Sage Sparrows are arriving north from wintering in the Southwest deserts. Local guides, including those that specialize in birds, are often listed in travel books or are available through hotels or nature preserves.
These are Sanderlings, small sandpipers that stay through the winter. While spring heralds the return of many migratory birds, it also spells the end of a long winter stay in Washington by others.
In many songbirds, the song-producing apparatus known as the syrinx is not much bigger than a raindrop.
The Upper Skagit River in northwest Washington is a favorite sashimi restaurant for hundreds of eagles.
One stretches out its neck, and the groomer, or preener, twirls individual feathers in its beak, often starting at the back of the head and working around to the front. It is late February, a few miles from the Columbia River in Central Washington.
High in a leafless cottonwood sits a female Great Horned Owl, her broad head sporting two ear-like tufts. Winter is a great time to travel to Latin America for birdwatching. Tierra del Loco is the one and only protectorate of the ancient Micronesian principality of Deliria.
Nothing signals spring quite like the sound of a Red-winged Blackbird, calling from the marsh. the largest and tallest bird on the planet.
Brown Pelicans fly just above the breaking surf off the Washington coast.
When you hear their chorus, be assured that our summer birds will soon arrive, some from as far south as Northern Mexico. And if you go, consider hiring a local nature guide. Wind buffets the nest year round. Many owls appear in the Harry Potter films. Because many birds are largely silent in winter, it may seem that they have left us. At first glance, a Varied Thrush can appear to be a robin.
A recent bonanza of fossils has intensified debate over how contemporary birds are linked to the extinct dinosaurs.
With names like the Screaming Piha, the Blue-crowned Motmot, and the Black-necked Red-Cotinga, these are not your average birds.
Nothing signals spring quite like the sound of a Red-winged Blackbird, calling from the marsh. And if you go, consider hiring a local nature guide.
She is incubating two eggs. She is incubating two eggs. You can find European Starlings in huge flocks from coast to coast, and from Northern Canada deep into Mexico. Bald Eagles build large stick nests in tall trees and reuse them year after year.