Nature Articles

Bird Town Pennsylvania: Thank you, Mr. Ruby-throat, for taking the time to be interviewed today. We’re aware of how incredibly busy you are. Ruby-throated Hummer: You really aren’t that aware, unless you can imagine yourself running constantly here and there to get each item for every one of your meals at 9 miles per hour, every day of your life. And when I say [...]

This program is a solution-based “call to action to regenerate biodiversity and ecosystem function by planting native plants and creating new ecological networks.” Their goal is to have 20 million acres of native plantings in the US, which would represent half of the green lawns of privately-owned properties. Habitat loss is a profound problem for birds and many other kinds of wildlife, so [...]

Buds for Birds - Mighty Mites! Everyone loves Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, but have you thought about where they are when they aren’t with us in Pennsylvania? The hummers that breed here or pass through while heading farther north mostly winter way down in southern Mexico and Central America. Most of them get there by making a 600-mile nonstop flight across [...]

Movie Review. The remarkable lives of hummingbirds are beautifully captured in this 55-minute documentary shot primarily in the highlands of Brazil. There are over 360 hummingbird species, with the earliest believed to have emerged 50 million years ago. British broadcaster and natural historian David Attenborough narrates and explains the fascinating history of how flowering plants coevolved with hummingbirds—the plants ensuring that their pollen would [...]

DO THIS, NOT THAT – Protecting Birds from Cats. Scientists estimate that domestic cats kill 2.4 billion birds in the U.S. every year (billion--that is not a typo!). *Much of the carnage comes from feral cats, but pet cats that are allowed to roam outdoors do plenty of killing too. In fact, after habitat loss, cats are the biggest threat [...]

Spotlight on Backyard Habitat Recognition Programs. The National Wildlife Federation’s “Certified Wildlife Habitat Program” is one of 10 programs that Bird Town Pennsylvania encourages homeowners to consider as they improve their backyard habitats to support birds and wildlife. Our goal is to engage and encourage all property owners and managers who care about providing good habitat for ecological diversity and a sustainable future. It’s [...]

DO THIS, NOT THAT – Practical Steps to Preventing Window Strikes. It probably happened to you at some time. You are at home, and you hear something that sounds like a soft thud in the background. You get up and investigate. Where did the sound come from? It sounded like it came from outside, but you look outside and see [...]

We live in a world where we can research anything with the simple click of a button. This is a wonderful thing to be able to do, but we must also realize that not everything we find is fact, or current. This holds true when you do a search of the web for bird-window collisions. You can find a wide range of facts, half-truths, [...]

Projects in Community Science, also called Citizen Science, are a fun way to contribute meaningfully in collecting data about our local bird and pollinator populations and beyond. The data that you collect help scientists study such things as diversity in nature and trends in populations. No formal training is required, but just curiosity, a willingness to go out and explore, and a smartphone or [...]

Set in Mongolia, this beautifully filmed documentary follows the teenager Aisholpan’s journey as she trains to becomes the first female in twelve generations of her nomad family to become an eagle huntress. With the help of her father, she learns how to train golden eagles, and she even captures and trains her own eaglet. She goes on to compete in the annual traditional Eagle [...]

Buds for Birds Be a Buddy — Plant Native It’s never too soon to start thinking about spring, is it? To make your dreams come true sooner rather than later, let’s talk about some of the earliest spring bloomers. Aside from having something to look forward to on dreary winter days, there are two good reasons to think about these plants early. First, [...]

Bugs for Birds As you’re snuggled warm in your bed… do you ever wonder what happens to our bugs in the winter? Okay, so it isn’t the most burning question on your mind. But come spring, birds (especially migrants) rely on bugs “reappearing”. So how do they survive and where do they go? Bugs are exothermic – which means [...]

A human conversation that doesn’t happen: “Brrrrr, I’m freezing out here!” “Remember, you can turn your body’s temperature requirements down—then you’ll be fine.” “Oh, right, good idea. I forgot how easy it is to re-set my internal dial.” A bird adaptation that does happen: In cold weather, birds sometimes turn their internal heat requirements down—in Pennsylvania, mourning doves and turkey vultures regularly use that [...]

DO THIS, NOT THAT – A Homeowner's Guide to Helping Beneficial Insects (and Birds) Weather the Winter Fall is upon us with a host of activities, football games, county fairs, and festivals. The smell of autumn greets us on crisp mornings, and we indulge in pumpkin lattes and ginger snap cookies. For us, as well as for nature, it’s a [...]

Spotlight on Community Science Projects in Community Science, also called Citizen Science, are a fun way to contribute meaningfully in collecting data about our local bird and pollinator populations and beyond. The data that you collect helps scientists study such things as diversity in nature and trends in populations. No formal training is required, but just curiosity, a willingness to go out and explore, [...]

Birdwatching: Classic Movies about Birds Bringing Migration into Focus: Winged Migration This is a stunning magnificent classic movie about the migration of birds both in spring and fall, when birds fly hundreds even thousands of miles as they navigate by the stars, sun, gravitational fields and landmarks to follow food sources and mate. The limited narration informs as needed, but the stars of the [...]

LIGHTS OUT Programs:  Do they help, and is it worth the effort? The short answer is YES! But it’s not that simple. Reading the news reports, on the night of the first and morning of the second of October 2020, over a thousand birds died in Philadelphia colliding with glass in a small block radius in downtown. Totally tragic and mostly preventable. Yet reading [...]

Your local grocery store closed down—what to do? You get in your car or on your bike and ride the roads to a grocer farther away. Birds react the same way: when cold weather closes down their food supplies in the north, they migrate south using their own ingenious transportation tools and tricks: elaborately engineered flight feathers and air highways complete with winding [...]

Seasonal migrations are exciting times for us birders. In the spring, we anxiously await return of our breeding birds from their southern wintering grounds. In the fall, we're sad to see them leave. While birds follow that classic concept of animal migration, insects (having shorter lifespans than a migration period) were historically excluded from consideration. Their small size and weight were also believed [...]

Your beloved relative is coming for the weekend:  you tidy up the house (but not so much that it feels like a don’t-touch museum), you prepare a comfy bed, set out clean towels in a clean bathroom, and stock the fridge with favorite foods.  So too for our distant kin, the birds:  you provide bushes, trees, wood piles, or nesting boxes where they can [...]

There are billions of people in the world, but we only fall in love with the ones who feel special to us.  Same with forks!  In America people use more than 100 million plastic utensils every day.  An ordinary plastic fork is just that—ordinary, not special.  Also, like all plastics, such a fork is a source of pollution that exposes birds and other wildlife [...]

Wait—are those birds carrying army pocketknives around??? Well, sort of. Birds don’t need to snatch our knives because they’ve got multi-tool knives built right into their bodies: their beaks. Birds’ beaks differ greatly depending on what they eat, but all beaks are strong while also remarkably light (flying creatures avoid hauling excess weight!). A beak is made of spongy bone inside, covered first by a [...]

Birds are affected by our “carbon footprints” —the amount of carbon pollution we put into the air through our energy and lifestyle choices. Carbon traps the sun’s heat around the Earth like a blanket.  An overheated Earth has more extreme weather—more hurricanes, wildfires, heat waves, droughts, and floods.  It’s like we’re putting big, hot, dirty feet into the sky. Climate shifts cause plant and [...]

Beautiful goldfinches with their lovely black wings are abundant now!  Did you know there’s another kind of “black gold” that YOU can create, and that it helps birds? “Black gold” comes from compositing—the natural way of recycling leaves, yard waste, and food scraps. Composting helps birds because it helps plants grow (birds really need plants!!).  Composting also reduces the air pollution that drives climate [...]

Our erratic climate can be disastrous for migrating birds.  Although scientists observe many birds adapting to climate change, “false springs” sometimes lure birds to migrate too early—followed by sudden, fatal “cold snaps” in the weather along their routes. Birds can also die or fail to breed from mismatches between previously synchronized—but now off-kilter—migration dates and the hatching or flowering of needed foods. But birds [...]

Do you love Birds?  And humans?  Then love a Bug! We don’t have lovebugs in Pennsylvania (they live down south), but we can all LOVE BUGS!  Here’s why: Bugs feed birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals (a possum can eat 4,000 ticks a week!).  Scientists report that, except for seabirds, 96% of North American birds feed insects to their young.  [...]

Wren babies begging for food; Printed with permission from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Hidden in bushes and trees all over our region, parent songbirds will soon be feeding adorable little hatchlings.  The babies have fragile throats, so they need soft food.  Fortunately, nature provides the perfect squishy protein packets for the hungry little ones:  caterpillars!  For most songbirds, caterpillars are the main [...]

When you were a child, did you love those soft gray pussy toes clustered along the stem of pussy willow branches?  I know I did. In spring, my mother would buy a bundle of cut, dry branches for an arrangement in the house, and I would stroke their soft fur.  But pussy willows are good for a lot more than indoor decoration! [...]

Whether you love or despise bugs, they’re important to birds as food and are fascinating to get to know.

Many of us embrace the beauty of the winter landscape when the first flakes of the year fall. By the time that February rolls around, though, we’re tired of snow and worn down by the effort of coping with the cold. Birds may not exactly share our emotions about winter, but as cold weather wears on, they also face extra challenges. Many insects are [...]

To help waning bird and insect populations by educating the public on how native plants could be used to create a beautiful and ecologically functional garden, the Upper Dublin Bird Town, Wyncote Audubon and the Ambler-Keystone Branch of the Woman’s National Farm and Garden Association are creating a Native Plant Demonstration Garden in the new Twining Valley Park. Once a golf course, the park presented [...]