I received an email a little while after my Monday program aired on KUMD. The writer said he’d looked at all the photos I’d posted on Flickr of the Pink-footed Goose I saw in New York City, and not one of them showed the pink feet. He wondered how I could be sure of the […]
Author: Laura Erickson
Laura Erickson, 2014 recipient of the American Birding Association’s prestigious Roger Tory Peterson Award, has been a scientist, teacher, writer, wildlife rehabilitator, professional blogger, public speaker, photographer, American Robin and Whooping Crane Expert for the popular Journey North educational website, and Science Editor at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. She’s written eight books about birds, including the best-selling Into the Nest: Intimate Views of the Courting, Parenting, and Family Lives of Familiar Birds (co-authored by photographer Marie Read); the National Outdoor Book Award winning Sharing the Wonder of Birds with Kids; 101 Ways to Help Birds; The Bird Watching Answer Book for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology; and the National Geographic Pocket Guide to Birds of North America. She’s currently a columnist and contributing editor for BirdWatching magazine, and is writing a field guide to the birds of Minnesota for the American Birding Association. Since 1986 she has been producing the long-running “For the Birds” radio program for many public radio stations; the program is podcast on iTunes. She lives in Duluth, Minnesota, with her husband, mother-in-law, licensed education Eastern Screech-Owl Archimedes, two indoor cats, and her little birding dog Pip.
Peru! Traveling to Fight Climate Change
Every year, two million people from around the world head to Peru specifically to visit Machu Picchu. Some of them want to see South American wildlife and enjoy a wonderful experience at one of the genuine wonders of the world, but their visits don’t require protection of anything outside of this area. Indeed, the sheer […]
Fall Migration Update, and Hawk Ridge Weekend!
I was in Peru for a week, and between preparing for the trip and getting ahead on work deadlines, I’ve not been able to keep up with fall migration here. Even 4,000 miles away, in the jungles and cloud forest of darkest Peru, I was getting emails about huge numbers of Blue Jays coursing over […]
Helping Lesser Prairie-Chickens and the People Saving Them
In 2013, when I did my Conservation Big Year, one of the birds I was most focused on seeing was the Lesser Prairie-Chicken. I saw and heard my first ones way back in April 1996 when my sister-in-law Jeanie and I took a road trip out West. One of my destinations was Lamar, Colorado, where […]
Brrrrrrrr! But a Lesser Yellowlegs
What a frigid morning! But if we were cold, the birds seemed even colder. We had something of a fall-out at Park Point—I’m sure our numbers for most of the songbirds are way lower than the actual numbers. We had a couple of Lesser Yellowlegs (the most we saw as a group was one, but […]
Letters from Listeners: Odd Things Birds Eat
In the past few weeks, I’ve received a couple of letters from listeners about their backyard birds eating unusual items. Craig Magnuson of Forks, Washington, wrote that he’s seen Evening Grosbeaks, during several different summers, eating cold campfire charcoal shortly after dawn at the Lake Kachess campground in the Wenatchee National Forest. He noted that […]
Where are the birds?
Every year I get several letters like one that came in mid-February from WXPR listener Doug Heise, who lives in Rhinelander and has been feeding birds for 30 years. He wrote about the species he’s fed over the years: “So many different varieties. chickadees, nuthatches, many types of finches, Pine Siskins, Chipping Sparrows, cardinals, Blue […]
15,354 Days and Counting
As of today, the Ides of March 2017, I saw my first Black-capped Chickadee 15,354 days ago. I’ve seen more than one chickadee on most of those days and over 200 in a single day on a few Christmas Bird Counts. I’m sure I haven’t seen an average of 65 chickadees a day over that […]