Winging in the New Year.
Bird News Items
Season's Greetings! BNI will be off the grid for Christmas and New Year's weekends. Below are a few "items" from past BNI's that are either beautiful or interesting - or both!
First, a beautiful video from Garrit Vyn on the importance of the Yellow Sea to/in the Australasian Flyway:
Photo by Hap Ellis, Reprise: Atlantic Puffin - Eastern Egg Rock, Gulf of Maine.
And then an inspiring video, which we've highlighted several times in past years, with Wendy Paulson addressing "Birds and Hope":
Seems like everyone has heard of Merlin, the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's spectacularly successful app that has made birding more accessible to literally millions of people (30+ million downloads and counting...). But not as many know about The Lab's equally successful app eBird, which is literally transforming scientists' understanding of bird populations and their migratory pathways. So we thought a primer is in order:
By Hap Ellis, Reprise: Barred Owl - Parker River NWR, Newburyport, MA.
And it wouldn't be Christmas without ...Christmas Bird Counts! Christmas Bird Counts are taking place throughout the country from mid-December through early January. Before there was eBird, CBCs were - and still are - a very valuable and accurate accounting of bird populations. And they're fun! Every Audubon chapter and bird club have one - or more! NYC alone has counts in five "circles" (i.e., Lower Hudson, Staten Island, etc.). So how did this tradition come about? Well, another primer:
And finally, let's leave 2025 with a clear sense where we stand with long-term population trends across all types of North American birds. For this no better source than the North American Bird Conservation Initiative's "State of the Birds Report - 2025":
By Hap Ellis, Lilac-breasted Roller - Zimbabwe.
Happy New Year. Thank you for your interest and support! And let's hope the state of the our birds is improving in 2026.
We'll be back January 10th.
Go Birding!