The sky was gray, the wind was sharp and there were still traces of snow in the ditches when I heard my first Song Sparrow this spring on March 13th. It sang from a hay field, what T. S. Roberts called “the sweet cheery song,” one of the first songsters of the new...

When Studies in the life history of the Song Sparrow by Margaret Morse Nice first appeared in print in 1937, it was 247 pages long. The ornithological world had never seen anything like it. Preliminary results of the years-long study had first been published in 1933...

Tom and I were picnicking in Yellowstone National Park when we were joined by a big black bird, a raven with menacing beak and hunched shoulders. It flew to a nearby tree and watched intently as we fished out the crackers, sliced thick slabs of Munster cheese from a...