For the Birds
Author's posts
Oct 07 2026
Why Is Bird Seed Sprouting Under My Feeder? Causes and How to Stop It
Bird feeders are a wonderful way to attract chickadees, cardinals, finches, and other backyard birds. However, sometimes they bring an unexpected gardening problem along with the birds. You might notice tiny green plants appearing beneath your feeder after a few rainy days. At first, they may look like ordinary weeds or new grass. Before long, …
Oct 07 2026
How to Keep Bird Seed Dry: Simple Ways to Protect Your Feeders From Rain and Moisture
Keeping birdseed dry is one of the most important parts of maintaining a healthy backyard feeding station. Whether you’re feeding chickadees, cardinals, goldfinches, or woodpeckers, fresh, dry food helps attract birds while reducing the risk of spoilage and contamination. Unfortunately, even a well-maintained bird feeder can become wet during a heavy rainstorm. Water may enter …
Oct 07 2026
How to Identify Birds by Flight
Sometimes a bird gives you only a few seconds to identify it. Instead of sitting conveniently on a branch, it flashes across the yard, circles high overhead, crosses a lake, or disappears behind the trees before you ever get a good look at its colors. Fortunately, birds can reveal a surprising amount about their identity …
Oct 06 2026
How to Identify Birds by Song
You can often identify a bird without ever seeing it. A whistle from the treetops, a repeated trill from a hedge, a rich melody from the lawn, or a strange call from deep in the woods can reveal which birds are nearby long before you find them with binoculars. Learning to identify birds by song …
Oct 05 2026
How to Identify Birds by Silhouette
Sometimes all you can see of a bird is its outline. A bird may be perched against a bright morning sky, flying too high overhead for its colors to show, sitting in deep shade, or disappearing into the evening light. Under those conditions, a field guide full of colorful plumage illustrations may not seem very …
Oct 04 2026
How to Identify Birds by Beak Shape
A bird’s beak can tell you an extraordinary amount about the bird in front of you. A short, heavy beak may suggest a seed-eater. A sharply hooked beak immediately brings birds of prey to mind. Long probing bills are common among shorebirds, while hummingbirds have slender bills that allow them to feed from flowers. Woodpeckers …
Oct 03 2026
How to Identify Birds by Tail Shape
A bird’s tail can be one of its most useful identification features. Some birds have short, square-ended tails. Others have long, flowing tails, deep forks, rounded tips, wedges, notches, or pointed central feathers. A bird may constantly flick its tail, fan it while turning, hold it upright, pump it downward, or barely seem to move …
Oct 02 2026
How to Identify Birds by Feeding Behavior
Sometimes the easiest way to identify a bird is to stop looking at its colors and watch what it is doing. A small bird may be hopping beneath leaves, hanging upside down from a branch, darting into the air after insects, hammering at tree bark, probing mud, diving beneath the water, or hovering beside a …
Oct 01 2026
How to Identify Birds at a Bird Feeder
A bird feeder is one of the easiest places to learn bird identification. Instead of catching a two-second glimpse of a bird disappearing into the trees, you may have several minutes to study it from a window. Birds return to the same perch, feed alongside familiar species, reveal their bills at close range, and often …
Sep 30 2026
How to Identify Birds of Prey in Flight
A large bird circling high overhead can be one of the most exciting—and frustrating—identification challenges in birdwatching. From hundreds of feet below, the field marks shown so clearly in a guide may disappear. A red tail can look dark. Fine streaking becomes invisible. Even a huge eagle can look surprisingly small when it is far …
