Page 6 - Bird Column News Today

Looking across the valley during a noontime dog walk around our neighborhood a few weeks ago, there among the drab, gray trunks and limbs of yet-to-leaf-out maples and oaks was a burst of yellow. A singlel tree, towering on the opposite hill, just...

Mistakes happen. Even in the bird world. Take for example the osprey that recently tried repeatedly to place sticks atop a tall light pole, high above the Bates College athletic field in Lewiston. The sticks kept falling off and landing in the field...

The sound was as clear as could be, a distinctive “kidick, kidick.” That’s one of the sounds made by the Virginia rail. Rails are generally very secretive birds that inhabit wetlands with significant cover. Here in Maine, that’s usually a cattail...

For much of last week, we were fortunate that our backyard was blessed with the presence of one of our largest and brightest colored sparrows, the fox sparrow. While there are a number of different forms in western North America, we here in the...

Called the “snowbird” by many people, the species officially known as the dark-eyed junco is a common and widespread winter visitor to much of the U.S. Here in Maine, flocks of juncos from Canada’s Boreal Forest descend into our state each fall...

Maine is famous for its blueberries. Those small, deep-blue spheres have a sweet, rich, and earthy taste that seems to somehow capture the deep history of where they come from: barren lands taken over by tenacious and hardy plants as the glaciers...

Last Friday, a friend told us that he had heard his first American woodcock of the year the night before. Woodcock are birds that are more often heard then seen, at least by most people. Those who seek them out to hunt in the fall with a good bird...

While walking the dog the other day (when a dog is walked as often as ours is, he’s bound to make frequent appearances in our column!), we heard an excited chatter of house sparrows coming from a thick bush long the roadside. Suddenly two birds...

A recent Maine-based magazine ran a feature about winter surfing in Maine. That article was highlighting people who enjoy the thrill of grabbing their boards and catching waves in the middle of winter. But to us, the original winter surfers are...

These warm days of late, even if interspersed with colder, more seasonal temperatures and occasional snow, have predictably made many of us humans think of spring. Birds seem to be feeling it, too. We wrote in our recent column about the resident...