Birds & People

Father and son birdwatching

The Owl and the Tanager

Despite all we know about birds, there remains as much yet to be understood. Both amateur and professional ornithologists can help add to the collective knowledge about birds

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A Pelican in the Backseat

The call came as my son Travis and I were halfway around our trap line. We often care for injured owls from the Strathcona Raptor Shelter, and to feed the owls as natural a food as possible, we have...

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A Memorable Visit

One year the students in our school had developed a great interest in birds. All through the winter we worked at a mural depicting a winter scene in which were shown all the birds any of us had...

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A Bush of Woodpeckers

In September of one year, while looking out the window of our house, which is located on an acreage near Armstrong, British Columbia, I noted a Pileated Woodpecker eating chokecherries. We see...

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The Hawk and The Train

You've heard of racing pigeons; how about racing hawks? While the Goderich-Exeter Railway Company's freight train was passing through a valley near Mitchell, a hawk decided to follow along. The...

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Me and the Ovenbird

A few years ago my wife and I visited Florida for a couple of weeks during the winter and spent a wonderful day birding at the Ding Darling Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island. My wife is not a birder but is generally pretty patient about birding with me.

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Dead Mice and Other Light Snacks

You shouldn’t go into our freezer without explicit instructions as to which containers are safe to open and which are not. That’s because there are dead bodies in our freezer.

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Drama on Ice

Loons return to the lake where we live in eastern Ontario soon after the ice goes out in April, yet they do not always nest nearby.

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White Birds

Long ago when we first came to this farm, I remember the flocks of birds all about the place.

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The Hawk and the Crow

I was walking across our 20 acre property near Armstrong, British Columbia, in September a few years ago when I heard, then saw, a typical confrontation between a Crow and a Red-tailed Hawk.

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A Long Way to Not See a Warbler

The moment I signed on as a participant in the Alberta Bird Atlas Project, I was no longer just a birdwatcher, content to wait for new species to appear on our acreage. I had become a bird hunter.

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The Names of Bird Groups

Have you ever tried to describe a group of birds but couldn’t find a more original term that simply “a flock”? Yup, it’s the same tired, old vocabulary used by everyone else. Well, there’s hope for those of you who want to stand out from the crowd; here’s a list of specific names (known as nouns of assemblage) for groups of different birds.

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Hollywood Goes to the Birds

Hollywood is the place where accuracy goes to die. And this is certainly evident with anything related to science or bird biology; neither field gets much respect from the movie-making bigwigs in Tinseltown.

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Our Kingfisher

Some years ago, our family, along with my brother's family, were building a new cottage on a small lake south of Parry Sound, Ontario. We had the pier foundation put in by a contractor and were busy...

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The Sparrow and the Waxwings

A pair of Cedar Waxwings built a nest about 5 feet above the ground in a spruce tree adjacent to my workshop at our cottage at Kendleston Beach. It's located about 50 miles north of Regina,...

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One Odd Bird

My older daughter, Marie, and I were hiking along the Hurricane Ridge area of Olympic National Park in Washington state one day in early August. We had been enjoying the wildflowers, and assorted...

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A Strange Friendship

My husband has always had a great love and respect for wildlife and has a great knowledge of their ways and habits. But a little Ruffed Grouse had him scratching his head. One day as my husband was...

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Yet More Ways to Tell if You Are a Birder

Seriously, if you read the other two articles about how to determine if you’re a birder, then you already know you are. Now you’re just here to see how many other people you can fit into the bird watcher category. Because we are everywhere.

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How to Tell if You Are a Birder

There is no way to identify a birdwatcher based on their economic status, ethnic background, social status, age, gender or even their clothes. This is because the community of birdwatchers includes people from every conceivable group in human society. However, there are some telltale signs which will identify a person as a birdwatcher.

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