October 1, 2025

Bird of Passage: October 2025

I realized recently that I had not really gone birding since May.

I realized recently that I had not really gone birding since May. May! That’s so long ago! I’ve certainly been on some walks outdoors (family hikes, brisk exercise-type walks along a local creek, etc.) where I was keeping an eye out for birds. But specifically going birding—leaving the house with the specific aim of looking for neat birds, binoculars in hand—hasn’t made it onto my schedule in far longer than I’d like.

Saturday morning, after some gentle urging from my spouse, I finally made it out the door to my binoculars. I headed for my favorite Weird Sparrow Spot, figuring this might be a good time of year for weird sparrows; it’s a beaver-created marshy spot at the back corner of the Whitman Mission National Historic Site, also a reliable place to find marsh wrens, which aren’t common around here.

Confession: I cannot reliably identify sparrow chip calls by ear on my own. So, I was leaning heavily on Merlin Sound ID, hoping I could visually confirm the presence of any unusual sparrows it detected. This meant that I soon found myself staring into a mass of active, poorly-lit song sparrows and white-crowned sparrows as they flitted from tree to bush, trying and failing to spot the savannah sparrow and golden-crowned sparrow that were almost certainly in there somewhere. At least I spotted some Lincoln’s sparrows (love those guys) and the marsh wrens! And what really matters is that I finally got to spend some time walking around out in nature by myself, something I’d been missing.

You may have noticed that I haven’t had much new writing of my own to share recently. Part of that is because more of my time has been devoted to my part-time school garden job, but part of it is just the weird timelines sometimes involved in freelancing—I’m under contract for multiple writing projects right now but most of them won’t see the light of day until sometime in 2026. Stay tuned!

---

Words About Birds

First: I occasionally freelance as a scriptwriter for the YouTube science show SciShow, and although I often write about non-bird topics for them, recently they did actually ask me to do a script on birds! So, check out this fun twelve-minute video about all the ways that ornithologists use decoy and dummy birds for research and conservation.

My favorite bird news story of the month was the blue jay x green jay hybrid documented in Texas. I’ve long dreamed about traveling to south Texas to see green jays, but I haven’t made it yet. Apparently there’s an area near San Antonio where they coexist with blue jays, and even though the two species are in separate genera (not that closely related), genetic analysis has confirmed that this weird-looking bird had a green jay mom and a blue jay dad. Wild!

If you’ve read my book, you won’t be surprised to learn that I’m still a bit obsessed with methods for tracking bird migration, and I enjoyed this story from Audubon magazine on the latest advances in tiny tracking backpacks. We now have devices that can determine a bird’s altitude (in addition to its latitude and longitude) as it flies over the ocean! This is great because, among other things, it gives us a better idea of whether these migrating species will be harmed by offshore wind development.

Meanwhile in New Zealand, scientists are frantically vaccinating kākāpō (flightless ground-dwelling parrots, about as far from long-distance migrants as you can get) against avian influenza. New Zealand is one of the only parts of the world that so far remains untouched by the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, but it probably won’t stay that way forever. So, wildlife managers are trying to get ahead of it by vaccinating kākāpō and other critically endangered native bird species before the virus arrives.

Finally, if you need a pick-me-up, check out this piece on once-rare North American birds that have made inspiring comebacks. The merlin, pileated woodpecker, and sandhill crane have all recovered from near-extinction. It’s hard to find much to feel optimistic these days, but history shows us that it is possible to reverse the factors behind the declines of some species.

---

Book Recommendation of the Month

I was lucky enough to receive a free advance copy of The Social Lives of Birds by Joan Strassmann, which was published last week. Joan’s first book, Slow Birding, was an intimate look at the backyard birds that we sometimes fail to appreciate. Her follow-up takes a much broader approach, hopping around the globe to examine the varied social structures of bird flocks, communities, and families and the benefits and challenges they create. I hope you’ll pick up a copy!

---

Upcoming Events

I have two virtual book talks coming up, one for Sarasota Audubon on October 13 and one for Skagit Audubon on November 11. If you haven’t heard me talk about Flight Paths and would like to, consider checking one out!

---

As always, feel free to leave a comment or reply to this newsletter via email! See you next month.