Archive • Bird of Passage • Buttondown

Bird of Passage: December 2025

December 3, 2025

Do you believe in omens?

Bird of Passage: November 2025

November 5, 2025

Happy November! Here are three short items that may be of interest...

Bird of Passage: October 2025

October 1, 2025

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

Bird of Passage: September 2025

September 3, 2025

Our backyard has a unique bird-related feature...

Bird of Passage: August 2025

A peak behind the curtain.

Bird of Passage: July 2025

Among birders, California's Channel Islands are famous for one thing...

Bird of Passage: June 2025

On transitions and the start of summer.

Bird of Passage: May 2025

When you’re out birding, is there a whole category of birds that you just sort of… ignore?

Bird of Passage: April 2025

Searching for sandhill cranes, then and now.

Bird of Passage: March 2025

Book giveaway inside!

Bird of Passage: February 2025

February 5, 2025

A quick note: I wrote this early in January, before all the news of the past couple weeks. It feels a bit frivolous now, but, well, taking time for things...

Bird of Passage: November 2024

November 6, 2024

A bit of housekeeping: This newsletter is going to go on hiatus for December and January, but it will be back the first Wednesday in February. Thanks so much...

Bird of Passage: October 2024

October 2, 2024

Do you have bird feeders? I don’t (not seed feeders, at least), and to be honest, I’ve become a bit of a curmudgeon about them. About half the area of my...

Bird of Passage: September 2024

September 4, 2024

Quick bit of time-sensitive bird world news before we dive in: The Bird Union, the union of National Audubon Society staff, is going on strike August 10–12...

Bird of Passage: August 2024

I have a big project this month: I’m editing the text for the forthcoming new edition of the National Geographic guide to the birds of North America. This...

Bird of Passage: July 2024

Have you been enjoying this newsletter? I’d really love to grow my subscriber base, so please consider forwarding it to a friend who you think would like it...

Bird of Passage: June 2024

Recently I had one of those days where the number of things I’d read about the election and PFAS and microplastics and climate change hit some sort of...

Bird of Passage: May 2024

If you’ve read my book, you may remember the chapter on “moon-watching” as a method for gathering data on night-migrating birds and the small group of...

Bird of Passage: April 2024

First, a quick housekeeping note: If this month's email looks a bit different, it's because I've moved from Substack to another email platform called...

Bird of Passage: March 2024

February was rough. But I mean, is February ever not rough? I firmly believe that it’s the shortest month of the year because if it were any longer, we...