Laura Erickson's For The Birds

A cute little predator on the Endangered Species List for Wisconsin and Minnesota has been turning up here and there in both states this spring.

On Saturday, Laura went to Ashland County, Wisconsin, to look at a very lost tropical falcon, a Crested Caracara.

BB's fine but somebody isn't.

An unprecedented number of Scarlet Tanagers turned up on Peabody Street this year, and Laura was thrilled.

A beautiful, useful, and engaging tour de force.

It's a red-letter day when we see one of the prettiest woodpeckers of all.

Laura recalls the birds who inspired her baby daughter's second word.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has created two extremely useful apps for birders. Merlin is wonderful and useful, but far from perfect.

Laura sparked unprecedented anger in a listener last week because of a program and blogpost from 2007. (All my blogpost/transcripts have photos, and some are longer than the program itself, but this program's linked transcript/blogpost has a *lot* more information than I could include in the program, along with pertinent photos and a video.)

*The Birds That Audubon Missed* by Kenn Kaufman is a clear-eyed and surprisingly exciting portrait of a time and place that have long ago disappeared, and an important and timely book as well. Laura can’t recommend it highly enough.

Kenn Kaufman has written an important new book. Laura begins her review by talking about her own personal feelings about Audubon and his work before Kaufman's rich and enlightening book gave her a broader, more truthful picture of a deeply flawed yet important human being and his contemporaries.

Laura's been in love with a pretty little sparrow since she first saw it in 1977.

With birds, as with her children, Laura has trouble picking a favorite.

Yet more owls have died, this time in Chicago, from rat poison.

Not much is happening in Laura's yard yet, but things will be popping within the coming week or two. (Lang Elliott recorded the Carolina Wren's rolling trill. Laura recorded the wren's song.)

Chickens haven't established themselves as wild, feral birds in most places in the world, but they're still the most abundant bird on the planet.

If chickens found their way to Hawaii on their own, things would have worked out okay for everyone. Unfortunately, they brought humans along, too.

During spring migration, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds usually arrive a couple of weeks after Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers do, for a very good reason.

Millions of years ago, Hawaii was off to a rocky start.

The rules of counting non-native birds are not always consistent.