Birding

We love to travel to find new birds and participate in a lot of bird counts. We also created a Guide to Birding Field Guides and host a collection of over 300 birding links from all over the globe.

Conservation

While our main focus continues to be birds, we are working to promote other areas of conservation. Conserving land not only benefits wildlife, but is hugely beneficial to people as well.

Outdoors

We love all sorts of outdoor activities, especially hiking and spend a lot of time outside with dogs and horses. We are working to produce more articles on all sorts of outdoor fun!

Photography

Every week we bring you Bird Photography Weekly. We periodically talk about our adventures in digiscoping. Feel free to browse our photo lifelist.

31 Cool Bird Facts #2 – Bobolink

October 2, 2008
Article in: Birding

The Bobolink [Dolichonyx oryzivorus] is symbolic of the prairie and the decline of this wonderful habitat. From their look to their sound (which we feel sounds a little bit like R2-D2), perhaps the most under-appreciated fact is how far these birds migrate.

Bobolink

The Bobolink is an extraordinary migrant, traveling to south of the equator each autumn and making a round-trip of approximately 20,000 kilometers (12,500 mi). One female, known to be at least 9 years old, presumably made this trip annually, a total distance equal to traveling 4.5 times around the earth at the equator! – Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds

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Deer Run Bird Survey #13

May 20, 2008
Article in: Bird Conservation

Making our third survey of the week, we did Deer Run Bird Survey #13 on Sunday, May 18th. It was by far our best survey yet in number of species as well as warbler diversity.

Wilson’s Warbler
Wilson's Warbler

We spent over six hours hiking and covered more than 7 miles. We were delighted to find four Henslow’s Sparrows and pleasantly surprised to find a Bobolink. Other interesting finds included Yellow-breasted Chat, Black-billed Cuckoo, and many Empidonax Flycatchers. We had 18 warblers total and four vireos.

Bobolink
Bobolink

We found a Red-breasted Nuthatch (a little late for them to still be here). Another cool find was a Gray-cheeked Thrush singing and hopping around in the brush. We found 674 birds of 85 species. That brings our overall total species count to 121 and 4925 individuals.

New Birds for the Count:

  1. Black-billed Cuckoo
  2. Black-throated Green Warbler
  3. Blackburnian Warbler
  4. Blue-headed Vireo
  5. Bobolink
  6. Chimney Swift
  7. Gray-cheeked Thrush
  8. Louisiana Waterthrush
  9. Red-breasted Nuthatch
  10. Sharp-shinned Hawk
  11. Willow Flycatcher
  12. Wilson’s Warbler
  13. Yellow-breasted Chat

Barred Owl
Barred Owl

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