Red-breasted Nuthatch, Sitta Canadensis

A pair of diminutive red-breasted nuthatches has been frequenting our bird feeders in the past several weeks. Smaller and more colorful than their cousins, the white-breasted nuthatch, our pair cut a fine figure with their gray backs and rosy breasts, and jaunty black...

Gray Catbird,  Dumetella carolinensis

The summer is rapidly drawing to a close. The chorus of birds that I could hear from my bed at 5:00 a.m. in June has dwindled to almost nothing and mornings are silent. We have not been entirely deserted, however. The gray catbird which nested in our yard this summer...

The Green Heron, Butorides virescens

By Sue Leaf Tucked away in a small cove of South Lindstrom Lake, a pair of Green Herons were making a fuss. They sat high in a dead tree. Their forms were dark, but I knew their bodies would be a deep green with a rich rusty-colored neck. The birds were hunched, like...

Song Sparrow, Melospiza melodia

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...

Margaret Morse Nice: The Song Sparrow Whisperer

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...