Laura Erickson's For The Birds

What's happening on Peabody Street?

Lang Elliott's free "Hear Birds Again" app with his recommended headphones is "fantabulous."

When the Air Quality Index is high due to smoke particulates, is it safe to set out birdbaths?

Birders using eBird are making an invaluable contribution to science, conservation, and education. This summer the New York Times is collaborating with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to encourage more birders to use it.

Weather radar provides an excellent picture of the movements of migrating birds that has helped demonstrate how serious the losses of birds in North America have been.

The first test we had to measure changes in bird populations, the Breeding Bird Survey, was wonderful but had important shortcomings.

eBird has been a game changer in allowing birders to keep track of every bird they see, and to be able to access information about any of those birds quickly and easily.

When Laura started birding, the only ways of getting the word out about rare birds were slow and inefficient. eBird has been a game changer.

A quirky bird that is much more often heard than seen.

How do we explain to toddlers and nesting birds that they must stay indoors with filtered air to be safe as smoke fills the atmosphere?

New York Times Bestseller author Jennifer Ackerman has a brand new book about owls. *What an Owl Knows* is extensively researched, beautifully written, and comprehensive, covering just about every imaginable aspect of owl biology, behavior, and psychology, as well as how they figure in the human imagination. And Laura is delighted that her beloved education owl Archimedes is covered in depth. She used recordings of Archimedes at the start and finish of this program.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has developed an ever-improving but always free non-commercial app to help us identify bird songs.

Birds use song, not fences, walls, or flags, to mark off their territories, and never send anyone else off to fight their battles. (I'm using Lang Elliott's Mourning Dove recording to open and close this one because in 1998, Michigan declared the Mourning Dove its official Bird of Peace.

Starting the first day Laura started birding, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has been her most valuable and beloved ornithological resource.

Laura got some photos of this gorgeous little sparrow at the Bog last week, reminding her of the first time she ever saw one.

One of the rarest birds seen in the Lower-48, a Ross's Gull turned up last week at Wisconsin Point.

REGI, the state-of-the-art bird rehab clinic in Antigo, Wisconsin, has been admitting hummingbirds covered in grape jelly. Jelly is apparently just too dangerous to feed birds.

One of Laura's friends gave her yet another reason to love robins.

When we set out for a day of birding, we never know what we're going to get, but even when there aren't many birds, the ones we do see can be pretty sweet.

Helping birds requires us to attack more than one issue at a time.