Birds
Documenting India’s Distinctive Birdhouses
Some years ago, while exploring Bhuj, a small city in Gujarat, India’s westernmost state, I stumbled upon a beautiful and initially enigmatic structure: a column that supported an enclosure adorned with hundreds of holes. It seemed to me to be a geometric abstraction of a giant tree — until a pigeon peeped out from one […]
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A Portrait of South Georgia: Abundance, Exploitation, Recovery
Sally Poncet first came to South Georgia in 1977. Back then, she said, the sub-Antarctic island was as gorgeous as it is today: A spine of mountains, some 100 miles long, defines the terrain; glaciers drape down from the peaks, with verdant slopes running up to meet them; glistening beaches wrap around the shoreline. But […]
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The Transfixing Beauty of Starling Murmurations
It was a late February evening in 2020, and I was standing in the marshlands of Friesland, a northern province in the Netherlands. Above my head, hundreds of thousands of starlings were swirling, swooping and diving in a dramatic fashion, blackening the sky. The sound of their wings reverberated through the air, creating wind patterns […]
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Japan Saved Red-Crowned Cranes. Can They Survive Without Humans?
KUSHIRO, Japan — The dance of the red-crowned cranes commenced, an impromptu pas de deux. The pair approached each other with a bow. They crossed back and forth, gliding up into the air and returning to earth with the effortless grace of parachutes. In a dramatic flourish, they spread their pristine white and jet-black wings […]
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Avian Flu Spread in the US Worries Poultry Industry
The 2014-15 outbreak is considered the most destructive in the nation’s history. It sent poultry and egg prices soaring and cost the industry more than $3 billion — though the federal government compensated farmers for lost flocks. In the end, nearly 50 million birds were killed by the virus or destroyed to prevent its spread, […]
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Six Days Afloat in the Everglades
From a distance, the mouth of the creek was indistinguishable from the thick tangle of mangroves that concealed it — as if the narrow waterway were only willing to reveal itself to those who knew to look. We approached attentively, unhurriedly, scanning the banks for alligators and wading birds. Twenty feet in front of us, […]
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Where to See Winter Wildlife in the U.S.
Sea Lions in Los Angeles Moviegoers can be forgiven if they believe coyotes wandering from the desert to yodel above Modernist rooftops are Los Angeles’s wildlife stars, but most people within earshot of the Pacific know better, especially during winter when beach revelers head indoors and their din is replaced by barking sea lions. Like […]
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The Magic of Birdwatching in Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park
Something had drawn a crowd of bundled-up onlookers to a snowy spot just off the main road that runs through Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park. Clad in ski hats, wool scarves and mittens — and bulky necklaces of cameras with hefty telephoto lenses — the line of about a dozen people seemed to be waiting. I […]
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