Image by Bjørn Christian Tørrissen

Meet the Northern Wheatear, an insect-eating bird about 6 inches long that weighs less than an ounce. On the outside, it looks like any ordinary beautiful bird, but when you delve deeper, this is one of most hardcore travelers on the planet.

According to the BBC, this little bird travels from the Arctic to sub-Saharan Africa and back each year. The half of the species that lives in the Canadian arctic travels over Greenland to Africa on a whopping 4,500 mile journey. The wheatears that live in Alaska go over Russia and Kazakhstan and through the Arabian desert to get to western Africa. That’s about 9,000 miles one way.

Impressive migrations are nothing out of the ordinary for birds, but each time I hear one of these amazing stories of a tiny bird traveling long distances, it’s difficult not to be astonished.

To put it into perspective, Alasdair Wilkins from io9 makes some stunning comparisons:

Proportionally speaking, we would have to travel roughly 50 million miles to cover the same sort of distance these wheatears do. In other words, for us to migrate on the same scale as these tiny Arctic birds, our entire species would need to travel to Mars and back every single year. (And yes, I’m aware that’s not exactly a fair analogy – it’s simply too awesome not to point out.)

Scientists found out about this remarkable journey by putting tiny tracking devices on the birds. Before this they had no idea where these arctic birds went for the winter. This is likely the largest range of any songbird in the world.

One of the major questions is why would these birds make such a long journey (3/4 the circumference of the earth to be exact). The scientists in the study posit that the birds have been embarking on this trek since the time of glaciation. This is just a testament to the old adage that old habits die hard.

Congratulations to Christine McKinney Ray and Natalie Waters for being our winners of the two amazing bird feeders for National Bird Feeding Month.*

Christine McKinney Ray’s picture was voted best among the four finalists. She is the winner of the Birds Choice Classic Bird Feeder with Built-In Squirrel Baffle and Pole. Natalie Waters was selected randomly among all entries as our second prize winner. She receives a Birds Choice Cedar 17″ x 14″ Open Platform Bird Feeder. Here is the great picture she submitted of a lovely house wren.

There were 112 entries with more than 100 of you submitting amazing pictures of birds you love. Although we can’t give away prizes to everyone, we thank you very much for your participation and enthusiasm.

It’s birders and enthusiasts like you that make this such a great community to be a part of.

*Christine and Natalie, please send an email with your address to BackyardChirperContests@gmail.com and we’ll ship you your prize right away.

For centuries, St. Valentine’s Day was just a day to feast in celebration to honor a martyred priest in Rome. It wasn’t until a 1382 poem by Geoffrey Chaucer (of The Canterbury Tales fame) that Valentine’s Day and love were mentioned together. Here’s an excerpt from Parlement of Foules (translated into more modern English):

“For this was Saint Valentine’s Day,
when every bird cometh there to choose his mate.”

Birds have a strong reputation for being a species known for their unique relationships to one another and no one knew this better than Geoffrey Chaucer. When he wrote the poem on the first anniversary engagement of the King and Queen of England, it was a time when romance was a prominent theme and few things represent true love better than birds.

As you can tell from the excerpt, Chaucer is pointing out that St. Valentine’s Day is the start of breeding season when birds start mating with one another. However, February 14, the day commonly associated with St. Valentine’s Day, is likely too early for birds to start mating in England since it’s too cold, so he was probably talking about a different day. Nonetheless, his talk of a fictional tradition of love and birds choosing one another (which before then was no tradition at all), stuck with St. Valentine’s Day.

It’s no coincidence that Chaucer chose birds as a representation of love because many birds exhibit the characteristics of love we commonly associate with our relationships.

Laysan Albatrosses are perfect examples because they’re among the many birds that breed for life with one mate. They don’t start breeding until about eight or nine years old, but for about four years before that, they form a bond with their mate through intricate dances (similar to us dating and marrying). Then, they keep that bond until one of the pairs dies. Here’s what Audubon reports happens when one dies:

“If they do lose their mate, they will go through a year or two of a mourning period,” says John Klavitter, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist at Midway Atoll. “After that, they will do a courtship dance to try to find another mate.”

Bald Eagles, Mute Swans and Atlantic Puffins all show similar traits when it comes to strong lifelong bonds. Sure, there’s the occasional act of infidelity and divorce happening among the birds, but overall, the bond between birds is strong.

So, although today is a day that’s been blow out of proportions by companies, let us return to the simpleness of the holiday and show our appreciation for those we love, including our backyard friends.

Male Northern Cardinal in Prospect Park

It’s not controversial to say Northern Cardinals are among the most desired backyard birds. With their vibrant red coloration, frequent trips to bird feeders and recognizable song, cardinals usually top the list of people’s favorite birds.

While birdwatching in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park the other day, I must have spotted a dozen Northern Cardinals fluttering about, particularly in a portion of the park called the Vale of Cashmere. The Vale, which is a prime birding spot, has thick woods surrounding the bowl-like area, ample water and places to find food. All of these resources are easy to mimic and provide in your backyard.

If you’re interested in attracting Northern Cardinals to your yard, here’s how.

Get a platform feeder

Unlike many other songbirds, cardinals do not like eating from small hanging feeders because they have trouble perching and they feel uncomfortable when something is unbalanced. That’s why it’s important to get a large, heavy feeder that won’t sway in the wind of move too much. Ideally, it’s best to get a large hopper feeder that is securely mounted to a pole and has a roof protecting the seed. Platform feeders are another options for cardinals.

Cardinals love seeds

The diet of cardinals actually consists of a wide variety of items, including corn, insects, tree sap and more. But, when trying to attract cardinals to your bird feeder, the best food is easily husked seeds, namely black oil sunflower seeds and safflower seeds. However, in winter months when food is harder to find, they will more readily eat things like peanuts, pieces of suet and cracked corn.

Water is key

One of the reasons so many cardinals gathered around the Vale in Prospect Park was the presence of water. Like all bird, cardinals rely on water for drinking and preening their feathers, so offering water will help attract them to your yard. Birdbaths do a great job, but since cardinals are larger than other birds, make sure the birdbath is a little deeper.

Female Northern Cardinal in shrubbery

Plant shrubbery

A long-term method for attracting cardinals involves providing as much shelter and cover as possible. Even though they might be noticeable in a bland thicket of trees, they prefer seclusion and discretion.

Keep feeders filled

This one always seems like a very obvious tip, but it’s really important to keep your feeders filled, especially during the early morning and late evening. Cardinals are often the first and last to eat at feeders and if they’re empty, they won’t stick around.

Provide nesting spots

Cardinals never use the same nest, but they will reuse the same location if they really like it. They are drawn to dense areas of shrubbery with a lot of cover, so consider planting more bushes.

Make them repeat customers

Unlike other birds, cardinals don’t migrate and rarely leave a small radius of a few miles. So, once you get them hooked to your yard, they’ll be regular visitors.

Bird feeding is a fun and rewarding experience that not only helps birds, but provides you a great way to reconnect with nature. Whether you’re an old pro or just starting out, here are 10 key tips to keep in mind when feeding birds.

1. Use a variety of feeders and types of bird food

When you’re first starting to feed birds, it’s fine to get just one feeder and fill it with one type of seed. However, you will become disappointed with the lack of diversity because different birds love different types of food. For example, insect-eating birds love suet, bluebirds enjoy mealworms, orioles have their own feeders, hummingbirds like nectar, etc. Putting up different types of bird feeders, like tube feeders, platform feeders, hopper feeders and others, will attract an array of beautiful birds.

2. Make sure your backyard is a safe place for birds

Safety is a key thing to provide to birds because they can be susceptible to predation under certain circumstances. In order to keep your backyard a safe place for birds, keep your cats indoors (which will also add years to their lives) and put up baffles to keep out bullying squirrels.

3. Be conscious of where you place the feeders

Selecting the right location for your feeders is important because it dictates how safe the birds are and whether or not they will be attracted to it. To learn more, check out my other blog post on the best locations to put your bird feeders.

4. Provide water and nesting boxes

Along with food, the other two essential resources that attract birds are water and shelter. Putting up a birdbath will attract birds that don’t eat from feeders and will draw in other birds. Also, if you add nesting boxes, you’ll make your backyard a sort of Las Vegas for birds where the fun never ends.

5. Clean feeders frequently

It’s absolutely essential for you to clean your feeders with consistency. The importance of cleaning bird feeders has been well-documented on this blog because they can spread harmful bacteria among birds and attract unwanted critters.

6. Supply food continually but don’t let it sit outside too long

To keep birds coming back, always have food in your feeder or they will start looking elsewhere. On the flipside, you should only fill your feeders to last a day or two. Bird food, especially the ones that go bad quickly like suet, does not stay good when exposed to the elements of nature for too long time.

7. Store food properly

In a related tip, the food for your birds should be stored properly before it even gets to the feeder because the same bacteria and dirt could contaminate the food. Suet should be stored in the freezer until it’s ready and read this article by Melissa Mayntz on how to store bird seed.

8. Buy the seed you can afford, but try to go for quality

While bird feeding can be an expensive hobby depending on how many feeders you have, you should never let it affect you financially. Nevertheless, birds are picky eaters and will shun those mixed-seed bargain bags, so opt for quality when you can.

9. Get a field guide and learn more about the birds

Half the joy of watching birds is admiring them and learning more about their behaviors. In order to do this, a good field guide (or field guide app) will make your experience more rewarding.

10. Have fun!

Last, but not least, bird feeding is only as fun and rewarding as you make it. Don’t see bird feeding as a chore or an unpleasant duty. See it as a way to give back to nature and contribute to birds on an intimate level. When you’re having fun with the birds, it makes everything worthwhile!

If you have any tips that I’ve missed, feel free to leave them in the comments, on Twitter @BackyardChirper or on our Facebook page.

The month is designed to bring attention to a hobby beloved by millions and encourage more people to partake in the important activity. That’s why we’re doing our part to promote National Bird Feeding Month and bird feeding in general by giving away two new bird feeders.

What you can win:

First Prize: Birds Choice Classic Bird Feeder with Built-In Squirrel Baffle and Pole – Green

We asked and you spoke. Our Facebook fans said they wanted a squirrel proof bird feeder with enough perches for four birds. It is difficult, if not impossible, for any squirrels to get the seed out of this feeder when positioned correctly.

Second Prize: Birds Choice Cedar 17″ x 14″ Open Platform Bird Feeder

The second type of feeder our fans wanted most was a platform feeder that could feed multiple birds at once. This sturdy feeder is well made and a great way to feed many species of birds.

How to enter:

Post ONE picture to our Facebook wall of a bird picture you took that you love the most before February 15. Make sure you explicitly say the picture is for the contest and please don’t post more than one for the contest!

Bonus: For ONE additional entry, Follow Us on Twitter @BackyardChirper and tweet this post: “I entered to win a free bird feeder @BackyardChirper. Here’s how you can too: bit.ly/x6pJYA”

How to win:

(1) To win the grand prize, three of the best pictures will be selected as finalists. The three pictures will go up for a vote with our fans and the one with the most votes will win the grand prize!

(2) The winner of the second prize will be randomly chosen from all participants, including tweets.

We look forward to seeing all your great pictures.

That’s exactly what happened in Los Angeles when a group of drivers on the freeway spotted a huge Laysan Albatross with a 7-foot wingspan nonchalantly sitting in the back of a pickup truck.

When the driver of the truck saw alarmed motorists trying to flag him down, he noticed the massive bird in the back and immediately turned the bird over to lifeguards.

If you’ve never seen a Laysan Albatross, picture a seagull on steroids. They usually have a greyish back with white underparts and a pink beak. These “near threatened” seabirds are usually only found on remote islands in the North Pacific where they nest.

Rescuers have an idea as to how this beautiful bird made it’s way to L.A. (and it’s not because it was trying to make it to Hollywood). Here’s an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times:

They suspect the bird stowed away on a cargo ship, hitching a trans-Pacific ride to Los Angeles before disembarking and hopping into the pickup.

The seabirds are adept at soaring long distances and can spend years roaming vast areas of the ocean without ever touching land. But they can mistake the flat surface of a passing container ship for a nesting island, landing and sitting there unnoticed until the ship arrives in port.

A group called International Bird Rescue took care of the bird for four days to make sure it was healthy and released the bird off the coast of California on Tuesday. They released the albatross far enough from shore to encourage it to head back home to Hawaii.

Amazingly, these birds are known for being out at sea for years at a time and can fly around the world in a mere 46 days, so getting to Hawaii from California is like a walk through the park.

So, the next time you go outside, always keep an eye out for the unexpected because you never know what you might see.

While large flocks of birds are not unusual, it can be pretty intimidating for anyone to see this many birds flying over your head at once. According to an article on Colorado’s 9 News, the birds cover a three-mile radius and have been there since Thanksgiving. They engage in these murmurations between 5:30 and 6:00pm.

Even though you might not think this is a big deal, having such a high concentration of birds in one area poses a lot of problems. One of the main issues is the fecal matter. A striking sight from the news report below is a woman carrying an umbrella because of the droppings raining from the sky. This could be a serious issue because excessive amounts of droppings could introduce bacteria into the air and create a foul smell. There are reports of people getting eye infections and irritation in their throats.

These murmurations can be hypnotic and beautiful in small doses, but being held hostage by the birds, for fear of defecation and health hazards, is troublesome. Many news reports are likening it to Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.”

If you don’t know anything about European Starlings, they are non-native invasive species in the U.S. There are an estimated 200 million of these birds, which are all descended from about 75 that were released in Central Park.

So, what is the solution for the starling problem that is affecting cities and devastating certain plant life? The Kentucky town is trying to disperse the flock of thousands with sound cannons, but it hasn’t worked.

There are a number of things you can do to keep starlings away from your bird feeders, but getting this amount of birds away from your town is a tall task. Back in 2008, the government poisoned or shot more than a million starlings to control populations. It’ll be interesting to see what actions this poor Kentucky town takes to rid themselves of the invasive birds.

Beginning last year, there’s been a huge trend toward putting up birdcams and using tiny, lightweight cameras to capture things we’d never be able to see otherwise. For example, the #1 most viewed live video of all time came from last year when the world became enraptured by the musings of the family of bald eagles in Decorah, Iowa.

Since then, 24/7 live streams of all sorts of wildlife have exploded all over the Internet. If you’ve never seen one and are wondering why anyone would want to watch one of these live birdcams, all I can say is watch one. They are intimate, revelatory, hypnotic and downright fun.

Currently, you can watch a few really interesting feeds. Right now, the San Diego Zoo Safari Park has a Condor Cam, which is a live feed of two California Condors incubating an egg at the zoo. Although the birds are in captivity and they’re not actually incubating the real egg yet for safety reasons (they will once the hatch-date gets closer), it’s still an amazing thing to watch. You get to see these endangered birds up close and join them on their journey.

Also, the beloved Decorah Eagles birdcam is finally back up. It’s way too early for any eggs, but the two beautiful eagles are there and bringing material to their massive nest.

If you have some time to kill, I recommend checking some of these out. You can also get in on the action and buy your own bird camera that can be set up at a bird feeder or in a nesting box.

I know it’s a bit too early to start thinking about bird nests, but it’s impossible not to marvel at the elaborate structures built by birds year in year out. A lot of these structures, like gigantic dams built by beavers or extensive burrow systems made by wombats, make the things we produce on a daily basis look small and inconsequential.

What got me mildly obsessed with this subject was a book I recently received from the Wild Bird Magazine called “Nests: Fifty Nests and the Birds that Built Them” by Sharon Beals, which features 50 amazing photographs of bird nests.

Photographer Sharon Beals, who became entranced with taking pictures of old bird nest specimens at museums, perfectly captures the adeptness of birds in a way that exhibits their intuition. The 50 nests in her book are just a tiny sample of all the different types of nests that exist in the world and you can really see her passion grow as she urges everyone to be conscious of how their actions affect nature and birds.

Here are 5 of my favorite nests from her photographs that really demonstrate why it’s important to conserve the planet.

Allen’s Hummingbird

I find all hummingbird nests remarkable because of how they are built and just how small they are. This image isn’t actually from her book, but it’s on Sharon Beals Flickr account.

American Robin

American Robins elaborately place twigs and weeds to create an outer layer. Then they reinforce their nest by smearing mud around it. They build a new nest for every new brood.

Caspian Tern

This is among my favorite nests, not because of its architecture, but simply because it looks absolutely beautiful. As you can tell from the materials it uses, the Caspian Tern nests near coastal areas all around the world. In the book, Sharon points out that the construction is rudimentary and that they scrape shallow depressions in the ground for a nest.

Golden-Hooded Tanager

The Golden-Hooded Tanager, which hails from Central and South America, constructs very strong nests in places where they can be hidden. For example, they are sometimes built in bunches of bananas, empty trees and even in old honeycombs.

House Finch

House Finches are well-known for their scrappiness and will use nearly any material or location to build a nest. As demonstrated from this picture, their use of our trash is both sad and admirable.

If you like these photographs, I highly recommend you get her book, which is a great coffee table book. Also, check out Sharon Beals website.