Friends, I am tired. If you’ve ever parented young children, you know that the weeks leading up to the end of the school year can be very, let’s say, full. In our family’s case, May also brings multiple birthdays, an anniversary, and the busy season for my school garden job. Unfortunately this all also coincides with the peak of spring migration, so just when I most want to be spending my mornings outside looking for birds, I have the least time and energy to actually do that.

That said, I have managed to eke out a few precious hours with the birds in the past month. We don’t have the warbler diversity here that folks in the eastern U.S. do, but it wouldn’t be spring if I didn’t lay eyes on a Calliope Hummingbird, Bullock’s Oriole, Black-headed Grosbeak, and Lazuli Bunting at least once. And then there are the tanagers.

To my eyes, there are very few migratory songbirds in North America more lovely than an adult male Western Tanager. (Maybe Painted Buntings. MAYBE.) So getting to spend a few minutes watching several of these beautiful boys foraging in a pine tree was perhaps the highlight of my month.

Next week the school year will be over and we’ll be off on a family road trip to the Olympic Peninsula. More soon!

Words About Birds

I have a couple new pieces to share this month! First, for The Revelator, I wrote about new research showing that a surprisingly high proportion of “stopover” sites used by migratory birds in North America fall within urban areas. The scientists behind this study used radar data to pinpoint stopover hotspots across the entire continent, and the results highlight the real (and sometimes overlooked) value of habitat conservation within cities.

Second, bioGraphic asked me to cover some new research on the concept of “refuge abandonment.” Although Spain’s yellow-legged gulls have nested on inaccessible cliffs for decades, that wasn’t their original habitat—long ago they nested right on beaches, but abandoned those sites due to the threat of egg harvesting by hungry humans. Now that the practice of egg harvesting has long ended, the birds are gradually returning to beaches and cities, surprising some people in the process.

Not by me: I enjoyed Audubon’s story on the science behind birds’ V formations. Birds in a V can take advantage of the little air vortexes generated by the leader’s wingbeats to generate extra lift and save energy. The effect is strongest for bigger birds, and you might see cranes, pelicans, cormorants, and other large, flocking species fly this way in addition to geese.

Finally, some pure fun: Popular Science curated a set of delightful highlights of bird cam footage from this spring. Check out head-bobbing owlets, banana-eating toucans, and more.

Book Recommendation of the Month

Birds Up Close: An Engineer Explores Their Hidden Wonders by Lorna Gibson. I’m reading this in preparation for reviewing it for the American Bird Conservancy magazine and it’s so much fun! Gibson is a retired materials science professor from MIT as well as an avid birder, and she turns her engineer’s eye to the structure of birds’ feathers, bones, and more to explore how these creatures pull of their amazing feats of physiology.

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