Professional Birder Answers Birding Questions

What does the raven sound like?

A bad human imitation, it's kind of like a...

[Christian imitates raven croaking]

That's a bad imitation.

Pretend I never said that.

No bird will understand that,

they'll think, What's wrong with you...

[raven croaking]

That's a raven!

I hope you heard that.

Hi, I'm Christian Cooper,

I'm a Birder, Editor,

and Author of Better Living Through Birding.

I'm here to answer your questions from the internet.

This is Birding Support.

[intriguing groovy upbeat music]

rinnamonsolls asks, Do birds have regional accents?

Absolutely.

They have their particular dialects

depending on where they are.

Many of the apps that you find that have bird songs on them

give you several different examples

from several different places,

so that you can compare and find one that's closer

to maybe the accent you're hearing.

I remember the first time I went birding down South

in like the Carolinas, and a cardinal was singing,

and I didn't recognize it,

because its dialect was completely different

from the cardinals I was used to hearing in New York.

Mostly, you'll notice that difference in songs.

Basically a bird saying, Hi, I'm Bob, I'm a yellow warbler;

and I am the best-looking yellow warbler ever,

this is my territory.

If you're a female, come check me out, baby,

and if you're another male, get the heck off my lawn!

It's long, gives you a lot of information.

The call is typically short and sharp.

It's like, Hey, or Hey, hey, danger, danger!

You will notice the accents in songs, calls are too short.

Next is from _lady_rainicorn_;

Perhaps a dumb question,

_lady_rainicorn_, there are no dumb questions,

But how do you actually find the birds?

What you wanna do first of all

is you've gotta achieve a sort of zen state.

And what do I mean by that is,

your head is going through all the different things

that you're thinking about in the morning or whenever,

those have to get silenced.

You're no longer paying attention to your inner monologue,

you're totally engaged with the outdoors.

And what you're looking for and listening for,

'cause you are using both of your eyes and your ears,

you are looking for any sort of sharp, sudden motion

in the greenery,

which is separate from like a leaf being moved by the wind;

and you'll learn to tell the difference

with a little practice.

So you're looking for that sharp, sudden motion

of a bird moving through the foliage.

Also, you're looking for shapes,

'cause there are some birds, like owls,

who during the daytime are not gonna move;

so you're looking for kind of a lump-like shape.

And then the other thing,

you want to be listening for sounds that draw your attention

in a certain direction.

And the great thing about using sound

is it's multi-directional,

your eyes can only look in one direction at any given time,

but your ears are scanning all around,

so you'll hear something here

and you're like, Oh, there's a bird up here.

Oh, there's a bird up here.

That helps you find the birds.

Let's go see if we can spot this Bewick's wren,

and if we can't, maybe we can see something else.

So, what happened just now

was I heard a little high-pitched chirp,

and that got my attention.

And then when I heard that,

I started scanning in the general location

of where the sound came from,

and I saw quick little darting motions through the foliage.

And so, that was my target.

You find the bird with your naked eye,

you keep your eye on the bird,

and you bring your binoculars to your eyes.

If you do this,

not gonna work, you're not gonna see the bird.

Practice with a stationary object,

like a sign or like that chimney there.

I got the chimney with my naked eye,

and now I'm bringing the binoculars to my eyes.

Now what I saw when I got this bird in the binoculars

was a thin, pointed bill,

a small bird, smaller than a sparrow,

and basically drab grayish-green all over,

maybe with a couple of more yellowish areas

on the underside,

and maybe the hint of a line through the eye.

And all of that,

particularly the fact that I'm here in the West,

tells me that that was an Orange-crowned warbler.

What we often do to help people

find the bird we're talking about

is we treat the tree like a clock.

And so, I'll say There's an Orange-crowned warbler

at nine o'clock at the very edge of the tree,

it's largely intuitive, largely common sense,

and it's just a lot of fun,

especially when you make all these sort of discoveries

on your own.

@ktrhyyh asks,

Birds live in a musical actually,

'cause WTF is a mating dance?

I think that is a great way of looking at it.

What is it?

It's a way to show off that you are super hot and all that.

One of the best ones I saw came on me totally by surprise.

I was in Trinidad

and I was walking through a forest

and I came to a little clearing,

and I got all excited 'cause I saw this little bird.

Basically it looked like someone had took a penguin

and shrunk it down;

it was a white-bearded manakin.

And all of a sudden, it popped like popcorn,

it was like it teleported from here to there.

And I didn't even see it,

it just went Pop, pop!

And then I noticed there was a whole bunch

of white-bearded manakins, and they were all doing it;

Pop, pop, pop, teleporting little penguins,

Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop!

I just stood there stunned.

I had stumbled onto what they call a lek, L-E-K.

And a lek is an area where males go as a group to show off,

to try to get a female to say,

Yeah, that guy's really got the popcorn thing down.

It's pretty amazing what these birds will do to get a mate.

lordphoenix81 asks,

Why are male birds, mammals, so beautiful and majestic,

they do all kinds of display of art to attract females,

while the females are just plain color?

All right,

[hand smacking] I'm going in.

There's a thing that the female bird typically does

that the male bird does not:

they brood the eggs.

So the female has to sit on the nest

and incubate the eggs with the warmth of her body.

And when she's doing that, she is basically immobile,

she is completely vulnerable to potential predators.

So, female birds

typically are what we call cryptically colored;

they're colored in plain, drab ways

to help them blend in

so they're not as vulnerable to predation.

The male birds on the other hand

typically do not have that problem,

because a lot of male birds don't brood the eggs.

So they can be all kinds of bright, festive colors

which they wanna be to attract a mate

and show their fitness.

And so, that's a way for the female

to judge the fitness of the male.

So that's why you get in birds

what we call sexual dimorphism,

a difference in the form of the bird

based on the sex of the bird.

Catpitalsea asks,

Do birds know exactly where they're going,

or are they just winging it?

They know;

they have a certain instinctual knowledge of where to go,

but then they also have all these different ways

of telling where they're going.

Whether it is the quantum entanglement in their eyes

that lets them see the magnetic poles,

navigating by landmarks like mountain chains or coastlines,

they can tell the sun, the angle of the sun,

north from south.

So they have a lot of ways of telling where they're going.

Willing-Today-1059,

Do you bird alone or with others?

You know, the answer is both.

One of the great things about birding

is that if you're a solitary kind of person,

it is the perfect solitary activity.

You just walk around and you get to experience the solitude

and commune with nature on a very deep personal, solo level.

One of my favorite things is when I stumble on a bird

when I'm birding alone,

and I feel like nature is revealing a little bit of herself

just to me in that moment;

and it's glorious.

And then there's the communal aspect,

you know, the comradery, the birding with friends,

that joined experience of seeing a bird together

that you were not expecting,

and you're high-fiving

and you're just in a communal state of awe.

So you get a little bit of both,

but really it is completely up to you

and what your temperament allows.

PenguinSexParty asks,

What's your guys opinion about pigeons?

I used to be like, Oh my God, why are you bothering me

with these birds?

And then I found out a little bit more,

their visual processing abilities are so great

that they've done tests where the pigeons

have been able to sort human artworks by school of art,

like impressionist versus another school of art.

So many amazing things about pigeons,

including their ability to home in

on heading back to a certain place.

And most important of all,

pigeons are in all our major cities.

And so, they are the bird ambassador

to so many people who are just stuck in urban areas

and maybe don't get to go out

into a beautiful green setting like this.

They are the window into the natural world,

into the wild world.

So I have nothing but respect for pigeons

as I've learned more and more about them,

and so should you.

@CameronMArcher asks,

Birding is getting your ass up before sunrise

because warblers.

Well that's not a question, but it is the correct answer.

Warblers are like butterflies with personality,

they're small, they're very active,

and they come in an incredible range of colors and patterns.

And so, in the East where you have about 35 different kinds,

it's like a pageant,

'cause they all come at different times

of the spring migration,

you can almost calculate when each group is gonna arrive,

and then there's a moment when there's the overlap

of the early ones and the late ones,

and you can have like a 25 warbler a day,

and you are in heaven,

because you're just seeing so many gorgeous,

beautiful birds.

So, yeah, it's all about the warblers.

Jellowcakewalk;

When I hear a bird sound I have never heard before,

what steps do I take to identify it?

This is a great question,

'cause this is how I learned my bird songs.

If you try to learn it by, you know, playing recordings,

it's like Northern Mockingbird,

[Christian imitates Northern Mockingbird chirping]

Eastern Bluebird,

[Christian imitates Eastern Bluebird chirping]

and it all becomes just a big mishmash.

Whenever I hear a bird I don't recognize,

I take the time to track down the bird

and put my eyes on it.

I have to see the bird with its mouth opening

and its throat vibrating and its tail bobbing

as it makes the sound,

'cause otherwise you can think you're seeing the bird

that's making the sound,

when really it's actually another bird in the bush.

You've spent 20 minutes crawling through the shrubs,

trying to see this darn bird

that has been making this darn sound

that has you frantic with curiosity,

hearing the song over and over and over again,

and then you associate the song

with that experience of crawling through the shrubs

in the Hudson Valley on a Sunday

with the sun beating down on you

and getting your knees muddy.

And the next time you hear it,

your brain is gonna flash right back to that moment

and you're gonna be,

Oh!

That's a Northern Mockingbird singing,

'cause you've made the association.

So this question is from @AjayHolmes,

#AskABlackBirder,

what do you all carry in your birding pack

when you go out birding?

We don't all carry the same things,

but, of course, we're gonna bring our optics,

in my case, that's a pair of binoculars,

other people will bring cameras, some will bring both.

You're probably gonna bring a field guide;

and what a field guide does,

is it's a kind of a compendium

of all the different birds you might find

in a particular area.

Most of us these days carry a field guide

on our phone, electronically.

Similarly, we don't typically carry journals these days,

what we do do is we record our sightings electronically

on Cornell Lab's eBird,

and that lets all that data get aggregated

both for you to look at later,

and for Cornell Labs to crunch,

so they find out more about the birds.

A couple other things are gonna be a hat

for either sun protection or to keep the rain off my head,

and snacks and water.

I do not bird hungry, 'cause birding hungry is no fun.

So how long I bird on any giving outing

really depends on where I am and the kind of day it is.

You know, sometimes you can be out there,

and you're not seeing that much,

in which case you might cut it short,

and then there are other times

when you're just having the time of your life,

in which case I'm gonna be out there for hours.

I've spent up to six hours at a stretch

birding Central Park alone.

So it really depends on the day and the birds.

This question is from msbonnie 0414,

Will buying more hummingbird feeders

keep those little, expletive deleted's, from fighting?

Maybe.

Hummingbirds are notoriously cantankerous,

they are aggressive,

and they are in often a constant state of war,

as they fight for territory and for food sources.

I always think that they've kind of got their engines

revved up because of their high metabolism,

and it gives them constant road rage.

So will putting up more hummingbird feeders

have them not fight as much?

It'll probably help,

it'll especially help if you put those feeders up

sort of spaced apart,

because then one bird can come to this feeder

and another bird can come to that feeder,

and they're not necessarily in line of sight of each other.

bleachedtattoo asks,

How do I attract more birds to my garden?

There are all kinds of native plants for your area

that you can plant in your garden that will bring the birds.

Nectar for hummingbirds,

the natural seeds it produces for other kinds of birds,

seed-eating birds,

but also a lot of these plants host insects.

And those insect hosts are crucial to birds,

particularly during the breeding season

when they need good protein to feed their young.

So far better than just relying on feeders

is to actually grow the plants that these birds evolved with

over millions of years to eat.

In fact, there's an organization

called Homegrown National Park

creating a whole network of people

who are growing native plants

to help support the birds and other wildlife.

I do it myself on my rooftop in Manhattan.

I got a bunch of pots up there,

and I grow plants that are native to the region

to attract the birds and the bugs.

Drake0074 asks,

Is it okay to put a baby bird back in its nest?

Yes,

but you could also just leave it where it is

and let nature run its course;

because very often,

the parents are not far away

and they're keeping an eye on the baby bird,

and they will coax it to where it needs to be.

And also all birds reach that point where they're fledging,

where they are learning how to fly for the first time,

and they're gonna fall,

and they're gonna be awkward,

and they're not gonna get it right,

and it's gonna take them a little bit.

If it were me, I would probably just leave it where it is.

So from @JadeMNeve, we have the question,

A question for #birders!

What's a bird you've heard plenty of times but never seen?

This is the most frustrating thing for us birders,

is when we've heard it many times but never seen it.

The one I always go back to is the Gray-breasted Wood-Wren

in Costa Rica.

I was in a place called Monteverde,

and I heard this bird over and over and over again.

Never saw the bird.

Very frustrating,

but hopefully, eventually, with enough patience and work,

you'll get to actually see whatever the bird is.

Next question is from Budget_Sun_6186,

Bird feeder; yay or nay?

My answer, yay;

and I say that because I started birding

because I put up a bird feeder in the backyard.

So I think it is a great way

to get an introduction to birding,

it is a great way for people who are home bound,

for elderly people to have the birds come to them.

I put up hummingbird feeders all over the place,

and that's a great joy

because those birds are so unique and so special,

and to have them come so close is wonderful.

I've actually had hummingbirds feed from a little feeder

in the palm of my hand.

And one time, I was changing a hummingbird feeder

and the male hummingbird came over and was like,

No, no, I'm not done yet.

And there he is feeding it,

and I had to dutifully hold it while he fed

until he was done,

and then I could take it in and change it.

I think some people don't want the birds

to associate humans with food,

I don't think there's too much trouble from that

because they associate the feeders with food,

not necessarily the person.

Also you have to be careful with feeders,

you have to clean them out,

you don't wanna let seeds sit there for too long

and then it gets moldy,

and then you're just spreading disease.

And if there is an outbreak of disease in your area,

then you definitely wanna stop feeding for a while

because feeders can artificially congregate birds

in one spot where they normally wouldn't be,

and then they can spread disease amongst each other.

So, you know, feed with care.

This bird feeder is great,

you'll be able to see everything

that's happening here up close.

And, you know, whatever kind of feed you put in

is gonna alter what kind of birds come to your feeder.

Cardinals love sunflower seeds,

American goldfinches love thistle seeds,

you put in peanuts and a lot of birds love the peanuts,

you know the woodpeckers, the blue jays,

cracked corn for black birds.

GoorillaInTheRing;

What are some cool unique abilities

certain birds have?

Hummingbirds, the only birds that can fly backwards,

that incredibly fast metabolism

that lets them beat their wings

like 60 beats per second or more.

They'd starve to death if that metabolism stayed

at that same rate overnight.

So every night their heartbeat goes down to almost nothing,

their body temperature goes down to almost nothing,

they literally enter a form of suspended animation

called torpor.

And then the next morning they have to jumpstart

their entire life system back into life.

Owls have special feathers

on the leading edge of their wing

which breaks up the air,

which allows them to fly silently.

A great gray owl hunts by sound in the winter,

listening for the sounds of rodents under the snow pack.

And by that sound alone, they punch down through the snow

and grab the rodent with their talons.

I mean just wild, crazy stuff.

And when we breathe, [inhales deeply]

and we're breathing out the old air,

we're breathing in the fresh air,

and some of it mingles in our lungs,

that's not particularly efficient.

Birds have a much more efficient respiratory system,

so that that air doesn't mingle,

so the fresh air stays fresh

and they get a lot more bang for the buck

from their breathing.

They need that because of their high-energy activity

of flying.

But the thing is that system

goes all the way back to the dinosaurs.

And in fact, birds are dinosaurs,

living, breathing dinosaurs,

the only ones who survived the extinction,

and that's probably the coolest thing about them of all.

jmaXX1087 asks,

How can you tell if a bird is a crow or a Raven?

If you have them side by side, it's easy,

'cause a raven is huge bird.

But if you don't have them side by side,

it's hard to judge size.

So how can you tell?

For one thing, a raven will have a wedge-shaped tail

where a crow has kind of a fan-shaped tail.

Raven has a big schnoz,

like this really heavy beak,

whereas the crow's beak is gonna be a lot thinner.

But probably the best way to tell is by the voice.

A crow will make those classic crow sounds,

short or long caws, [imitates crow cawing]

or... [imitates long crow cawing]

Raven doesn't make those sounds.

Typical raven sound is a croak,

like a crow maybe with a sore throat,

kind of like a... [imitates raven croaking]

That's a bad imitation.

Pretend I never said that,

no bird will understand that,

they'll think, What's wrong with you...

[raven croaking]

That's a raven!

I hope you heard that.

Maybe he was fooled.

[Christian imitates raven croaking]

[raven croaking]

[Christian chuckles]

[Christian imitates raven croaking]

Now he's like, No, you're just stupid. [chuckles]

The other way to tell ravens will soar, crows will not.

So if you see a big black bird making lazy circles

in the sky for a long period of time, it's a raven.

Crows at most will glide for a couple of seconds

and then they're flapping again.

Next question is from askmedo1995,

Spotting scope or binoculars?

Depends.

If you are going for warblers,

warblers are very small, very active birds

that are constantly flitting around in the foliage,

you're gonna want binoculars,

'cause you're not gonna be able to get them in the scope,

they're not gonna hold still long enough.

On the other hand, if you're going for shore birds,

very often, they're at a great distance,

and they're usually often in a rather fixed position

or only moving around sort of along the shoreline

in a fixed direction.

Those you can get in the scope a lot more easily.

So, you know, it's a combination,

know what you're most likely to see

and equip yourself accordingly.

All right, next question is from notoriousshasha,

Can you tell what type of bird from its nest/eggs?

Some people can, I cannot.

As far as the nests go, two things to know.

First of all, a nest is not a house,

a nest is the equivalent of a cradle or a crib

for almost all birds.

They use it for raising the young, and then they're done;

that's it, they don't use it after that.

The second thing to know

is that different birds have different nesting strategies.

There are birds that are cavity nesters,

they nest in holes in trees,

and that's who will nest in a house like this.

Typical cavity nesters are things like woodpeckers,

compare that to say a cardinal or a robin,

a cardinal's nest I think is generally made out of twigs,

whereas a robin's nest

is made out of typically grass and mud.

And then there are birds that nest

just like on a scrape in the ground,

and that would be some of your shore birds.

And then mourning doves are notoriously bad nest makers.

They'll like throw a couple of twigs down

on top of an air conditioner,

and then think that's a nest.

And half the times their nests fail,

'cause the eggs are rolling off, and that's that.

And yet they're prolific beyond words,

there are more mourning doves

across the whole North American continent.

Next question is from Square_Music1695,

Is it true you can attract birds playing their calls

on a speaker or phone?

It is true, and you don't wanna do it,

because you're disrupting the bird's natural behavior.

Usually what you're playing is the song of arrival,

and that's gonna get the other bird agitated

and come forward to try to confront this opponent.

Another reason is courtesy to the other birders around you.

If you're in a place that's birded with a lot of people

and you start playing this call,

people are gonna come rushing over thinking,

Oh, I just heard a cerulean warbler singing,

and you got a sheepish look, you'll go,

Oh, sorry that was me, eh.

Nah, you don't want that.

It's bad birder etiquette in general.

And then there's just the sounds

we can make with our own mouths.

That disturbs me less.

You know, if you've got the skill to fake the bird out

and bring him in with your own voice,

yeah, again, you don't wanna do it too much,

but you know every once in a blue moon,

it's not the end of the world.

Important-Advisor545, hmm...

What do you write in a birding journal?

The date, the time, the weather,

I'll even sometimes write the phase of the moon,

and then of course a list of what birds I've seen

in the course of the walk,

and I'll put numbers to approximate

how many of those birds I saw.

And that's a great sort of snapshot of the day.

If you go back you can see

exactly how many of these did I see this year on this date

as opposed to say a year later, five years later.

One of the things that has really come to the fore

in studying birds is citizen science.

The observations of just regular old amateur birders.

If we can aggregate them and put them together

and review them over time,

we can spot trends in what's happening

to the bird population.

Good example, Christmas Bird Count

in my hometown of New York back in say 1920,

it would show very different birds

than a Christmas Bird Count in New York today.

For example, you would not see cardinals.

And now cardinals are a common bird all over New York City.

By keeping lists, journals like this,

you can keep track of that personally.

And if you keep those lists on an app called eBird,

which is totally free,

it's from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology,

all that data from all these different people

goes to the lab and they crunch the numbers

to be able to tell you all kinds of things

about bird populations over time in different areas.

And that's tremendously helpful to science.

That's also totally helpful on an individual level.

Let's say I'm planning to take a trip to Sausalito,

I can look up eBird reports for Sausalito,

and I can see where people saw what they saw and how many.

eBird is fantastic.

Vespasianus26 asks,

To all you big city dwellers, that's me,

How many different birds do you actually see

in your everyday life?

How many different kinds of birds you see

really depends on the time of year and what city you're in.

If you big city happens to sit on a migration route,

like New York City does,

your everyday life becomes a wonder

during the migration times.

It's like a tide washing in new stuff,

and it turns every morning into a treasure hunt.

But even in the quiet times,

there were more birds than you would think.

I remember just on a regular, average, every old day,

I was on top of my roof

and I saw a big-old red-tailed hawk

sitting on the next roof over,

and I thought That's pretty cool.

And then I heard this... [imitates bird chittering]

Because there was a pair of American kestrels,

our smallest falcon,

and they were doing basically tag team wrestling.

One would swoop down and take a run at the red-tailed hawk,

which is like many times the size of the kestrel,

and then the other one would take a turn,

and the poor red-tailed hawk

is there like... [imitates bird groaning]

As they're taking turns.

And then suddenly, the kestrel stopped,

and I hear... [imitates falcon kekking]

And a peregrine falcon comes dive-bombing

and coming after the red-tailed hawk.

Meanwhile, the kestrels were like,

No, we're not getting involved in this.

We're sitting this one out. [chuckles]

And it just turned into this raptor warfare

on the streets above New York

with everyone down below me completely oblivious,

and I'm like, Bring me the popcorn,

'cause this is the show I wanna see.

JavertRaison asks,

How to ID birds when they are flying?

You're looking for many of the same things

as you're looking for when the bird is perched,

in that, you're looking for field march,

where the colors are, the size and shape of the bird,

the patterns, any sounds it might make.

For example, in flight,

American goldfinches have a flight call that they make

that kind of goes Potato chip, potato chip, potato chip.

Also, the way they fly can often help you identify

what the bird is.

Swallows and swifts,

they're both aerial specialists catching bugs on the wing,

but they have different ways of flying;

where swifts have a very stiff-winged flight,

so it's kind of like a bat,

Swallows have a very swooping flight

where they're pulling the wings in with every stroke.

So all these things can help you tell

especially what family the bird is in,

and then you can get some of the plumage details

to find out exactly which bird you're looking at.

lateralus420 asks,

Will birds actually use birdhouses made by people?

Yes, but here's the thing,

depending on what kind of birdhouse you make or put up,

that's gonna determine whether or not birds use it,

and what birds use it.

So take this birdhouse for example.

This is actually a pretty well-constructed bird house,

you'll notice it has ventilation at the top,

so that it doesn't turn into a sauna.

It's got some drainage at the bottom,

so that any water that gets in can drain out,

it's made so that you can open it up

at the end of the season and clean the old nest out.

It's got an overhang to help prevent any water

from getting in.

The size of the hole is gonna determine

what kind of bird is gonna use the house.

You want this hole to be only as big as necessary

for the kind of bird that you want to use the nest box

to go in and out;

because the bigger it gets,

the more other things can get in,

whether that's other kinds of birds

that you're not looking to have use the box, or predators.

Now the thing you have to remember

is not all birds nest in birdhouses,

a lot of them will build nests on twigs and branches.

The only kind that will use a birdhouse are cavity nesters.

Busy_Base_2753;

Lack of respect in birding and too many twitchers.

There are etiquette rules to birding,

and we should all follow them.

One of them is that you don't trespass on private property

without getting permission.

And you don't point your binoculars

in the direction of somebody's house or apartment,

you do not go trampling off the path in a sensitive area

and destroy the vegetation

'cause you wanna get a better look at the bird.

Do not use playback,

where you play the song of a bird

to try to bring it into you,

and being respectful to the other birders around you,

and being welcoming to other birders around you,

regardless of who they are or what their background is.

So what is a twitcher?

A twitcher is somebody who will drop everything

because there's a rare bird and they have got to see it.

We all twitch to greater or lesser extents,

it's not a bad thing, it can be a little obsessive.

And if that's all you're about with your birding,

that's probably not the best way to be.

mich3113moor3 asks, Best birding app?

Without a doubt, Merlin.

Merlin is an app put out by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology,

it is free.

You can hold up your phone, and it will listen around you,

and then based on what it picks up,

it will tell you exactly what birds are around you.

It is not 100% accurate,

but it gets better and better and better.

It is I would say probably about 95 to 98% accurate,

and it's changed the birding world.

This question is from Quora,

What time of day is best for birdwatching?'

In my opinion, the earlier the better,

'cause the birds are just like us,

they wake up and they're hungry, they want breakfast.

Birds are warm-blooded animals like us,

maintaining a certain body temperature.

To do that, you need to burn calories,

you need to have the energy,

so you need to be eating.

So they are most active first thing in the morning,

things will slow down by the middle of the day,

a lot of birds will take a siesta around noontime,

and there will be a second pulse of activity

in the afternoon.

I like to get there like right before dawn,

'cause sometimes there's something

that we call the dawn chorus,

and we don't know why, but for some reason,

a whole bunch of birds will start singing all at once

right before or at dawn.

And if I'm there to hear it,

it's like getting a table of contents

of what birds are in the park that morning.

Then I go out and find them.

Pioustrickster-1089;

Where can I find local birdwatching groups

and communities?

You can always look online.

The local groups pop up pretty quickly.

The most obvious ones are typically

the local chapters of Audubon/Bird Alliance,

'cause a lot of the local Audubon chapters

have changed their names now to Bird Alliance.

@birdmoder asks,

Birding question!

What is the most effort you've put into seeing a species,

whether it be harsh conditions, distance,

or any other things.

In the height of the COVID epidemic,

I hopped on a plane when nobody was traveling to go anywhere

solely because I had the opportunity

to see finally a harpy eagle.

And so, I got on a plane to Ecuador,

one ruined pair of hiking boots later,

I was staring up at the nest of a harpy eagle

with this big ass female sitting there looking glorious.

SupBenedick;

If you had the power,

what laws would you make/enforce to protect birds?

That's too easy;

leash laws for unleashed dogs in protected areas.

That's all I'll say on that subject matter.

In addition, keep your cats indoors, please! [sighs]

Household cats are non-native predators,

our birds have not evolved to deal with them,

and they kill billions of birds in North America every year.

So, please, keep your cat indoors.

Another big hazard to our birds is skyscrapers.

Birds don't see the glass,

or if they do see the glass,

they see a reflection of the green space around it,

and they smash into it, break their necks, and die.

There was a building in Chicago

that was this massive bird killer in a single day,

killed something like 2000 birds.

Bird-safe glass looks the same to our eye,

but the birds can see it,

and so, it dramatically reduces the number of collisions.

bearbeanbear;

What birding locations are on your bucket list?

Cuba, 'cause I wanna see the bee hummingbird,

the smallest bird in the world,

Madagascar,

because they are chopping down those rainforests there,

and I wanna see all the wildlife,

but particularly the unique birds there, the endemics,

before that's gone,

and probably highest on my list is Bhutan:

a Himalayan kingdom that for decades

was closed off to the West,

and now it's open, I hear it's wonderful,

the people are wonderful,

and they have birds.

I mean, the people I know

who have birded Bhutan and come back

have just raved about what they've seen,

particularly the pheasants.

So, Bhutan.

That's all the time we have for today.

Hopefully, I've answered some of your questions,

but more important is to develop new questions,

more things you want to know because you've been out there,

and seeing and hearing things,

[Bewick wren chirping] like this Bewick wren

that is singing over my shoulder.

Just go out, you know, grab a pair of binoculars.

If you don't have binoculars,

use your own two eyes and see what you can see,

hear what you can hear,

use your Merlin app, use whatever you got,

and just enjoy it;

that's the whole point, is just have fun.

Tune in next time, folks, for more Bird Support.

Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.

[groovy upbeat music]