Come winter, after the bears have retreated to their cold weather dens, many backyard bird enthusiasts hang feeders to attract – and nourish – avian visitors. Birds need more than a supplemental food source, however.
Whether they are roosting, feeding, selecting a nest location, or flying from one grove of trees to another, birds rely on vegetative cover, from the ground level to the treetops. Offering natural sources of cover can help birds evade predators and find protection from inclement weather, as well as provide shelter during migration. [Read more…] about Shelter for the Birds: A Primer
There are only a few dozen species of birds capable of surviving the rigors of an Adirondack winter, and of these, the wild turkey is one that is more closely associated with the warmer and less snowy regions of New York than those to the north. 
The 35th season of Project FeederWatch begins Saturday, November 13th.
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has announced the launch of the 
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.
In September, as summer yields to fall, most of the colorful birds that breed in our region during spring and summer head south for warmer locales. The departure of ruby-throated hummingbirds, Baltimore orioles, migratory woodpeckers, and numerous warblers doesn’t leave us entirely without striking birds, however.
The grackle appeared early last spring, the day before I put the feeder away (so as not to tempt the bears who would soon be awakening from their winter dens). In the dim light of a cloudy day, this avian visitor seemed at first to be just another blackbird, on the larger side, perhaps, and with a longer than usual tail. When I peered at him through the binoculars, however, his head and neck shimmered with iridescent blues and purples, and there seemed to be a greenish tinge to his wings.