Listening is the best way to find birds. If you only look with your eyes, you will miss a lot. For species that are shy and secretive, listening is often far more effective than looking for detecting ...

The usual suspects were consuming the black-oiled sunflower seeds in the bird feeder and scattered on the deck railing, as well as working the suet block. The dependable nuthatches, juncos and ...

I am in my mid-50s. Four decades of lawn-mowing, chain-sawing, weed-whacking, and snow-blowing have taken their toll on my hearing. As my fellow reporters point out to me -- sometimes gleefully, ...

There is a bird called the California towhee that is found in almost every yard. It is the most mundane of backyard residents: plain and brown, a chunky, clumsy member of the sparrow family that hops ...

Last year I told you about a Baltimore oriole that was scratching on the ground under my birdfeeder. At the time you seemed skeptical saying, “It doesn’t sound like oriole behavior.” Well, the bird is ...

Often missed by birders, particularly those of us who hear poorly, is one of our most attractive species — the eastern towhee. Until 1995, it was called the rufous-sided towhee, a very descriptive ...

The eastern towhee is one of those birds that shows up erratically, and when it does show up is often overlooked. That is why a report from Thief River Falls caught my attention. Valerie Solem sent a ...