Birds and Freedom
Enslaved men and women in America’s South developed their own ornithology. To them, birds meant forced labor. But they also meant food, opportunity, and sometimes even freedom.
Bird History
Telling the stories of the birds of America - and the people who named them, ate them, studied them, and saved them.
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Sparrowmania
The House Sparrow Was the Bird America Asked For—and Maybe the One It Deserved
The 100 Greatest Bird Names of All Time
Making this list was the hardest thing I’ve ever done
The Tragic Tale of Woodcock Dick
New York’s first celebrity woodcock
More than the latest "It Bird"
New to woodcocks? Sit down. They’ve been famous for centuries.
The Ornithologist in the White City
Birding at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair
Audubon at Carnival: Party Like It’s 1873
Birds took over New Orleans in the middle of the state’s worst political crisis
How About A Game Dinner?
Nothing is more American than sitting down to a meal with seventy of your favorite wild animals.
We’re Not Sending Our Best
Americans have strong feelings about foreign birds naturalized in the U.S. It turns out we’ve also sent our fair share overseas.
American Birds Abroad
To Europeans, America’s cardinals and mockingbirds were plenty exotic—and they couldn’t get enough of them.
Republic of Feathers
I’m writing a book!
Bird City
New York City Can’t Live With Its Birds, And It Can’t Live Without Them
Dying Birds and the March of Civilization
Fearing extinction at the turn of the century
Two Years of Birds
Some stats, highlights, and lessons after 50 posts at Bird History
Chunk Ducks, Blatherskites, Butterballs, and Slug-toots
These used to be folk names for American birds. Where did they all go?
Field Notes: Parrots Gone Wild
Six Fairy Penguins, bird import metrics, disappearing budgies, and luxury cockatoos.
Parrots Gone Wild
A global trade in exotic pets brought millions of foreign birds to America. Some of them had other plans.
Home On The Range
Ring-necked Pheasants and their uncomfortable place in South Dakota
Welcome to America, Please Try Not to Die
Inside the government’s twenty-year campaign to import the world’s most huntable birds
Field Notes: The Crucible on Laysan Island
Laysan Rails, friendly albatrosses, deadly cisterns, and conservation proposals a century before their time.