One morning in early autumn, I was running errands in downtown Keene, New Hampshire, when I was stopped in my tracks by a flash of yellow. Crouching down, I found a gorgeous, palm-sized bird, olive above, with a belly as gold as sunshine. It was a species I’d never seen before, and it was lying dead on the ground beneath a store window.
After consulting several field guides and two friends who know the intricacies of warbler identification far better than I ever will, I deduced that it was a mourning warbler – a secretive songbird of boreal and high-elevation forest clearings, with a migration route that tracks to Central and South America. Imagine flying all that way – a wonder of beauty and color – only to be felled by a run-in with a pane of glass. [Read more…] about The Perils of Bird Migration
A warm southerly breeze in mid-March brings with it loose, granular conditions on the ski slopes, a layer of mud on dirt roads, and the return of the first seasonal avian residents – among these are the red-winged blackbirds. 
Mornings are quiet now. Gone is the loud chorus of bird song outside my window that I awoke to in spring and summer. While we brave the cold, snow, and bitter winds of winter by donning extra layers or throwing another log on the fire, most of our summer 
