The first full day of spring, and I was up to my knees
in new snow this morning at Gavin’s Point, on the
Missouri River between Nebraska and South Dakota. It’s
a long ways from Omaha, our base of operations for the
next week, but the drake Harlequin Duck reported there
recently was an irresistible lure. And there he was,
feeding [...]

Poppe said something funny the other day:
“I don’t think you can count yourself a birder,” she said, “until you’ve exposed yourself to personal injury looking for birds. And advanced birders, they’re the ones with scars.”
 

Eurasian Collared-Dove has done well in small towns on the Great Plains, but the cities have so far resisted the expansion of this exotic. I was surprised, then, to have a bird fly across the road in front of me just as I left the Omaha airport this afternoon; are they gaining an urban toehold [...]

To Boyce Thompson Arboretum, near Superior, to look for the Rufous-backed Robin. The robin eluded us, wretched creature, but the time we spent standing quietly under the tree it’s been feeding in was well worth it.
Olives are widely planted as ornamentals here in southeast Arizona, but I never think of looking for birds in them: [...]

In the east and the midwest, the arrival of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds in April is a dramatic event, an overnight passage from no hummingbirds to hummingbirds. Here in the southwest, it’s a little different; with nearly every feeder in Tucson hosting 2 or 3 species all winter, arriving migrants and summer residents can easily sneak in unnoticed.
I’ve [...]