History, Natural History & the Arts
“There is a singer everyone has heard, / Loud, a mid-summer and mid-wood bird…”
Heard, yes, but maybe not seen. This bird keeps me company on summer walks, calling out tea-CHER tea-CHER tea-CHER in loud, ringing tones. When I hear it, I imagine Robert Frost pausing in his New Hampshire sugarbush to pen his ode to the ovenbird (Seiurus aurocapilla). [Read more…] about The Often-Overlooked Ovenbird
One of the great joys of early May in the Northeast is the dawn-break aubade of songbirds returning to summer habitats or passing through to their nesting grounds in higher latitudes.
Mornings that only a month ago were silent – save the croaking crows and shrieking blue jays – are now filled with a polyphonic chorus of trills, chirrs, and fluted arias that quicken both body and soul. [Read more…] about Songbirds Struggle With Noise Pollution
At this time of year, wild eastern turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) are still congregated in the flocks of 20 or so birds with which they spend the winter. Groups of hens, mature female turkeys, will generally winter with the broods they raised the previous summer.
Toms, mature male turkeys, spend the colder months apart from hens and immature birds, in what biologists call “bachelor groups,” though males and females are sometimes seen congregating around food resources in winter.
But as the days get longer and warmer, wild turkeys start feeling the urge to begin the spring shuffle, wandering in search of breeding opportunities and nesting sites. [Read more…] about Gobble & Strut: Wild Turkey Mating Season
In early March, birds that have been gone all winter begin appearing at my feeder. One of the earliest of these spring migrants is a brown-backed sparrow with a white breast coarsely streaked with brown.
The streaks converge in a dark central breast spot, an easy identification mark. This is the song sparrow, our most widespread and abundant North American sparrow. [Read more…] about The Song Sparrow: Backyard Neighbor
With summer winding down, it seems fitting to shift focus from the dog days of summer and onto the Catbird. The Gray Catbird is a common, vocal, and unique bird that happens to be the only fully gray bird in New York State.
Although some might consider the coloration to be plain, this bird is full of personality. [Read more…] about Gray Catbirds: New York’s Only Fully Gray Bird
One recent morning, trying to find the source of a warbler trill high in a white pine tree, I was rewarded with a brilliant flash of orange. It was my first sighting of a Blackburnian warbler, one of the most beautiful songbirds in the northern woods.
While Blackburnian warblers are not uncommon in mature conifer and mixed hardwood forests, they can be hard to see, since they forage and nest high in the branches. But once spotted, they are easy to identify. [Read more…] about The Brilliant Blackburnian Warbler
It’s a familiar sight in winter: An inky-black raven soaring over a landscape white with snow.
Though similar in appearance to the American crow, the common raven (Corvus corax) is distinguished by its large size, fluffy neck feathers, and long, thick beak. [Read more…] about Ravens Foraging in Winter
The idea that plants benefit from kind words, or from speech in general, has roots that go back at least to Charles Darwin, who supported the concept.
Sound evidence that speaking to plants makes them healthier came to light several years ago – it turns out the “silly” folks who talk to their gardens and hoe plants have been right all along. And this effect is not due to the carbon dioxide we exhale, which plants need, since audio recordings produce the same result. [Read more…] about Talking (and Listening) to Your House Plants
Hearing the sleigh bell-like sound of hundreds of these wetland-loving frogs is a sure sign that spring has sprung. The spring peeper (pseudacris crucifer) is easy to identify with an “X” on its back, and their color ranges from dark to light brown. Spring peepers are only about an inch in size, nut their chorus can carry for a quarter of a mile. [Read more…] about What’s That Sound? Spring Peepers
The silence that prevails in winter along the shores of marshes clad in alders, willows, dogwoods and wild raisins changes in early spring as the warmer weather melts any remaining patches of snow and ice at lower elevations.
As the ground loses its winter characteristics, the spring peeper is quick to awaken from its winter dormancy, crawl from its shallow, subterranean shelter along with countless numbers of fellow peepers, and travel to a nearby marshy setting. Once it arrives at the water’s edge, this amphibian loudly announces its presence and willingness to breed. [Read more…] about Spring Peepers: Always Heard, Seldom Seen
Frogs have hopped about Earth since before the time of the dinosaurs, and it shows. Celebrated for their amphibious lifestyle and cacophonous choruses, the long arc of frog evolution has yielded other awesome and efficient adaptations in organs from their lungs to their skin. [Read more…] about Fascinating Frog Adaptations
Most of the mammals that populate our wilderness, including the moose, are not known to produce much in the way of sounds.
Like the white-tailed deer, the moose is viewed as silently moving through our woodlands, except for the snapping of twigs and the rustling of leaves that it steps on, and brushes against as it meanders about the forest. [Read more…] about Moose Music: Moans, Cries and Calls
It can be heard at almost anytime, but especially after sunset. On calm evenings from the late summer throughout autumn, the high-pitched yelping cries of eastern coyotes occasionally echo across the landscape under the cover of darkness.
While the coyote is known to make its tormented-sounding bark during any season, at this time of year they tend to be more vocal. [Read more…] about What’s That Sound? Coyotes At Night
The Paul Smith’s College’s Visitors Interpretive Center (VIC) in the Adirondacks has a Forest Megaphone on its accessible Barnum Brook Trail. The Forest Megaphone, an oversized wooden megaphone large enough for adults to sit or laydown in, amplifies surrounding natural sound for those seeking a deeper sensory experience in the outdoors. [Read more…] about Adirondack ‘Forest Megaphone’ Amplifies Natural Sound
Have you been outside at dusk lately near an open field or scrub brush area and been startled by a loud PEENT sound followed by twittering sound? What you’re likely hearing is a courtship display of a male American woodcock trying to attract a mate. [Read more…] about What’s That Sound? American Woodcock
With spring creeping closer, our year-round avian residents such as cardinals and titmice are already raising their voices. But there’s more than one way to make music, and birds have evolved means for using everything at their disposal to fill our forests with whistles, twitters, and booms – no voice needed. [Read more…] about The Unsung Music of Birds
In winter, when temperatures dip well below zero Fahrenheit, especially if they fall precipitously, things go bump in the night. Frozen lakes and ponds emit ominous groans, snaps and booms that reverberate through the ice. Wood siding and old knee joints might creak. And if soil moisture is high and snow cover sparse, the soil can freeze deeply, causing the earth to shift in a harmless, localized cryoseism, or “frost quake” that produces a nerve-rattling bang. [Read more…] about Trees, Knees, and Other Deep-Freeze Creaks
Even if you’ve never ventured further into the forest than an urban park or a college campus, you’re probably familiar with Sciurus carolinensis, the eastern gray squirrel. While it’s easy to identify gray squirrels by sight, however, recognizing the various sounds they make is more complicated.
Their vocalizations – squeaks, moans, buzzes, barks, and clucks – can sound like noises made by cats, chickens, jays, catbirds, even ducks. [Read more…] about Squirrel Talk: Gray Squirrel Communication
On the New Hampshire lake where I spend much of the summer, loon calls are so common that I sometimes take them for granted.
The sounds of the common loon (Gavia immer) are iconic of wilderness and have been described as haunting, plaintive, maniacal, other-worldly, even wolf-like. [Read more…] about Loon Calls & Other Vocalizations
Several years ago, I was awakened nearly every day of late spring by a recurring – and very loud – bird sound. I say “sound,” rather than “song” because this particular noise was not so melodious as the cheery whistling of the robin or the musical trilling of the hermit thrush. It was more of a short squawk, repeated over and over again.
This, I discovered, was the call of a gray catbird (Dumetella carolinensis). Over the years, catbirds have returned each spring to our yard, and I have come to enjoy their sounds – and the antics of these curious and loud birds. [Read more…] about The Gray Catbird: A Loud and Curious Bird
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