BirdNote asked listeners to tell us about the bird life around their homes. BirdNote’s Dominic Black met up with Denise Acsay — who lives on San Juan Island in Washington State — to learn more about Denise’s love of birds such as this Barred Owl. Denise says her favorite bird sounds are…

Scientists once believed that Australia’s songbirds — such as this Superb Lyrebird — were the result of lost birds from Asia and Africa colonizing the continent. But recent research has changed that thinking. It turns out that the Australian continent was the evolutionary epicenter of much…

The House Wren presents us with a classic bird image. That jaunty tail, twitching sharply as the wren scolds, puts an exclamation point on the bird's perky voice and attitude. The word "wren" comes to us intact from the Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon languages, where it referred specifically to…

As part of their spring courtship, Downy Woodpeckers perform a spectacular "butterfly flight." The birds seem to dance in the air, holding their wings high, and flapping slowly and lazily like butterflies. It's the smallest woodpecker in North America, and you might miss it, as it pecks…

Brain imaging studies have shown that hearing enjoyable music “lights up” the mesolimbic reward pathway in the human brain. But how does a bird experience a song from its own species? Scientists at Emory University found a similar pattern in the sparrow’s brain. Female White-throated…

One of the most remarkable singers on the European continent is the Bluethroat. Often singing while fluttering aloft, Bluethroats mix their own song elements with imitations of just about every bird within hearing distance. They'll even try their luck with crickets, tree frogs, and train…

Celebrate the earth -- from a canyon in the West, where meadowlarks sing … to the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, where a pair of Common Loons returns to breed and raise their young and spring peepers sing for mates … to an old-growth hardwood forest in North Carolina, where warblers and…

Why are bluebirds blue? Unlike many other bird colors, blue is not a pigment but a color produced by the structure of the feathers. Tiny air pockets and melanin pigment crystals in each feather scatter blue light and absorb the other wavelengths. The even finer structure of the feather…

To celebrate BirdNote's 10-year anniversary, we asked BirdNote founder Chris Peterson how she came up with the idea for the show. The StarDate public radio program provided inspiration. “I had this idea grab me around the neck,” Chris recalls. “Why don’t we do for birds what StarDate does…

In the world of birds, you’ll find King Penguins, King Vultures, King Eiders, 89 species of kingfishers, 11 species of kingbirds, and three species tiny kinglets. But of the 10,000 species of birds around the globe, there are no “queens.”* Once upon a time, there was a species of bird-of…