Bird song

Sagebrush Singers

Wow, where did the summer go?  It seems like just yesterday I was waking up to some lovely dawn choruses and now many of the birds have already migrated south.  With breeding season over, even most of the resident birds have quieted down, so the steppe and woods surrounding my home are much quieter now. […]

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Alert Grackles

Bird Conversations

My last stop on my summer journey from Carson City to Tucson, after a brief stay in Pinetop, Arizona, was the San Francisco River in New Mexico.  There is a designated birding area south of Glenwood that provides a parking lot and access to the river. It was mid-day and sweltering when the dog and

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Carson River in summer

Lazy morning on the Carson River

On my recent trip to Nevada, I spent a few quiet mornings along the Carson River, just outside of Carson City.  The river was pretty low for this time of year, reflecting the low snowfall in the Sierras last winter.  But during the hot spell that hit the area in July, the mornings on the

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Western Tanager_male

The Dynamic Dawn Chorus

Around the world, during the warmer months, the beginning of the day is heralded by bird melodies.   But in addition to being wonderful alarm clocks, the dawn chorus reflects how birds have adapted their singing to both ambient conditions and interspecific competition.  Most bird song is for territory defense and attracting mates (female birds often

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Ash-throated flycatcher

The importance of bird song

A recent article in BBC News Magazine highlights some fascinating research being conducted on how tuned in we are to bird song. People find birdsong relaxing and reassuring because over thousands of years they have learnt when the birds sing they are safe, it’s when birds stop singing that people need to worry. Birdsong is

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Top of the Huachucas

Spring in the Huachuca Mountains

Spring has finally arrived in the mountains of southern Arizona.  Little flowers are starting to appear, and birds are starting to sing.  Last week I took one of my favorite hikes in the Huachuca (wa-choo-ka) Mountains, up to Blacktail Pond.  It’s a steep hike up a very rocky road, but the views of the surrounding

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Curve-billed thrasher

Early Spring in the Sonoran Desert

The birds around my house are really getting fired up.  A week or two of seventy-degree weather (albeit interspersed with snow squalls) seems to have sent them into overdrive.  They start chirping at first light, and by 6:30 am the dawn chorus is in full swing.  Unfortunately, that is also when my little community on

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Smoke over the Gila Wilderness

Before the Whitewater-Baldy Fire

In mid May of this year, I headed over to the north end of the Gila Wilderness to do some camping and recording.  A small column of smoke was visible in the general direction of the center of the wilderness, but I had read on the USFS website that some controlled burns were planned for

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