BIRDING NEWS 2

Young Birders Alert:  The Cornell Lab will be hosting the annual Young Birders Event this June 25 thru 28th in Ithaca, New York. If you are a high school student interested in pursuing a career that connects with birds, this event is for you, and the application deadline is March 8th. This 4-day event is held at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which is staffed by a variety of professionals who all work with birds in different ways: As bird biologists, ecologists, artists, communicators, educators, audio specialists, computer scientists, app designers, and more.

Taxonomists just completed creating the most updated version of the "Bird Family Tree" that includes all recognized 11,167 bird species! You can refer to the new illustrated Phylogeny Explorer to see the connections between different birds you encounter and others that interest you. Understanding bird systematics and the connections between different birds and bird families is an interesting part of becoming a better birder, and now Birds of the World provides a way for users to trace any bird's lineage, compare species relationships, and explore major evolutionary milestones with a click of a button online. 

Biologists who have been tracking Bald Eagles that fledged from nests in Arizona found that most migrate north after the nesting season, sometimes extending their movements into southwest Canada during summer and fall. Rather than making a southbound post-nesting migration used by most migratory birds, the Arizona population of Bald Eagles showed they follow northbound routes where the young eagles made stopovers at lakes and rivers. These discoveries point to the need for targeted conservation of critical travel corridors and feeding areas beyond Arizona nesting territories.

Saturday January 31st, the Superbowl of Birding will bring birding teams together to compete in a 12-hour race to find as many bird species as possible on the coldest day of the year (maybe). Centered at Mass Audubon's Joppa Flats Sanctuary, this friendly competition fosters the joys of winter birding and being outdoors while raising awareness about the importance of bird habitats along the Massachusetts North Shore and surrounding areas. All ages and levels of experience are welcome to participate in the Superbowl of Birding. 

With more than 550 Whooping Cranes wintering along the Texas Gulf Coast centered at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, the best way to get close to some of the rare and majestic Whooping Cranes is to join Captain Tommy on the cruise ship Skimmer. Whooping Crane & Coastal Birding Cruises depart regularly from Rockport, Texas, on 3-hour waterborne birding adventures that cruise into prime Whooping Crane viewing and photography areas, and you have a chance to see 30 to 60 different species of birds and other wildlife during the trip.

For the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 2025 marked another extraordinary year for eBird, Merlin, Macaulay Library, and Birds of the World. As the birding community reached incredible milestones in worldwide participation, engagement, and conservation data gathering, the Lab provided enhanced tools and expanded content to unprecedented numbers of people around the world. By connecting people to birds, more people entered the birding world than ever before, including 140,000 first-time eBird users and 9.6 million new Merlin users!

As we begin a new year of exciting birding events, Birding Festivals are a great opportunity to learn more about the variety of birds and their varied surroundings at a given location, while connecting with others interested in birds and birding. During January there are 12 birding festivals from Alabama to Arizona and California to Florida, and 5 of them feature wintering Bald Eagle populations. Even so, every birding festival is different, but all provide activities with novice and experienced birders in mind including a variety of exciting events – and along the way you are sure to learn more about how to be a better birder.

A new study reveals that “5 Great Forests” in Central America are lifelines for many of North America’s migratory birds. Every spring, the familiar songs of Wood Thrushes and a variety of warblers return to the woods, parks, and backyards of eastern North America. But their migrations begin far to the south in the lush, remote tropical forests of Central America that sustain songbirds and others during most of the year. The new research reveals that the 5 Great Forests of Central America – stretching from southern Mexico to southern Panama – are indispensable lifelines for dozens of migratory bird species that link the Americas.

The Bird Academy at the Cornell Lab has reduced the price on every self-paced, online course about birds and birding. Whether you're just discovering the joys of birding, enthusiastic about bird identification, or curious about bird behaviors and adaptations, there is a Bird Academy course available for you, now at a discount. Whether you are most interested in specific groups of birds – raptors, waterfowl, warblers, and more; want to improve your ID skills, bird photography, or artwork; or if you are looking for how you can expand your beginning birding skills and activities, there’s a Bird Academy course for you.

In late October, which is unusually early, young Snowy Owls started showing up in rapidly increasing numbers from the western prairies of southern Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba to the Maritime Provinces in Canada, and especially in the western Great Lakes around southern Ontario, Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin according to this week’s Project Snowstorm alert. A few Snowy Owls have even been reported in British Columbia and Washington state where Snowys have been scarce to absent in recent years, and the early surge in sightings has intensified during the past couple of weeks.

Each year the Owl Research Institute produces The Roost, their annual newsletter that is filled with project updates, owl info, and many impressive photos. Actually, The Roost is more like a magazine than a newsletter, and it’s available now for anyone interested in owls, science, and conservation. This is the 29th annual publication of The Roost, and you will find the information it contains especially interesting, including the variety of owls being studied, ranging from Snowy Owls to Burrowing Owls, Great Gray Owls and Short-eared Owls, Northern Saw-whet Owls, and more.

The live action feeder cam is becoming more exciting each day after the first snowy storm of the season in Ontario pressed new birds beyond the boreal forest, including large finches like Pine Grosbeaks and Evening Grosbeaks, plus Red-breasted Nuthatches and Blue Jays. It’s all happening at the Ontario FeederWatch Camera that provides a live feed and video recordings of especially interesting moments that you can watch any day. And if you are interested in viewing a very different tropical bird feeder and birds in Panama, All About Birds has a live cam for you too.

Emphasizing elite engineering, top performance, and a lifetime guarantee, German Precision Optics (GPO) USA is providing birders with a new line of premium binoculars and spotting scopes. GPO USA is an American-based company that creates and sells high quality, premium optics for birders with exceptional features at significantly lower prices. Headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, GPO USA was established on the principle that German design, engineering, and quality control can be provided at the strictest standards while utilizing the efficiencies of global production.

Climaxing the 2025 Birding Festival season are 7 super birding events that include 2 of the absolute best annual birding celebrations for people of all ages – the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival in south Texas and the Celebration of Cranes at Bosque del Apache Refuge in New Mexico. Cranes are also emphasized during the Great Midwest Crane Festival in Wisconsin and the Celebration of Cranes in Kansas. The Central Valley Birding Symposium takes place in California, as does the California Swan Festival – and there is the popular North Shore Birding Festival in Florida to cap off the year.

Presented as part of the online Birds of the World discovery seminar series, “The Social Life of Cliff Swallows” will be described by Charles Brown tomorrow, October 16th at 9am CDT. Brown’s study of the social behaviors of Cliff Swallows stands as one of the longest-running research projects on any species of birds in North America. Dr. Brown’s work to understand the social behavior of colony nesting Cliff Swallows provides many interesting insights into social feeding and illustrates the advantages and disadvantages of group living, along with some surprising egg-laying behaviors.

Last Thursday night, September 25th, almost 1¼ Billion birds were documented migrating above the continental United States! Only once before has a night’s migration total topped a billion, overnight October 6, 2023, which is now the second highest migration night recorded to date. Real-time migration analysis maps show the intensity of actual nocturnal bird migration as detected by the US weather surveillance radar network. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology produces the live maps that are archived on BirdCast’s Live Bird Migration Maps webpage.

An event for students aged 13 to 23 and their parents or mentors, the Frontiers in Ornithology Student Symposium will be held in Seattle on October 4th with the primary mission to focus on birds, ornithology, conservation science, and related academic pursuits. The goal is to inform and inspire students to take their interests in birds to a higher level. The symposium is focused on cutting-edge technologies being used in bird research and study, careers in ornithology, and how to pursue that focus in higher education, professionally, or as an avocation.

GOVIEW USA is a new optics company founded by a team of highly skilled optical industry experts who are introducing an innovative and modern collection of binoculars and accessories. At GOVIEW, you will find affordable binoculars that are technologically uncompromising and available in modern color options that are available with a variety of practical accessories. GOVIEW products are for birders who appreciate design, technology and, above all, crisp brilliant colors when birding in the field and in your neighborhood.

Hosted by the Cayuga Bird Club, the New York State Ornithological Association Conference will take place in Ithaca from September 19 to 21 for a weekend celebrating birds and birders. The event will take place on the shore of Cayuga Lake in the beautiful Finger Lakes region of the state, a popular area for fall field trips. The conference is open to the public and it brings birders together from across the state and beyond, offering attendees a variety of social, educational, and birding activities during a peak fall migration period.

If you are wondering when bird migration will peak in your area, a list of the peak migration period for birds in the 1,000 largest cities in the Lower 48 States is available now courtesy of BirdCast. The “peak periods” are the date ranges when 50 percent of all nocturnal bird migration takes place over each city. This peak period was determined by examining radar information of bird migration collected during the past 25 years. Knowing when the peak period of migration takes place in an area can help inform people who plan birding activities, engage public interest, and inform conservation action.