7 August 2026
Candice Burke posts wonderful bird photographs at @candiburke on X. In the past two weeks her yard in Hyrum in Utah’s Cache Valley has been a Little Bit of Hummingbird Heaven.
Three species are possible at this time of year: black-chinned, broad-tailed, and rufous. Can you identify these?
On 6 August 2026.
On 29 July 2026.
20 June 2026
North American grasslands have disappeared at an alarming rate and so have grassland birds, but there are still a few places to find them near Pittsburgh.
Western Pennsylvania did not have grasslands until we had strip mines. The Surface Mining Conservation and Reclamation Act of 1977 compelled coal companies to “establish a diverse, effective, and permanent vegetative cover capable of self-regeneration” and so they planted native grass.
Less than a half hour drive from Downtown Pittsburgh, there are grasslands in Allegheny and Washington Counties. I visited two of them in the past week to see grassland birds and was able to digi-scoped the birds that stood still.
The upland sandpiper (Bartramia longicuda) is a very rare bird in Allegheny County, last seen here many decades ago (50+ years, I don’t remember). This one at Imperial has friends with him. Dozens of birders have visited them. I finally made it there yesterday.
He was silent while I visited. If I’d been lucky he’d have said this!
At the Panhandle Trail at Midway, PA but there are Henslow’s sparrows, boblinks, eastern meadowlarks and grasshopper sparrows (Ammodramus savannarum), to name a few. I was able to digi-scope this one while he was singing.
I cannot hear him singing but maybe you can. 😉
2 June 2026
In the midst of Peregrine Fledge Watch Season this blog has been All Peregrines All The Time but I’ll take a break to tell you about our outing on 31 May.
Fourteen people came out last Sunday for a walk in Schenley Park. Here are 10 of us at journey’s end.
Highlights were:
Nearby a female cowbird, perhaps the birth mother, watched the fledgling. As soon as he is “weaned” from his foster parents he will figure out he’s a cowbird when he hears his mother (or another female cowbird) make the rattle call.
In all we saw 22 species. Our checklist is here https://ebird.org/checklist/S350315353 and listed below.
Schenley Park–Lower Hollow Run Trail, Allegheny, Pennsylvania, US
May 31, 2026, 8:30 AM – 10:15 AM. 14 participants
Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) 2
Chimney Swift (Chaetura pelagica) 10
Red-bellied Woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus) 2
Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) 2
Eastern Phoebe (Sayornis phoebe) 2 Feeding a cowbird baby
Red-eyed Vireo (Vireo olivaceus) 1
Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata) 5 Newly fledged blue jay feed by parent
Tufted Titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor) 4
Northern Rough-winged Swallow (Stelgidopteryx serripennis) 30 Flying over Panther Hollow lake (pond) capturing flying bugs
Northern House Wren (Troglodytes aedon) 1 In and out of nest in light
Carolina Wren (Thryothorus ludovicianus) 1
Wood Thrush (Hylocichla mustelina) 2 Seen and heard
American Robin (Turdus migratorius) 20
Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum) 20
House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) 3
House Finch (Haemorhous mexicanus) 5
Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia) 3
Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) 10
Brown-headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater) 2 Eastern Phoebe feeding baby cowbird
Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula) 6
Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) 4
Rose-breasted Grosbeak (Pheucticus ludovicianus) 2
16 May 2026
The second week of May is always wonderful for warblers, especially along Lake Erie’s southern shore at Magee Marsh, Ohio and Presque Isle, Pennsylvania. Shown above are just a few warbler highlights from Presque Isle this week.
Also at Presque Isle, Charity Kheshgi saw a large family of common mergansers. 13 ducklings! So cute. I’m sorry I missed it.
When they swam the first few were able to climb on her back.
15 May 2026
Of the 56 species of wood warblers in North America, only two nest in cavities: the prothonotary warbler in eastern North America and Lucy’s warbler in the West. Last June I wrote about prothonotary warblers.
Now let’s explore the nesting habits of the West’s cavity nesting warbler.
Lucy’s warbler (Leiothlypis luciae) is the smallest and palest of the wood-warbler family. Named for Lucy Hunter Baird, the daughter of ornithologist Spencer Fullerton Baird, it is closely related to:
(See a photo of Lucy with her parents, here.)
It breeds in the American Southwest and northern Mexico and winters on Mexico’s Pacific coast.
Lucy’s has been called both the “mesquite warbler” and the “desert warbler” because it prefers riparian mesquite habitat and, according to Birds of the World, “nests almost entirely in the hot lower Sonoran desert of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. It occupies the driest habitat of the 4 southwestern lowland-breeding warblers.”
Lucy’s will use natural cavities such as woodpecker holes and will also build in nestboxes.
Watch as a pair of Lucy’s warblers build their nest.
15 April 2026
Brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater) are the blackbird we love to hate. The female never builds a nest but instead lays her eggs in the nests of smaller birds who feed her hungry chick while their own eggs and chicks die.
This nesting strategy evolved from the cowbirds’ historically close association with grazing herds on the Great Plains. Since the buffalo were always on the move, so were the brown-headed cowbirds. Without a home to build a nest, they use the nests of other birds.
Their nomadic existence also affected their courtship behavior. Male brown-headed cowbirds do not stake out a physical territory where a single male perches to sing. Instead males gather and loudly display to attract females. Their display is like a lek except that it is always on the move.
Watch as one male cowbird displays to a female at the feeder. When he first arrives she makes her rattle sound. Another male shows up and they both display.
This month you’ll see male cowbirds displaying together in the trees to attract more females to join them. At the end of this video another female arrives.
Eventually they’ll move on and set up their mobile lek somewhere else.
30 March 2026
Five of us gathered at Duck Hollow yesterday morning when it was cold and cloudy. Waterfowl activity was low because the river was so high. The mud bar (not a sandbar) was still submerged.
We hoped to find the blue-winged teal that was there on Saturday but no luck. Instead we saw the usual suspects, mallards and Canada geese, and a beautiful male wood duck and three common mergansers.
Thankfully the clouds broke up, the sun came out, and songbird activity picked up. A single northern rough-winged swallow gave us a Rare Bird Alert though it was “too early” by only a few days.
Red-winged blackbird males competed for the best territories before the females arrive.
One red-wing kept the area safe from raptors by chasing off an immature red-tailed hawk.
What bird did we spend the most time on? This drab brown female. Couldn’t see her back. The light was so weird that it made her face look yellow and her beak thin. Eventually we walked close enough to cancel the effects of odd light. Her drabness, conical beak, and beady eye = female brown-headed cowbird. We saw two male cowbirds displaying elsewhere.
Most surprising observation: We saw more cardinals than robins.
See our checklist at https://ebird.org/checklist/S314555426 and printed below.
Duck Hollow, Allegheny, Pennsylvania, US
Mar 29, 2026 8:30 AM – 10:45 AM, 27 species
Canada Goose (Branta canadensis) 20. More than 10 in the distance, but seen only via scope
Wood Duck (Aix sponsa) 1 Male
Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) 13
Common Merganser (Mergus merganser) 3. Pair, but not in suitable habitat
Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) 5
American Herring Gull (Larus smithsonianus) 2
Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura) 7
Cooper’s Hawk (Astur cooperii) 1
Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) 4. One immature was attacked by a red-winged blackbird
Belted Kingfisher (Megaceryle alcyon) 1
Red-bellied Woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus) 2
Downy Woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens) 2
Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) 1
Eastern Phoebe (Sayornis phoebe) 3
Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata) 4
Carolina Chickadee (Poecile carolinensis) 5
Northern Rough-winged Swallow (Stelgidopteryx serripennis) 1. (Rare Bird Alert)
Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) 2
American Robin (Turdus migratorius) 11
House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) 1
House Finch (Haemorhous mexicanus) 3
American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis) 12. Some males were molting into bright yellow
White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis) 6
Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia) 3
Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) 5. One attacked red-tailed hawk as it flew
Brown-headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater) 3. Two males, 1 puzzling female
Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) 20. Males chasing each other & females. Females also chasing each other.
23 February 2026
Starlings (European starlings, Sturnus vulgaris) are the invasive species Americans love to hate. They’ve only been on this continent for 136 years, having been successfully introduced in 1890 & 1891 in Central Park, New York. DNA studies indicate that every starling in the U.S. is descended from the Central Park group.
Have our starlings physically changed since they got here? Have they evolved differently from their native relatives in Eurasia?
In 2023 a team led by Julia M. Zichello(*) set out to answer that question. They measured 1,217 starlings including their beaks, wings and tarsi (plural of tarsus) using historical museum skins and modern birds from the U.S. and Eurasia, especially starlings in the UK.
Tarsus length can serve as proxy for bird body size.
Their study found that U.S. starlings have indeed changed from their Eurasian relatives:
Beak length in the native range has remained unchanged during the past 206 years, but we find beak length in North American birds is now 8% longer than birds from the native range. … Additionally, body size in North American starlings is smaller than those from the native range.
— Recent beak evolution in North American starlings after invasion, Julia M. Zichello et al, Nature.com
Graphs from the study show the differences in orange (U.S. starlings) and blue (native-range starlings).
Why did U.S. starlings make these changes?
Smaller size: A lot of reasons
The study says, “Smaller birds in North America, versus larger birds in the parent population, occurred rapidly on arrival and this trend has persisted today,” perhaps because (a) U.S. birds experience warmer summer temperatures than the native range (warmth makes organisms trend smaller), (b) starlings experienced “genetic drift” upon arrival, and/or (c) the founder population of birds (the 1890-91 group) may have randomly consisted of smaller bodied birds.
Longer beaks: Livestock grain vs. natural food
Longer beaks were the big revelation in this study and they conclude that it has to do with diet. U.S. starlings eat a lot of grain at cattle feedlots in winter (longer beaks are an advantage). Eurasian starlings don’t.
The most dramatic difference between starling diet in the U.S. and their native range is the intensity of their foraging at dairies and feedlots in the U.S., where they consume substantial amounts of food intended for livestock.
Since 1960, corn production in the U.S. has increased exponentially, which has also enabled a concurrent expansion of the cattle industry. By the 1960’s feedlot operators in several states were reporting major starling disturbance. In our data, 1960 is when we observe a marked increase in proximal starling beak length in the U.S. beyond what is observed in the native range at any time.
Starling flocks on U.S. dairies can exceed 10,000 birds and cause an estimated $800 million dollars of annual
— Recent beak evolution in North American starlings after invasion, Julia M. Zichello et al, Nature.com
lost revenue across the country. … We estimate that starlings may consume [136 million lbs] of livestock feed per year in the United States. An individual bird can eat up to 2.2 lbs (1 kg) of feed per month, and 1,000 birds can consume 630 lbs (286 kg) every hour spent foraging at feedlots.
Yikes!
Traveling the PA Turnpike in fall and winter my husband and I often remarked on the “starling barn,” a dairy farm near Plainfield with a HUGE flock of starlings that always caught our eye as we passed. This winter the starlings were not noticeable, perhaps because USDA “helped” the farmers with their starling problem. Listen to The Controversy Over Controlled Poisoning Of Starlings from WBUR in January 2017. It’s an interview with Bob Mulvihill of the National Aviary.
11 January 2026
We could watch backyard birds all day, but when they land it happens so fast we don’t see the steps from head-first flight to feet-first landing. How do they do it?
In March 2025 Bob Kroeger captured stop-action stills of birds approaching his Cape Cod feeder. All the birds use similar steps on the way to landing. Black-capped chickadees are very fast. Larger birds take a little more time.
Here are Bob’s three shots of a female northern flicker coming in to land.
(slideshow photos by Bob Kroeger)
Yesterday Cornell Lab of Ornithology posted super slow motion video of this very thing. Filmed in Massachusetts, watch these birds as they land: black-capped chickadee, tufted titmouse, blue jay, mourning dove, northern cardinal.
They make it look so easy!
27 December 2025
In mid-December an iNaturalist report from a home near Frick Park reported a very rare bird — a painted bunting (Passerina ciris) at a backyard feeder in Squirrel Hill. Birders soon discovered where it was and were welcomed by the homeowner and the next door neighbor, my friend Maren Cooke. Since then more than 110 people have seen this stunningly colorful bird, some as recently as yesterday morning.
Painted buntings are truly rare birds in Pittsburgh and worth a trip to see. Their normal range extends to Kansas and South Carolina in summer but they retreat to Central America and Florida in winter.
Note the winter dot at Virginia Beach, above. Painted buntings are known to wander in fall and winter because they eat seeds and can survive without insects. The purple squares on the eBird map below are painted bunting reports since 2020. Individual birds have shown up as far north as Newfoundland, Canada in the last 5 years.
Many of my friends visited the Painted Bunting Stakeout on 19 December and got stunning photos. Steve Gosser was lucky to capture it in a natural setting with snowflakes. Charity Kheshgi photographed it on the feeder with fellow red birds, male northern cardinals.
By the way, male painted buntings are absolutely gorgeous but don’t expect the females to look like this. The ladies are camouflage green to match the thickets where they nest.
We are lucky that a male showed up.
