Found throughout the United States, the American Goldfinch has grown in abundance, making their frenetic behavior and vibrant-yellow plumage beloved backyard sightings. Because of their propensity for being around humans, it’s easy to get them to come around your backyard by doing a few simple things.

Set up seed feeders with nyger or sunflower seeds

Goldfinches are primarily seed eaters with occasional forays into the world of insects. The two best ways to attract goldfinches to your yard is with feeders filled with nyger or sunflower seeds. Nyger, which is the same as thistle, and sunflower seeds are the food of choice for finches coming into your backyard. They usually eat from traditional feeders, but there are also finch feeders designed specifically to bring in finches to your yard.

If you’re having a particularly tough time bringing in goldfinches because bigger birds are bullying them out of their food, you could get feeders that only allow American Goldfinches to feed like the Perky-Pet Upside Down Finch Feeder. The design requires birds to feed upside, something only goldfinches could accomplish at this feeder.

Plant seed-producing flowers

I’ve written about how providing specific types of plants creates a long-term bird-friendly yard, and it remains the case here. By putting certain plants and flowers in your yard that goldfinches love, you’ll establish an environment that will keep birds coming back, without having to break your wallet. Here’s a good discussion of plants and flowers goldfinches are attracted to.

Provide cover

The natural habitat of goldfinches is the edges of grasslands and open areas, which means they love places that offer them protection in the form of low-growing shrubbery. Plant some bushes and shrubs on your property, or don’t trim them as much, and the finches will be more likely to come to your yard than if it’s open and bare.

Put a water feature in your yard

With summer coming, having a water feature in your yard will make it attractive, not just to goldfinches but all types of birds. You don’t have to build a large fountain (though you can if you want), but something small like First Nature’s Globe hanging bird bath will do the trick for goldfinches.

The Cedar Waxwing is one of the last birds you’ll see laying eggs since most of them begin nesting at the end of June (something you could see in our nesting chart).

But for those who live in the area where Cedar Waxwings and Bohemian Waxwings overlap, it can be fairly difficult to tell them apart. So here are some helpful tips to help you.

Location and time

The first thing you should consider is location and time. Bohemian Waxwings spend summer and spring in the northern portions of Canada and Alaska or in high altitudes in northwestern United States, you’re likely seeing a Cedar Waxwing. It’s only in the winter that Bohemian Waxwings come down into western and northern portions of the United States. But if you live in a place that overlaps during certain parts of the year, this probably won’t help too much. Here’s a helpful map of each species range taken from Cornell’s All About Birds.

Size

Without a comparison of each species next to each other, it’s usually hard to get a grasp on the size of a bird. However, generally speaking, Bohemian Waxwings are bigger and stockier than Cedar Waxwings. Here’s a great observation from 10,000 birds: “Bohemian Waxwings are only an inch longer than Cedar Waxwings but weigh almost twice as much on average.” If it seems short and stocky, then it’s possible the bird is a Bohemian Waxwing, but if it looks long and slender, it could be a Cedar Waxwing.

Color

The color will reveal which species it is. The chest and belly is a good indicator of the species. A Bohemian Waxwing has a gray chest and belly while a Cedar Waxwing has a brown chest with a yellow belly. If you can, check out the undertail of the bird when in flight. If the undertail is a brownish orange, it’s a Bohemian Waxwing. If the undertail is white, it’s a Cedar Waxwing.

Markings

Finally, another field mark you can look at are the wing feathers. Bohemian Waxwings will have white bars going across the feathers horizontally. Cedar Waxwings, on the other hand, will have light white lines going down vertically halfway down the bird’s back.

But researchers have found that one type of Australian bird, the fantastically named Superb Lyrebird, takes song and dance to new levels by having some of the most sophisticated dance repertoires in the bird world.

Similar to how different songs spark different dance moves in humans (for example, the Electric Slide with “Electric Boogie” or the Dougie with “Teach Me How to Dougie”), the Superb Lyrebird has four specific dances to go along with four distinct songs. According to Wired, the Australian researchers recorded 12 males to dissect the patterns of the birds and found that their performances are elaborate.

From the video below, you can see a male doing one of the dance routines, but it’s difficult to hear and decipher the songs and dances. The first song sounds like a 1980s video arcade game, the second is loud and short, the third is short but quiet and the final one features a lot of buzz.

The male Superb Lyrebird has a large, ornate tail that fans out in different patterns, depending on the song, in order to impress the female.

With its great dance moves, interesting songs and flashy appearance, I’m sure these birds make great companions.

Before you jump into the chart, here are some definitions that will help you better understand it.

Breeding Season: The breeding season is the typical period of time each year in which a species will breed and produce offspring. The chart gives a general range, but the actual start and finish of the breeding season varies by location.

Clutch Size: A clutch of eggs is the amount of eggs a bird lays at a time. The size of a clutch means the number of eggs you’ll usually see in the nest during each brood. This, like the others, varies with each brood for most species.

Broods: A brood is a group of chicks hatched at the same time. In the context of this chart, the number is the amount of broods produced by the species in a single breeding season.

Incubation Period: The incubation period is the amount of time a mother or parents will tend to the eggs by regulating their temperature. At the end of the incubation period, the eggs will usually begin to hatch.

Nestling Period: This is the period of time after the egg has hatched but before the chick has grown feathers or developed wing muscles for flight. After the nestling period, the fledglings will begin to leave the nest.

If you have any other birds you think should be on the list, let us know in the comments.

Breeding and Nesting Information For 20 Common Birds

Some information was taken from The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds.

We wrote about Thomas Poulsom last year when his creations first appeared on the LEGO crowdsourcing site that looks for new ideas to make commercial. However, in his first series of birds, he made species found only in the UK. He’s now expanded to several North American birds.

He currently sits at around 6,130 votes on the site, but he needs to get to 10,000 in order for LEGO to take his creations into consideration to sell them commercially. So if you’d like to see these in stores, go to his page to vote and see more.

In the meantime, check out his 15 North American LEGO birds. (All photos by Thomas Poulsom)

Andy the American Goldfinch

Arnie the American Robin

Bradley the Blue Jay

Tommy the Turkey

Stormy the Snowy Owl

Benny the Black-Crested Titmouse

Norman the Northern Cardinal

Scotty the Scarlet Tanager

Peter the Painted Bunting

Buddy the Baltimore Oriole

 Gary the Great-tailed Grackle

Hudson the Hooded Warbler

Eric the Eastern Bluebird

Dodo the American Dipper

Monty the Mountain Bluebird

Audubon’s painting of Passenger Pigeons.

Their wings darkened the sky over North America for more than 12 hours as they flew past. Just one flock stretched 300 miles long and a mile wide and included more than 3 billion birds. But in a span of just 50 years, the Passenger Pigeon went from one of the most abundant birds in the world to extinct.

The story of the Passenger Pigeon is one we shouldn’t forget because up to 5 billion individual vanished from hunting and the loss of habitat, a direct result of human intervention. That’s why filmmaker David Mrazek and a few others are setting out to make a documentary about the bird called “From Billions to None: The Passenger Pigeon’s Flight to Extinction.”

The film is angling to explore what went wrong with the Passenger Pigeon and what could go right for currently endangered species like the Whooping Crane.

The only problem is that the film hasn’t been made yet. The team behind the project is currently seeking public support to finance the film. They’ve already raised $24,650, but their goal is $65,000 with only 11 days left. They’re trying to get the film out by Sept. 1, 2014 — the hundredth anniversary of the death of Marta, the last living Passenger Pigeon.

If you’re interested in seeing this potentially powerful film, check out their support page at Indiegogo.

Here’s the promo video:

Photo by Seabamirum via Flickr

I love birds. I watch Black-capped Chickadees flutter to and from bird feeders in the backyard. I stop and stare when I see a raptor soaring above while I’m walking down the street. I actively seek out warblers at the park during spring migration. Yet, when someone asks me what I do for fun or enjoyment, I am always at a loss for words.

I usually just stumble through some explanation about how I like to look and listen for birds and occasionally take photographs, only to have the person say, “Oh so you’re a bird-watcher.” My response to this is usually some even longer explanation about how that term doesn’t completely entail all aspects of what I do, including the audio aspect of enjoying birds.

This brings us to the crux of the article: Am I a birder or a bird-watcher?

In its purest historical sense, birding is the older term, although it’s an antonym of how I would describe myself today. When people went birding in the 15th and 16th centuries (and up until the 1900s really), they meant they were hunting for birds. Bird-watching, on the other hand, didn’t appear until 1891, according to Merriam-Webster.

So simple logic should lead us to believe that bird-watching is the correct term, since we don’t mean we go out hunting birds. But that’s not how language works. It lives, breathes and changes in time. For example, we no longer use the word awful to describe something that’s amazing and fills you with awe. We use it to mean horrible and grotesque. The term birding went through that same transformation when it was usurped by people who love birds to mean that act of seeking out and enjoying birds without harming them.

So which one should we use?

Unsurprisingly, I’m not the first person to ponder this same existential debate. The great Melissa Mayntz at the About Birding page writes it’s all about the intensity. She argues a bird-watcher is someone who is more casual about birds. They don’t travel specifically for birds and enjoy birds in their backyard with binoculars.

Birders, however, are those who actively seek out species with high-end optics and go birding for sport or thrills.

Do you bird or bird-watch?

The simple truth is that the terms aren’t mutually exclusive and birding and bird-watching are used interchangeably. So why wouldn’t all of us (both casual and hard-core bird enthusiasts) just use birder? Well, not only does it sound a bit pretentious, but it also raises more questions in people and precipitates this same debate. A bird-watcher, alternatively, is often derisively painted as someone who wants people off their lawn and wears funny hats.

So, again, which one should we use?

The answer may be less satisfying, but you should use whichever you want. After writing this diatribe, I am going to continue to call myself a birder because I’d rather have lay people be interested in this strange term and strike up a discussion about what separates it from bird-watching, but I would never fault anyone for calling themselves a bird-watcher.

Even though some diehard factions of the birding/bird-watching community will insist on one or the other as the 100% correct answer, self-identity has always been a matter of choice, which is why you should be able to call yourself whatever you want. Just don’t call yourself a twitcher…

Let us know how you identify yourself as a bird enthusiast and why.

Photograph by Chris Selvig via Flickr

The past few weeks, we’ve been writing about keeping your hummingbird feeders free from pesky ants and flying insects. One of our readers brought up another threat to hummingbird feeders, other birds.

Orioles are known for raiding hummingbird feeders, but they’re not the only ones. Woodpeckers, House Finches and other species tend to invade hummingbird feeders for a chance to drink the sweet nectar. And when these bigger birds eat the nectar, they usually scare away the hummingbirds, which defeats the whole purpose.

So here’s what you can do to protect your hummers from unwanted birds.

Get an oriole feeder, suet feeder and/or seed feeder

One of the best solutions is to simply get more feeders. If you mind having orioles coming to your hummingbird feeders, you can buy feeders especially for them. Oriole feeders are essentially the same as hummingbird feeders, but they can accommodate fruits and jelly as well as nectar. For woodpeckers, you can also put up suet feeders for them to get nutrition. You can do the same thing with other feeders, depending on the species hanging around your hummingbird feeders. Remember to make sure they’re always full, so the birds don’t have to turn to your other feeders for food.

Opus Glass Hummingbird Feeder

Get a hummingbird feeder without a perch

Small, perchless feeders essentially keep out every bird except hummers because most birds need to perch while eating. A simple feeder like the Opus Glass Hummingbird Feeder requires the birds to be in flight while drinking the nectar. A larger bird like the woodpecker wouldn’t be able to mob the small feeder. You can also trim down the perches on your existing feeders.

Buy or make a bird baffle

Even if the feeder itself doesn’t have a perch, sometimes birds are able to perch on top of the feeder or grab onto the wire that holds it up. You can put a standard baffle or create your own makeshift one out of an old CD.

Separate the feeders

If you have separate feeders for orioles and woodpeckers, but they’re still going to the hummingbird feeders, try separating them. Putting them farther apart will make it less tempting for an oriole to move over and target the hummingbird feeder.

Please let us know any solutions you found.

These birds, found mainly in the eastern and central portions of the United States, are very unique. We’ve assembled 10 interesting facts about Baltimore Orioles that will make you love them even more.

1. Baltimore and Bullock’s orioles are very similar and even hybridize where their ranges overlap. For many years, scientists believed they were one species (Northern Orioles) until genetic testing revealed they were in fact separate.

2. The oldest banded Baltimore Oriole in the wild lived for 11 years and 7 months, but they can live up to 14 years in captivity.

3. Baltimore Orioles got their name because of their bright orange and black colors, which were the same as the crest for the family of Lord Baltimore.

4. They’re also the state bird of Maryland, which is apt because Cecilius Calvert, Second Baron Baltimore, was one of Maryland’s founders.

5. According to Cornell’s All About Birds, orioles sometimes feed in an unusual, but clever, way. They stick their closed beak into a soft fruit and then open their mouths, which creates a cup of fruit juice that they drink with their tongues.

6. Baltimore Orioles are very sensitive to insecticides. Insecticides have the adverse effect of killing insects that orioles eat, and the poison can also directly kill orioles if they’re exposed to it.

Image by Henry McLin

7. The nest of a Baltimore Oriole looks like a stuffed sock that hangs at the very edge of a tree branch high in the air to keep predators away. It can take a female as long as 15 days to construct the nest, which is woven out of various fibers like animal fur, twine, wool, bark and other materials.

8. Baltimore Orioles are generally solitary birds, except during mating season. However, a group of orioles is called a “split” or “pitch,” according to WhatBird.

9. One of the Baltimore Orioles favorite things to eat is caterpillars. This is important because their appetite for caterpillars and other pests can help protect forests.

10. Baltimore Orioles are attracted to the color orange, which is why getting an orange oriole feeder will increase your chances of attracting these beautiful birds to your yard.

Turkey Vulture by Tim Sträter

When we try to understand the world around us, we see it through the lens of humans. It’s completely natural to do because it’s how we interact with the world, but it can be problematic when trying to get an accurate vision of the things around us. This could not be truer than figuring out how birds interact with the world.

For example, the sense of smell plays a pretty big part of our daily lives; we use smell to tell whether something is rotten, when there is danger (smoke or fire) and other useful things. But for many bird species, the sense of smell is fairly insignificant.

Yes, birds have a sense of smell and recent studies say that it’s more developed than we had previously thought, but it still doesn’t play as big of a part of their lives as humans or other animals.

All birds have some sort of olfactory system that gives them the sense of smell, but it’s very difficult to decipher when and what they use it for. Even John James Audubon conducted experiments to see whether vultures use smell to find their meals.

In his experiment, he put out a painting of a dead sheep and found that the vultures tugged at the canvas. The next time he hid dead meat next to the painting, but the vultures still tugged at the canvas instead of the nearby hidden meat. He felt this was enough to disprove the theory that birds don’t have a strong sense of smell.

Later experiments by scientists found that vultures do have a good sense of smell, so the verdict is still out on to what extent they use their smell. Audubon’s Carolyn Shea quoted ornithologist Kenn Kaufman giving a great reason for why figuring out the sense of smell in birds is so hard:

“How do you know whether the bird is actually smelling something? You can’t say, ‘Raise your right wing if you smell this.’ “

Small songbirds probably don’t have much use for smell, but some petrels use smell to detect relatives (and therefore avoid incest) and locate their burrows. Other seabirds use the smell of fish oils or krill to find food. Kiwis in New Zealand also reportedly have a strong sense of smell that they use to find earthworms.

So the next time someone asks you whether birds have a sense of smell, you can give them the simple answer of yes, but add a caveat that each bird species is different and it’s near impossible to find out to what extent they use it.

But you can still assure everyone that a mother bird will not reject a chick if it smells human on it.