Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Across America, something extraordinary is hiding in plain sight. Grasslands: a critical ecosystem that many Americans are unfamiliar with.

Grasslands may look empty at first glance, but they are vibrant with life. Grasslands support people’s livelihoods, Indigenous cultures, ecosystem functions and numerous bird species. They have evolved to withstand regular disturbances from grazing animals, drought, and fire. Yet despite the essential services they provide, grasslands are disappearing rapidly. More than half of bird species that depend on grasslands for breeding habitat are in steep decline.

We’re proud to be part of America’s Grasslands Coalition, we invite you to look closer and learn more: https://grasslanders.org/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=grasslands-week-mini&utm_content=cornelllab

Looking for a last minute gift this coming Father's Day? Bird Academy has just the thing!📣 🎁✨Gift a loved one or treat yourself to a self-paced, online course. From bird identification to nature journaling to explorations of favorite bird families, Bird Academy has something for everyone, with no deadlines and nothing to ship! Plus, you can save big for a limited time on select courses, including Understanding Bird Behavior or Waterfowl Identification. Check out our catalog:

Learn More About Birds and Nature with These Courses | Bird Academy • The Cornell Lab Start at your level. Go at your own pace. There’s something for everyone. Interested in our new quizzing tool, that lets you chose what birds to learn? Try ...

QUIZ ANSWER: This week’s quiz bird has a rapidly expanding range and a penchant for wandering northward, making it a real-life mystery bird for some as it increasingly turns up in unexpected places in the northern U.S. and southern Canada. Fortunately, it has an abundance of field marks to help identify it: a bubble-gum pink bill; gray face; long, thin neck; chestnut body; broad black wings with bold white wing stripes; and long pink legs that extend beyond a short tail. These points all add up to an identification of BLACK-BELLIED WHISTLING-DUCK, one of North America’s most distinctive—and most rapidly expanding—waterfowl species. To learn more about this species visit All About Birds: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Black-bellied_Whistling-Duck
Thanks to Anne Bielamowicz for sharing this photo with eBird and the Macaulay Library archive.

BIRD QUIZ: Here is a trio of birds photographed in early June in Virginia, north of their normal range. Do you know what species it is? Leave your answer in Comments and we'll post ours at the end of the day. Thanks to Anne Bielamowicz for sharing this photo with eBird and the Macaulay Library.

Habitat is a great way to narrow down bird ID. You may think there are limited species in urban areas and city parks, but there are so many species you can see in these areas! Swipe to see some iconic city dwellers. Cemeteries, parks, city dumps, and even parking lots are great places to catch sights of birds in urban areas.

Fun facts about some of the birds featured here:
Peregrine Falcons, who previously had perilously low population numbers because of DDT, were brought back from the brink thanks to the Peregrine Fund in 1970 (formed by the research director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Dr. Tom Cade and colleagues). Because their numbers bounced back so triumphantly, they had to spread out and seek new nesting sites. Peregrine Falcons, who naturally nest on cliff sides have made adaptations to nest on artificial structures like bridges and cathedral tops , making cityscapes ideal for this fast flier.

It may come as a surprise to see noisy, green-and-gray parrots racing through cities in the United States. But Monk Parakeets, native to South America and long popular in the pet trade, established wild populations in the U.S. in the 1960s. These social parakeets nest communally and dozens live together year-round in large, multifamily stick nests built in trees and on power poles. These large group nests may be one aid to surviving the cold winters in adopted cities as far north as Chicago and New York.

We're finishing up our run of with the piercing stare of this Boreal Owl. Compare with the photo from real life—how do you think Fuertes did in capturing this bird's essence? We love the look of concentration and the hint of power we get from this predator's posture and the glimpse of its talons.

Boreal Owls—often called Tengmalm's Owl in Europe—are small but fierce predators that live in the snowy boreal forests from Alaska all the way around the Northern Hemisphere to Siberia. Their range extends southward into the Rocky Mountains, across parts of Europe, and into Kazakhstan and China. They hunt mainly in darkness, feeding on voles, mice, shrews, pocket gophers, and some small birds including redpolls and crossbills. We hope you've enjoyed this brief survey of Louis Agassiz Fuertes's artwork—what's been your favorite Fuertes bird during this series?

This berry-colored bird—aptly named the Varied Bunting—is the next in our series. Just as fascinating as the image are the notes written in the margins—a hint at Fuertes’s eye for detail and exacting standards. We love this beautiful image and its stunning subject—but Fuertes notes several areas he’s dissatisfied with, writing, for example:

“Blue of forehead should be lighter and clearer, contrasting sharply against the black face.”
“All the dark areas in the wings and back are too black. Also, try to blend the light blue of wing-bend into the violet, and that into the deeper red of the lesser coverts, to remedy the blotchy appearance it now has.”
“The yellow of these blossom heads isn’t clear enough. There should be no blue used, except in the shaded parts”

By the time he'd finished this painting, Fuertes was intimately familiar with how Varied Buntings should look in life—and intent on reproducing that faithfully.

Though this watercolor is more than a century old, the bright blue and burnt orange of this Lazuli Bunting remains vibrant. Louis Agassiz Fuertes painted this for a 1902 book, Birds of the Rockies, by Leander Keyser. Fuertes’s knack for mimicking life through art made him a popular choice for authors of books about birds.

As beautiful as their feathers are, Lazuli Bunting also have beautiful songs. Young males listen to older, nearby males, piecing together bits of the songs into their own. This process creates a kind of “song neighborhood” where songs from a particular area all sound similar. Males from the same neighborhood learn to recognize and tolerate each other. They respond more aggressively to unfamiliar songs that come from outside their neighborhood.

Learning bird calls and songs can be a great way to tune in and connect to birds, even when you can't see them! Here are our tips for getting started:

Bird ID Skills: How to Learn Bird Songs and Calls When a bird sings it's telling you what it is and where it is. Learn bird calls and open a new window on your birding.

What a close-up! This portrait of an Egyptian Vulture is one of many paintings Louis Agassiz Fuertes made during an expedition to “Abyssinia” (present-day Ethiopia) with the Chicago Field Museum (1926-27). During his travels to the area, Fuertes painted roughly 108 species of mammals and birds. With this detailed painting we’re transitioning from Fuertes’s black-and-white artwork and starting to look at his beautiful sense of color.

Egyptian Vultures have a large range, spanning from western Europe, to East Africa, into India. These birds were often represented in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. While once fairly common, this and many other African vulture species are currently endangered owing to a number of factors.