Human mythology, folklore, and fairy tales are full of stories about someone doing a seemingly innocent thing that ends up releasing chaos and death. A common element in these stories, from Pandora’s box to Humpty Dumpty, is that once it happens, it can never be fixed. The mess created when the little children opened the […]
Author: Laura Erickson
Weird Genetics: White-throated Sparrow
The White-throated Sparrow is one of my all-time favorite birds. I saw and heard my first on April 12, 1975, when I was a brand-new birder. I was in Virginia for an environmental education conference right when White-throats were in full migration down there. Within a week or so, they were up in Michigan where […]
Coming Home from Uganda
I’ve spent the last two weeks in Uganda. I finished my packing during the heady days of the World Series and the glorious aftermath of my beloved Chicago Cubs winning it all, and left the morning after my hometown held a parade that drew an estimated five million people, united in a way Americans never […]
Big City Parrots
My daughter Katie lives in Brooklyn, and I love when I get to visit her. Not only is she a wonderful person in her own right, but also when I’m at her place, I get to eat real New York bagels and see cool urban birds. My favorite is the Monk Parakeet. I often hear […]
Cuban Tody!
For more than a decade, I’ve been blathering on and on about todies. For a time, if you googled “Most adorable bird in the universe,” the first page you got was from one of my blog posts about the Cuban Tody. It really does live up to those words, but unless you’re an ornithologist or […]
The first shall be last: West Peruvian Dove
Before every trip I’ve ever made to a new country, or a new state, a new wildlife refuge, a new garbage dump, or just about any other new place, I’ve always speculated about what the very first bird I’d see would be. I knew my first Peruvian bird would not be an Andean Cock-of-the-rock, a […]
Fall is here! A walk on the Western Waterfront Trail
A lot of people seem to think it’s still summer—yesterday’s sweltering 88 degrees contributes to that misapprehension. Birds know better. Days are noticeably getting shorter, most baby birds of the year are on their own now, and adults are recovering from the rigors of raising those young birds—many have finished molting into new feathers and […]