BirdNote Daily

As it began to hail, Marlon Inniss saw several Canada Geese doing something odd. Rather than trying to shield their heads, the geese pointed their bills skyward, directly into the path of the hail. The geese were pointing the smallest surface area of their sensitive bills, the narrow tip, into the hail — minimizing the impact. Inniss’s video of the behavior helped reaffirm an observation made by naturalist Aldo Leopold one hundred years before of Northern Pintails adopting the same stance. Learn more at BirdNote.org.

In Texas, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere, people have reported seeing Northern Cardinals that are red on one side and brown on the other, indicating that a bird is half male and half female. This anomaly occurs in other species of birds, as well, not just cardinals. Insects, too! Scientists call these bilateral gynandromorphs. Learn more at BirdNote.org.

In this episode of BirdNoir, the private eye gets a call from H. Jon Benjamin about unusual Wild Turkey behavior. A male turkey (known as a “tom”) won’t leave his car alone. He keeps tapping his beak on the car. Then the turkey starts circling the house and looking in all the windows. The private eye reveals how things look from the turkey’s perspective, which points the way to a possible solution. Learn more at BirdNote.org.

In Canada, where Alberta meets The Northwest Territories, lies Wood Buffalo National Park, where endangered Whooping Cranes dance, nest, and raise their young. It's a "place of superlatives,” says park superintendent Rob Kent. “Visitors can see pristine ecosystems, 5,000 bison, 150-pound wolves, and the largest freshwater delta in North America.” When summer ends and the juvenile cranes are able to fly, they migrate 2,700 miles to their wintering grounds on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Learn more at BirdNote.org.

If this week's bright full moon pulls you outside, pause for a moment and listen. You might hear migrating songbirds overhead. Most songbirds migrate at night, when fewer predators are out. The migrants stop, feed, and rest during the day. However, many scientists believe that the main reason songbirds migrate at night is that the stars help orient them on their journey. Learn more at BirdNote.org.

Today, we’re sharing a glimpse of what it was like in mid-March at the bird exhibits in the Kyiv Zoo. Workers at the zoo stayed to take care of the animals during the Russian invasion. They worked long days, doing what it took to keep a zoo running: cleaning stalls and preparing food. They returned to bomb shelters to sleep at night. Julia Vakulenko of the Kyiv Zoo shared recordings of her coworkers caring for the zoo’s birds. Learn more at BirdNote.org.

When Cliff Swallows arrive on the breeding grounds in North America, the dirty work begins. The swallows scoop up mud in their beaks and carefully build a gourd-shaped nest with a tapered opening. They add a lining of dry grass to keep eggs warm. It takes days of work and a thousand mouthfuls of mud to finish a single nest—and it’s just one part of a large colony. Learn more at BirdNote.org.

Among the most welcome features of spring is the renewal of bird song. Can you imagine a spring without the voices of birds? The silence would -- as they say -- be deafening, the absence of their songs like the loss of one of our primary senses. Rachel Carson's 1962 book, Silent Spring, helped found the modern environmental movement. When you hear the birds (like this Spotted Towhee or its cousin, the Eastern Towhee) sing this spring, remember Rachel Carson, and be grateful. You can learn more at RachelCarson.org.

A number of years ago, poet Donika Kelly was trying to figure out how to date, when she saw a nature documentary about a bowerbird. Male Satin Bowerbirds will gather all the blue items they can find, build a beautiful structure called a bower, and do a dance to try to woo the females. Donika found herself wishing that human courtship had such a clear structure, and wrote a series of poems inspired by the bowerbird. Learn more at BirdNote.org.

Most of the time, a Ruby-crowned Kinglet is neither ruby nor regal. A tiny songbird washed in faded olive-green, the male shows a hint of crimson atop of his head — hardly a ruby crown. But don’t forsake the kinglet for flashier birds. When courting a female or dueling with another male, the kinglet exposes those ruby feathers, and his crown glows with the feathery fireworks that give the bird its name. Now is the time to look for kinglets, as they migrate north across much of the continent toward breeding sites in remote evergreen woods. Learn more at BirdNote.org.