WINGS and Sunbird now have a Facebook page where leaders and participatns can post photos, comments, and links of interest to the worldwide birding community. Watch for news and musings, then contribute your own, too.

The seawatch at Gambell--the source of many stories!

WINGS is very happy to be sponsoring the new season of Birding Adventures, the first television program to focus on birding in the exotic destinations WINGS visits around the world.

Birding Adventures is broadcast three times a week on two cable networks. Upcoming shows include trips to California and Guyana,  with lots of exciting footage of the places WINGS tours visit–and the birds we see there.

This fall and winter, watch for shows featuring WINGS leaders Jon Dunn, Gavin Bieber, and Rich Hoyer in Texas. You’re sure to be inspired!

Dave Jasper and his Camp Chiricahua birders found a Brown-backed Solitaire in the Huachuca Mountains this noon. The bird was photographed and recorded, experiences it is likely to relive again and again if it lingers.

A link to the initial report is on line at AZ-Birding, where I’ll also post updates as they come in.

Logically enough, aerial display is most frequent in birds of open country, where elevated songposts are scarce or absent, and flight song is common across a vast range of species, from shorebirds to sparrows.

The larks are among the most famous of sky singers. And of the larks, none is better known than the Eurasian Skylark, a bird that calls up cultural memories even for those who haven’t yet seen this blithe spirit in life.

The typical song flight of a Skylark lasts for about three minutes, an astoundingly long time for a bird to be in the air and not going anywhere. But the record is held by a bird in Britain said to have sung for sixty-eight minutes before finally dropping to earth.

With the exception of Antarctica, every continent has its larks. The family attains its greatest diversity in Africa, where it is thought to have originated; Ethiopia and South Africa are especially lark-bountiful, with some 65 species between them, including many endemics.

Sprague’s Pipit is just as long-winded. Birds of North America Online cites one example of a bird whose “display bout” lasted for nearly three hours; it isn’t clear from that source whether that was a single display flight, but it must have been an impressive performance in any case.

Thanks to Ted Floyd and Ron Martin for the pointer to Sprague’s Pipit.

DNA analysis of dropped feathers is helping researchers keep track of Imperial Eagles in Central Asia–reducing expense and hardship for birds and for ornithologists.

Eastern Imperial Eagle

I grew up believing that dinosaurs were a sickly gray-green, while my little nieces and nephews think of them as vividly parti-colored.

Just how do you reconstruct the colors of an extinct beast?

The University of Adelaide has managed to match up stray fossil feathers with various species of moa, providing a glimpse of what those giant New Zealanders looked like in life.