Birds »
Video: Owls Have Heads Designed for Hearing
The silent flight of owls is pure beauty and grace in motion. In fact, in order to lessen the noise levels of airplanes, aeronautics designers are studying owl feathers for potential applications. But that’s
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Video: Identifying Birds by Color Patterns
Last week, here in the Midwest in mid-March, I spotted my first robin of the year. My mother used to say that seeing a robin was a sure sign that spring couldn’t be far
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Cockatoos That Drum for the Love of Music
For many of us, music is so much more than just mere entertainment. We use it to wake ourselves up, to make our morning commute go quicker, to motivate us, to alleviate our worries
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Videos: The Natural Worlds of Antarctica and the Falklands
Well into this very cold winter—though still far from its end—I like to dream about the summer that’s happening some other place now, down at the bottom of the world. And two of those
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Grasslands: A Lot More Than Just Flyover Country
Across the world, they go by many names: downs, prairies, pampas, rangelands, steppes, savannas or velds. But what all of these landscapes have in common is that grass is their naturally dominant vegetation. These “grasslands” occupy what I
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Wilderness: Lost and Found
Today, little more than 20 percent of the world can still be considered “wilderness.” That’s not a lot, especially when you weigh the benefits that those few designated areas provide. In the last two
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The Year-Round Land of Evergreens: the Taiga
It’s mid-January, the time some people call the “doldrums,” a period of feeling low energy and a lack of motivation after the Christmas and New Year season of celebration and parties. It can be
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Losing Urban Trees—and the Wildlife that Depends on Them
We need to learn to tolerate a bit of messiness when it comes to our urban neighborhoods and landscapes. And I’m not talking about litter on our sidewalks, trash in our local parks or
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