• Bird education becomes a bird podcast

    By Georgia Silvera Seamans

    Five years ago, I partnered with Street Lab to design a nature education project called Explore Birds, in which we presented pop-up exhibits of taxidermied birds in historically underserved New York City neighborhoods such as Chinatown.

    A program of Washington Square Park Eco Projects, Explore Birds aims to showcase New York’s urban bird diversity using study skins,  bio-facts, and other materials. The visitors to our science stations ranged in age and ethno-racial identity. I am a chronic jotter and so always carry a notebook with me. I took quick notes of most of the interactions with participants during one of our Chinatown pop-ups.

    Explore Birds in BrooklynThe author shares a Red-tailed Hawk specimen with a young girl in Brooklyn, part of Explore Birds with Street Lab. Photo by Street Lab.

    “Are they real?” [Many people asked this question.]

    Of the red-tailed hawk, a teenager asked, “Is it a falcon? I used to see many in this area but not anymore.”

    “This is so cool. I love pigeons.”

    “Are they dead?”

    “What would happen if a real bird came by?”

    “Which has the sharpest beak?”

    “Where I play (in New Jersey), there is a hawk that perches and watch us. It shows the environment is better.”

    “Would you find these birds in New York?”

    Of the red-tailed hawk, “Is it an owl?”

    “That’s disgusting!” exclaimed a young girl.

    “Are they real? I’m not touching them!” shouted a teen girl.

    “Birds are cool,” said a boy.

    “Is that a raptor bird?” asked a young girl about the American Kestrel. “I’m guessing that’s another raptor,” as she pointed to the Red-tailed Hawk. I asked her if she studies birds in school. “I love birds a lot,” she said. “I love falcons.”

    “I chase it [a pigeon] away every day from [pooping] on my car.”

    “Are the birds for sale?” an older man asked in Cantonese.

    Of the Tufted Titmouse, a boy asked, “Are these baby birds?”

    “I thought they were sleeping.”

    Explore Birds in ChinatownThe author at a “Move and Walk Weekend” event in New York’s Chinatown, with Explore Birds and Street Lab. Photo by Street Lab.

    The curiosity displayed in these questions, statements, and short stories are not unique to New York’s Chinatown. I have installed Explore Birds in other parts of the city, ranging from uptown Manhattan to Brooklyn, Queens, and 2,772-acre Pelham Park in the Bronx. In every location, I’ve been the fortunate recipient of New Yorkers’ bird stories.…

  • Re-nest Success

    By Tara McIntire

    I had noticed a persistent Anna’s Hummingbird zipping about our yard, collecting web from all the nooks and crannies, which made me wonder if she were building a nest nearby.  Sure enough, a few weeks later our neighbor mentioned there was a very agitated bird in their yard with a nest in their lemon tree.  Luckily for me, they lived next door and offered access through the side gate whenever I wished!

    I grabbed my camera and headed over to check out the situation. I was delighted to find a female Anna’s Hummingbird tucked inside a perfect nest she had built on a lemon leaf. (Note: The males are absent during parenting, taking no part in nest building or rearing of young.)

    Female hummingbird on nestFemale hummingbird on her beautiful nest – Feb 26, 2021

    Still working from home at that point, I was eager to fill rare moments between meetings with something other than more work. I readied my camera and identified the best angles and time of day for lighting, while making sure to not disturb the female who was potentially incubating eggs.

    Hummingbird nestAnother view of the nest, built on the leaf of a lemon tree

    Anna’s Hummingbird egg incubation takes typically around 16 days, so on March 14th I wandered over to see if there were any changes. With mom safely away, something caught my eye through my long lens. One tiny hummingbird was barely peeking out of the nest!

    Hummingbird chickFirst view of a hummingbird nestling – March 14

    This species of hummingbird fledges roughly 20 days after hatching and since I wasn’t looking directly into the nest, I couldn’t tell how far along the nestling was. However, just six days later I spotted not one but TWO birds, and they were nearly bursting out of the stretchy, tiny nest made of lichens and spider web.  I imagined the nest felt a bit like my yoga pants after a long Covid winter eating ice cream and comfort food.

    Two hummingbird nestlingsNot one but TWO hummingbirds – March 20

    Two days later, our neighbor called and said, “A baby bird fell out of nest!’

    “I’ll be right over!” I responded, sprinting to the yard. The nestling was sitting on the concrete patio, from which I quickly scooped it up.  My adrenaline valve was wide-open at this point and I went into full emergency-response mode.  As I filled a bowl with tissues to make a warm temporary nest, I was also carefully inspecting the bird and visually assessing its general condition.…

  • Birding by Ear with help from AI

    By Margot Bezrutczyk

    I’ll probably never know what it was: the bird that sang such complex, liquid song in the thicket of bay laurel that morning on Bolinas Ridge. I tried and failed to come up with a mnemonic, resorting to simile: “It sounds like an Ewok and a robot fighting. It sounds like a computer drowning.” I climbed up some fallen branches hanging off the trail in an attempt to see the bird, but several crows and a wren joined the chorus and began scolding me. I was brand-new to bird identification, armed only with my field guide and binoculars, birding alone during the pandemic, and eventually I simply had to walk away. I found birding in the woods both exhilarating and frustrating, because it was so difficult for a beginner to even know what to listen for.

    Then I discovered BirdNET.

    BirdNET is a sound ID app developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in partnership with Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany. I’ve been a bit of an evangelist for BirdNET since I started using it, and I was happy to see that similar artificial-intelligence (AI) technology has recently been integrated into the Merlin app as a “Sound ID” feature.

    Both apps are free, and both work by recording spectrograms of the sounds detected by your phone. The spectrogram—a visual representation of audio frequency and signal strength or “loudness”—is processed through a neural network that returns one or more predictions based on both the spectrogram and your location. A sound may represent multiple bird species, which the app can identify simultaneously.

    You have the option to share your recordings with Cornell’s Macaulay Library, where they’ll be used to improve the quality of IDs in the future. I usually don’t do this because because many of my recordings end with something like, “…it’s just a f*∆king squirrel, again.”

    Shortly after downloading BirdNET, I held up my phone towards the cacophony of an oak woodland one April morning, and finally begin to distinguish signal from noise. The first test: I was able to determine that a certain call I’d been hearing for weeks was the song of a Wrentit, an untrustworthy-looking little grey bird I’d seen in my Sibley book and longed to lay eyes on: It was right here all along!

    With an idea of what to look for, it wasn’t long before I was able to spot the Wrentit and learn its song by heart.…

  • Two weeks on the Farallones

    By Michael Pierson

    I recently had the pleasure of spending two weeks volunteering on the Farallon Islands as part of an invasive plant removal team. I work as a naturalist on a local whale watching boat and have spent many weekends circling the islands, wishing I could set foot on this forbidden place. The many books and articles I’ve read had given me an idea of what it would be like, but the reality was so much more than I imagined.

    View from the Farallon Islands View with nesting gulls from the Farallon Islands by Michael Pierson Marine mammals on the FarallonesMarine mammals on the Farallones by Michael Pierson

    There’s lots of planning: filling out paperwork, rolling sleeping bags, cleaning the camera lens, and completing food order lists. This last task is no easy feat. Trying to determine how many apples, eggs, or slices of cheese you’ll consume in a week is harder than you would think. There’s limited storage, fresh food can go bad, and it all must travel to the island with you because you can’t just run to the store if you forgot to buy milk.

    Flexibility is important because you don’t have a departure date so much as a window. If you’ve done a trip around the islands, you know the weather can be quite mercurial and accessing the islands is dangerous enough in good conditions. Four days before the target departure, we still didn’t know if we would be going. The wind picked up and didn’t seem to be calming any time soon. Finally, forty-eight hours before our anticipated departure, the forecast predicted a break in the wind and e-mails went out: “The trip is a go.”

    The departure day started early, with everyone arriving at the dock by 6 a.m. so we could get there and unload the boat before the wind started again. Supplies and gear were loaded and we passed under the Golden Gate for a bumpy ride to the islands. On the boat were the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service crew that I was part of and researchers from Point Blue Conservation Science, the non-profit organization that conducts most of the research on the island. Several of the researchers got seasick right away; fortunately, my time working on a boat saved me from the same fate.

    I’d traveled this route countless times before, but this felt different. As the islands became visible in the fog and the smell of thousands of pinnipeds and hundreds of thousands of birds began to burn my nostrils, I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.…

  • Birds for breakfast

    By Alan Krakauer

    Breakfast cockatooBreakfast cockatoo by Alan Krakauer

    The past year of Covid-19 saw folks change how they relate to nature. Like many of you, my wife and I enjoyed a bit of a silver lining by getting reacquainted with our local wildlife. Attendance in nearby parks soared as people sought freedom and relief in the outdoors. When one can’t get outside to scratch this itch, sometimes biophilia can find a strange and creative outlet. For us, it changed how we have breakfast!

    I present to you: Fruit Art!

    When lockdown began last March, we decided to try eating healthier by making oatmeal every morning. Instead of just throwing some pieces of fruit into the pot, I started decorating the oats to lighten the mood as we grappled with the uncertainty of the pandemic.

    Some of the inspiration came from my father-in-law: We’d laughed out loud at the whimsical mandarin, apple, and banana sections he arranged into faces for breakfast. I also channeled my inner Charley Harper to leverage the simple geometric shapes that a piece of fruit can yield in a few quick cuts. As I became more familiar with this organic ephemeral art medium, I took on the challenge to make animal-inspired designs. Naturally this included a lot of birds. Here’s a selection of our bird-related breakfast art from the past 14 months.

    Northern Cardinal by Alan KrakauerNorthern Cardinal in the style of Charley Harper, by Alan Krakauer

    Some were local species.

    Bewick's Wren in oatmeal by Alan KrakauerBewick’s Wren for breakfast by Alan Krakauer Wild Turkey in oatmeal by Alan KrakauerWild Turkey for breakfast by Alan Krakauer California Quail in oatmealCalifornia Quail by Alan Krakauer Breakfast woodpecker by Alan KrakauerPileated (?) woodpecker by Alan Krakauer

    Some were from farther afield.

    Prairie chicken or sharp-tailed grouse in oatmealPrairie chicken or Sharp-tailed Grouse by Alan Krakauer Breakfast penguin by Alan KrakauerPenguin, definitely in the style of Charley Harper, by Alan Krakauer Ostrich from banans in oatmealOstrich for breakfast by Alan Krakauer

    How many ways can you make an owl?

    Breakfast Barn Owl by Alan KrakauerBreakfast Barn Owl by Alan Krakauer Breakfast owl by Alan KrakauerGreat Horned Owl by Alan Krakauer owl in oatmealAnother Great Horned Owl by Alan Krakauer Breakfast owl by Alan KrakauerYet another Great Horned Owl by Alan Krakauer

    A couple of bonus bowls.

    Breakfast kiwi birdA kiwi, obviously, by Alan Krakauer Birds made of pears in oatmeal“Birbs,” unknown species, by Alan Krakauer

    Curious about our recipe? We use steel-cut oats and typically add apple (whatever isn’t needed for the design), ground cinnamon, and vanilla extract. Any other extra bits of fruit are chopped and added to the bottom of the bowls before we spoon in the cooked oats. Occasionally we add a splash of milk, but no extra salt, sugar, or butter.…