Laura Erickson's For the Birds

Laura joins Heather Wolf, author of Birding at the Bridge: In Search of Every Bird on the Brooklyn Waterfront, at Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Oil from the BP oil spill is being found in the tissues of Seaside Sparrows, meaning it’s worked its way up the terrestrial food chain.

When the world seems to be facing the most extreme dangers, how should we respond?

What’s in a bird’s name? Sometimes a lot of sound.

When thousands of geese die an a Superfund site, what lesson should we learn?

Thousands of Snow Geese were killed just last week at a Superfund site that had been closed to mining back in 1982.

Laura has a place in her heart for a bird that has caused serious problems for bluebirds and martins. Now, even in urbanized areas, House Sparrow numbers are plummeting, and she finds that troubling.

The stunning Gray Crowned-Crane makes an ideal national emblem for a wonderful country.

Some of the stories Laura has been telling for years turn out to have been based on false memories.

The White-throated Sparrow has a fascinating chromosomal anomaly that may be unique among all vertebrate animals.

Laura wishes Americans could be more like chickadees.

Laura crossed the equator several times this month. Birds didn’t seem to notice.

Laura is home from a trip to a Third World country that is far ahead of ours in some important ways.

Laura’s been waiting for this her whole life. And even birds seem to approve.

Laura loves Heather Wolf’s book about her adventures in birding along the Brooklyn waterfront, Birding at the Bridge: In Search of Every Bird on the Brooklyn Waterfront.

Monk Parakeets are abundant in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, where they are more popular with the management than the pigeons that once nested there. Why is one introduced bird so much more acceptable than another?

What we Americans perceive as liberty is not quite the same as what birds do.

Laura’s Most Wanted Bird turned out to be even more wonderful than she’d anticipated.

Lifelong dreams really do come true, at least sometimes.

Laura got home from her Cuban trip last night. This morning she talked to Lisa Johnson live about her trip.

The very first bird Laura saw in Peru turned out to be the last one, too.

One of Laura’s favorite birds, found along the Amazon River, its tributaries, and the Orinoco Delta in South America, can be found in a small area of Peru, but Laura was there during the dry season, and didn’t spend much time in the right habitat anyway. So her chances were poor, but her hopes were high.

Airplane travel is a serious driver of human-caused climate change. Tropical deforestation is even more significant, something some forms of eco-tourism can actually help alleviate.

One of the birds Laura saw during her first year of birding turns out to be two different species.

This weekend is Hawk Ridge Weekend, and Laura will be there for several events. Migration has been splendid, and even bigger numbers are headed our way!

Laura’s Most Wanted Bird in Peru on her recent trip was an Andean Cock-of-the-Rock.

Laura just returned from Peru and talked to Lisa Johnson on the air.

Despite the sweltering temperatures, fall is upon us, as birds along the Western Waterfront Trail showed Laura yesterday

On July 30, Laura brought her friend Lisa and her little birding dog Pip to the Sax-Zim Bog for a lovely, quiet morning.

When the goal is to protect an endangered species, does it matter if the people helping believe in evolution?

Laura’s nesting Red-bellied Woodpeckers have flown away. How did their nesting turn out?

Today Laura talks about one of the casualties of the major storm that hit Duluth last week.

Post script: Laura’s power went back on Sunday night, the day she wrote this. And Minnesota Power had brought in crews from as far as Colorado to speed up the process.

A new study claims that Northern Mockingbirds don’t learn new songs as they grow older, but Laura doesn’t think the experiment warrants the conclusion.

Since protections afforded by the Endangered Species Act, Kirtland’s Warbler numbers have soared from a low of 167 pairs to more than 2,000.

A new report establishes that fully 85 percent of the 120 bird species listed under the Endangered Species Act are recovering or their populations have stabilized, while unlisted species have declined an average of 24 percent since 1974.

Laura’s nesting Red-bellied Woodpeckers seem to be growing and thriving.

Laura spent two weeks in Maine last month, at the famous Audubon camp at Hog Island.

Laura had some quick but lovely experiences with Roseate Terns when she was in Maine.

Russ and Laura spent a lovely day watching Least Terns at Popham Beach State Park in Maine.

Laura’s backyard Red-bellied Woodpeckers have young in the nest, but the tree is in jeopardy.

Last week, Laura visited Popham Beach State Park in Maine, where she was very impressed with how the stewards provide public recreation near where they provide superb protection for Piping Plovers. Meanwhile, back home in Duluth, an off-leash dog chased off the one Piping Plover that showed up on Park Point.

To list or not to list: that is the question.

Laura and Pip had a close encounter of the Rail kind at the Western Waterfront Trail.

Some interesting and even unexpected woodpeckers are raising young in Laura’s neighborhood.

Over the years, Laura has made some mistakes. Now she’s trying to clear the record.

Not many birds are back yet but a Little Blue Heron showed up on Sunday, to Laura’s delight and, thanks to eBird, the delight of lots of other birders as well.

“For the Birds” is thirty years old today. How did Laura come to start producing the program? (This program was produced with technical assistance from Michael Geraci.)

Today is Warbler Day, when Laura remembers warblers she struggled to identify many years ago, and warblers she saw before she’d ever even heard of such a thing.

Laura spent two mornings last week at the Douglas County Wildlife Area’s Sharp-tailed Grouse lek, watching grouse and more.

Chickadees seem to be reenacting at least part of the movie Camelot.

A trusty presence at Sapsucker Woods isn’t there this year.

Spring may be starting slowly, but there’s plenty out there to enjoy.

Laura disapproves of the idea of trademarking or branding anything that fundamentally transcends “ownership.”

Laura is thrilled about a new book of poetry by her friend J. Drew Lanham. He read four of his poems for today’s program.

April weather in Duluth can be cruel, temps in the 40s when it’s in the 70s not far from here, but for a birder, there’s a lot of pleasure to be had.

One of Laura’s friends near Chicago got to watch a sapsucker outside her window for a whole day. What was it doing there?

Laura puts on her “Miss Manners of Birding” hat to explain some rules for deportment in social situations.

The first Red-winged Blackbird of spring is magic.

With the Flint water disaster in the news, raw sewage flowing into Lake Superior in the last big rainstorm, and some of Duluth’s water system valves failing in Laura’s neighborhood, she’s concerned about us maintaining our infrastructure.

Laura reads two delightful poems by her friend Steve Ingraham.

Laura discovered the exact cause of her hearing loss from listening to a For the Birds program from November 2006.

Somehow, the Chicago Cubs and Black-capped Chickadees gave Laura the luck she needed to find a Northern Saw-whet Owl when she was leading a bird walk this weekend.

Laura’s been archiving the last decade of For the Birds radio programs, and seeing how little some environmental issues have changed but how much scientists have learned over the years.

Laura and Pip went birding in the bog with John Richardson, where they were served up a buffet of wonderful birds, and returned home to a sweet dessert.

Why do we give February that extra day, and do we really want our election years to be our longest years?

Dr. Jeff Price, who is with the Tyndall Climate Change Centre in the UK, gave Laura some excellent suggestions about offsets when traveling.

How do albatrosses raise their young?

In the first of this two-part series, Laura talks about the subject of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, and some of the challenges albatrosses face.

Laura’s friend Lisa and two little boys in Laura’s neighborhood are having fun watching Pileated Woodpeckers.

Women’s heart attack symptoms can be tricky to recognize, so Laura talks about the fuzzy feeling that sent her to the hospital just in time.

Yellow-rumped Warblers may be almost unheard of in Minnesota in winter, but they’re abundant in California. The western form used to be considered a different species than the eastern form, and they may be re-split in the future. Why?

The mangled Ivory Gull carcass Laura retrieved in Superior last month is yielding valuable information at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago

A listener took Laura to task for boasting about squandering energy.

Clay Taylor, one of Laura’s birding friends, recently photographed a Common Tern with a leg band. He worked out the band number with his photographs, sent them to the Bird Banding Lab, and learned that the tern was 23 years old!

Maxene Linehan of Hovland, Minnesota, had a Yellow-rumped Warbler coming to her feeder for most of January. What was it doing out of range, and what are its chances of surviving?

Laura’s daughter Katherine has developed a new webpage for her that will allow people to look up birds and find Laura’s photographs, articles, and past radio programs about them.

Laura talks about this annual tradition.

Laura continues about the issues involved in helping birds, this time focusing on how bad for birds well-intentioned acts of mercy can be.

Laura talks about how we humans must use our heads and our brains both to figure out what animals need, and to help them safely.

The Ivory Gull that was present in Duluth since at least New Years Day appeared to be ill or injured this past weekend, and is presumed dead.

Listener Mike Bartz wrote to Laura about a fascinating encounter he made with three ravens.

Lots of unusual birds have appeared this winter in the Northland. Laura recorded this program on Friday, January 15; that very day another Ivory Gull appeared in Duluth, but didn’t stay around. On Saturday, two Black-legged Kittiwakes showed up. At least one was still being seen on Monday, January 18. And Laura’s been hearing from someone in Hovland, north of Grand Marais, about a Yellow-rumped Warbler visiting her feeder.

Laura’s going to be taking four major trips this year: to California, Maine, Cuba, and Uganda. How does she study up on her birds ahead of time?

Laura has resolved to keep track of every bird she sees with eBird this year. Fortunately, with the eBird app (for iPhones and Android), this won’t be too hard!

Is there a difference ethically between tossing out food for wild owls vs. wild gulls? Laura says yes, and the difference is rooted in these birds’ basic biology and ecology.

On January 6, Laura received an email saying the Ivory Gull had died in Superior, with photos. She went to retrieve the carcass, and immediately got a message that people were watching “the” Ivory Gull in Canal Park: there were TWO!

An Indigo Bunting, which belongs in Central America right now, is visiting Laura Erickson’s neighborhood right now.

Lots of people are making jokes about birders facing off the armed insurrectionists who have taken over Malheur NWR headquarters. For Laura Erickson, this is no laughing matter.

Laura doesn’t get lifers easily anymore, but on New Years Day, she added a good one!