Laura Erickson's For the Birds

STOP feeding ducks! Feeding other birds may be fine, depending on where you live.

Knowing when and when not to intervene when an owl seems distressed is not straightforward.

For a while in the 90s, Laura had two licensed education birds, a nighthawk and a Blue Jay, both lovable but entirely different. They inspired this story, written in 2020.

Laura’s stayed healthy while birding in Central and South America, Europe, and Africa thanks to the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control, and the National Institutes of Health.

BB the banded Pileated Woodpecker still visits Laura’s yard now and then.

Jimmy Carter did not fail us. We failed him. (I used Lang Elliott’s recording of a Brown Thrasher, the state bird of Georgia, for this program.)

Northern owls are staging an irruption this year, many of them physically stressed. Birders can’t help but want to see them. If birders stick together and stay on the road, most owls can handle birders and photographers.

Laura has lots of plans to celebrate her “Year of the Chickadee.”

It took Laura 67 days from receiving her first pair of binoculars to her going out to find her first bird. How did she spend that time?

Fifty years ago, Laura was abysmally ignorant about birds. And then–a miracle!