Laura Erickson's For the Birds

Laura remembers her fifth grade teacher, who taught her, via Rodgers and Hammerstein’s original stage musical The Sound of Music, that real heroes stand up against cruel regimes even when there is no way to stop it.

How do birds fare during frigid weather?

General facts about albatrosses and good news about a very special one.

Laura remembers three Thanksgivings of the past, and how a Pileated Woodpecker keeps those memories alive.

Every environmental organization down in the Gulf during the BP oil disaster had to abide by a 5-year moratorium on ALL of their eye-witness information except as BP allowed. National Audubon did way more than honor BP’s rules–they publicly parroted all of BP’s false claims minimizing how bad the disaster was.

At the time of the BP oil spill, Laura thought some important organizations were complying with BP more than they should have. Now, as she explains, she realizes that most of them weren’t cowardly.

Who can we trust after a major disaster?

Laura visited one of the four rehab centers allowed to treat birds oiled in the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Laura talks about the extremely low-tech and ineffective way BP tried to protect beaches and islands after the spill, and the even worse way they approached cleanup. There are many photos and a video on the accompanying blog post at (https://lauraerickson.substack.com/p/getting-away-with-murder-part-2)

As Laura faces her 73rd birthday in what feels like a hopeless time, she looks to chickadees. (This program was reworked from the “For the Birds” program from October 12, 2010.)

The BP oil spill was when Laura learned just how much power a corporation has over individuals; well-meaning and well-respected organizations and institutions; and our government.

Billionaires and corporations have too much power over us, birds, and the environment we need and share.

Birding may keep us young, but not literally.

Clean energy should be making us less, not more, reliant on huge transmission lines.

Power transmission lines can be very harmful for birds and human beings.

Laura recently returned from the American Ornithological Society’s annual meeting. Some things have changed, and some remain the same.

Laura’s has attended a few professional ornithological meetings through the years.

Blue Jays help protect each other from Sharp-shinned Hawks.

More cases of errors and mistaken identity, and one case of vindication

When Laura makes a mistake, she appreciates people who let her know about it, but notes that there are good ways and bad ways of doing so.

Laura talked to Lillian Stokes and Matt Young about their decision to include the finches of Hawaii (called the Hawaiian Honeycreepers) in their new book.

Matt Young is doing important work with his Finch Research Network to help one of Laura’s favorite birds of all, the Evening Grosbeak. He and Lillian Stokes talked about this splendid bird and their new book.

When Laura talked with Lillian Stokes and Matt Young about their new book, The Stokes Guide to Finches, they talked about one of our most widespread, common finches, the American Goldfinch.

Laura spent time talking with Lillian Stokes and Matt Young about their new book, The Stokes Guide to Finches. Today they explain how they met and decided to produce this book.

On September 17, Little Brown will be releasing a great new book, The Stokes Guide to Finches. Laura explains why she likes it.

A plucky little survivor. Except when it isn’t.

The mystery of Blue Jay migration, and the irony of human nature.

On Labor Day, Laura had a most unexpected visitor at her birdbath.

Duluth birders, and even many non-birders, have been enjoying a huge nighthawk migration this week.

There’s a lot happening on Peabody Street these days.

Are this year’s numbers normal?

Laura and Russ drove to Michigan this weekend to celebrate the 100th birthday of one of the most important people in Laura’s birding life.

The many forces funded by anti-environmental think tanks and the chemical industry are still vilifying Rachel Carson, accusing her of being responsible for the deaths of millions of children. Why are they so persistent?

Human beings won a huge battle when DDT was banned. The powerful anti-environmental forces quickly regrouped to ensure that the success would not be repeated, and did their best to vilify the woman whose book sparked so much of the environmental movement.

Laura gets a big kick out of her backyard birds who molt in August. Before they can again be as beautiful as possible, they must go through an Ugly Duckling stage. Fortunately, they don’t have access to mirrors.

Two mammals made a visit to Laura’s yard on Sunday night.

In “Star Wars,” even as the Rebel Alliance celebrated defeating the Galactic Empire, Darth Vader and the Emperor were plotting their revenge. In the 1970s, even as environmentalists celebrated, dark forces were plotting how to gut the EPA and destroy the legislation protecting air, water, and wildlife.

Laura has fallen in love with one particular catbird in her yard. Naturally, she’s worried about it.

Three months after the first Earth Day, Richard Nixon proposed charging the new Environmental Protection Agency with setting goals and standards regarding pesticides, clean air, and clean water, and it was soon given regulatory authority. Laura was as relieved and joyful as Princess Leia at the end of the first Star Wars movie.

Everyday life for most Americans in the 1950s and 60s involved a mind-boggling array of toxic chemicals.

Laura takes a momentary break from an important environmental issue to reminisce about a tragicomedy in the 1990s.

How did the nation come together to start the Environmental Protection Agency and pass the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts?

When Blue Jays and chipmunks stash away food, some people call them greedy pigs. They’re not.

How can we possibly think we can communicate with non-human life forms from other galaxies when we can’t communicate with intelligent carbon-based life forms right here on earth?

Two weeks ago, I transported a crow from my neighborhood and a fawn with neurological damage from our local Wildwoods rehab facility to Wild & Free in Garrison, Minnesota. Now I’m unsettled wondering how the crow is doing.

Even with minimal effort, my backyard habitat is pretty nice!

Back in 1977, Laura made flashcards from the illustrations in her original Golden Guide. She still has them.

This thrush with the ethereal, spiraling song keeps many secrets that scientists keep trying to tease out.

Seeing ourselves as the one species at the pinnacle of evolution is as wrong-headed as seeing our planet at the center of the universe.

To know them is to love them. But first, we have to be aware of them.

Seeing or even hearing one of these rare birds is a matter of the “3 P’s”: Patience, Perseverance, and Providence.

Two warblers were on the official Endangered Species List in 1973. Now they’re both off the list, but for opposite reasons.

Last Tuesday, Laura and her friend Bernie found a Wood Thrush at one of Laura’s favorite birding spots in Duluth. She hopes it attracts, or already has, a mate. (The blogpost for the program is much longer and more fleshed out, with lots of photos.)

A cute little predator on the Endangered Species List for Wisconsin and Minnesota has been turning up here and there in both states this spring.

On Saturday, Laura went to Ashland County, Wisconsin, to look at a very lost tropical falcon, a Crested Caracara.

BB’s fine but somebody isn’t.

An unprecedented number of Scarlet Tanagers turned up on Peabody Street this year, and Laura was thrilled.

A beautiful, useful, and engaging tour de force.

It’s a red-letter day when we see one of the prettiest woodpeckers of all.

Laura recalls the birds who inspired her baby daughter’s second word.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has created two extremely useful apps for birders. Merlin is wonderful and useful, but far from perfect.

Laura sparked unprecedented anger in a listener last week because of a program and blogpost from 2007. (All my blogpost/transcripts have photos, and some are longer than the program itself, but this program’s linked transcript/blogpost has a lot more information than I could include in the program, along with pertinent photos and a video.)

The Birds That Audubon Missed by Kenn Kaufman is a clear-eyed and surprisingly exciting portrait of a time and place that have long ago disappeared, and an important and timely book as well. Laura can’t recommend it highly enough.

Kenn Kaufman has written an important new book. Laura begins her review by talking about her own personal feelings about Audubon and his work before Kaufman’s rich and enlightening book gave her a broader, more truthful picture of a deeply flawed yet important human being and his contemporaries.

Laura’s been in love with a pretty little sparrow since she first saw it in 1977.

With birds, as with her children, Laura has trouble picking a favorite.

Yet more owls have died, this time in Chicago, from rat poison.

Not much is happening in Laura’s yard yet, but things will be popping within the coming week or two. (Lang Elliott recorded the Carolina Wren’s rolling trill. Laura recorded the wren’s song.)

Chickens haven’t established themselves as wild, feral birds in most places in the world, but they’re still the most abundant bird on the planet.

If chickens found their way to Hawaii on their own, things would have worked out okay for everyone. Unfortunately, they brought humans along, too.

During spring migration, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds usually arrive a couple of weeks after Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers do, for a very good reason.

Millions of years ago, Hawaii was off to a rocky start.

The rules of counting non-native birds are not always consistent.

The most abundant bird on the planet, feeding billions of humans every day, is the chicken. Laura talks about how they became domesticated and some genetic differences between domestic birds and their wild ancestor, the Red Junglefowl. The recording used in this program is of a wild Red Junglefowl in India, recorded and contributed to Xeno-Canto by Lars Lachmann.

Laura remembers a wonderful eclipse from three decades ago.

Is using energy always the same as squandering it?

Along with Duluth’s spring blizzard came redpolls! (In the background throughout, the sound is a recording of the redpolls at Laura’s feeder made this past Saturday, March 30.)

New for the traveling birder!

A post-mortem established that Flaco, the famous Eurasian Eagle-Owl whom a vandal released from the Central Park Zoo, was carrying lethal amounts of three anti-coagulants, a pigeon herpesvirus, and even a toxic metabolite of the pesticide DDT. Is anyone actually “free” if they have no alternative but to eat poisoned food?

Laura waxes poetic about a poet.

It’s hard watching children, or a Pileated Woodpecker, move on to independence.

The second half of Laura’s trip to Hawaii was just as wonderful as the first.

Laura’s trip to Hawaii kept getting better.

Laura’s trip to Hawaii was wonderful, every single day.

The only constant is change, for better and for worse.

What drew Laura and her husband Russ to Duluth in 1981?

How can it be spring before winter even arrives?

Flaco the Eurasian Eagle-Owl whose enclosure in the Central Park Zoo was vandalized, leading to his escape on February 2, 2023, died Friday.

Laura headed back to Prentice Park in Ashland on Wednesday and this time saw (and got VERY bad photos) of the Fieldfare.

On Tuesday, Laura suddenly noticed a chickadee with a badly overgrown, crossed bill at her feeder.

Last week, an incredibly rare vagrant from Eurasia turned up in Ashland, Wisconsin, sending Laura and Erik Bruhnke on a wild goose chase.

Preparing for a trip can start the fun weeks before I leave. (The accompanying photo is a Nene [Hawaiian Goose] taken by Russ while we were in Hawaii in 2000.)

Laura’s annual celebration of Superb Owl Sunday was short on birds but did involve her first sighting of Girl Scout Cookies for 2024.

Laura’s was having severe dizzy spells, but they’re gone now that a physical therapist showed her “the Epley maneuver.” Bird ears have the same structures as ours only with an even more sophisticated design. Do they ever get those dizzy spells?

Mild weather may seem good for birds, but several issues complicate it.

In the 38 years since Laura started producing For the Birds, many bad things have not gotten better.

This spring, both the 17-year “Great Northern Brood” cicadas and the 13-year “Great Southern Brood” will emerge from underground. These innocuous insects cause absolutely no damage, but their noise is astonishingly loud, so many people over-react. The pesticides people used during the “Great Eastern Brood” emergence in 2021 are believed to have killed a lot of birds.

The American Birding Association’s Bird of the Year for 2024 is one of the rarest birds not listed as endangered or threatened.

For the first time, the American Birding Association named a warbler its Bird of the Year.

Why have so many Ancient Murrelets, who belong in the northern Pacific Ocean, turned up in the Great Lakes, and even in Tennessee, in late 2023? We may never know. (The accompanying photo is of the Two Harbors bird, taken by Erik Bruhnke on December 9, 2023.)

Laura spent last Wednesday birding in the Sax-Zim Bog with Erik Bruhnke. Highlights were a Great Gray Owl and a snowshoe hare.

Laura’s first bird of the year was a Pileated Woodpecker. In addition to enjoying her backyard birds, she’s preparing for her trip to Hawaii next month, by studying the birds and getting herself back in shape for the adventure.