see the lead bird fall back to have another take its place. Today, despite the fact that both resident and migratory Canada geese are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, they are considered to be a problem species in the majority of states. As noted earlier, Canada goose flocks have been exported to various other countries in Europe, including the United Kingdom, as well as to New Zealand. [Extracted from the article]

Highlights from the article: 621 bird species found in the Often a bird species is seen in Birds, which includes birds Name), this wee gray bird loves Bird species in North America.

Highlights from the article: Handel went with a veterinarian colleague to her friend's yard, where they caught the birds, affixed aluminum identification bands on their legs, and trimmed their bills before releasing the birds. After contacting the local Audubon authorities to seek other reports of bill deformities, Handel was inundated with observations from folks who fed birds, mostly all of chickadees at first, and then of a red-breasted nuthatch with a long straight bill, and later, the odd woodpecker. I asked Handel where this bill deformity issue rates in the growing list of dangers to the world's bird populations and why she is not working on the problem on a 24/7 basis.