1. Let’s start with a beautiful video from the “Backyard Birds Revealed” Series we highlighted last month:

Birds look extra beautiful against a backdrop of snowflakes—and they’re often more active, too, as they search for food, water, and shelter to stay warm. Using slow-motion and super-wide-angle cameras, Tim and Russell Laman get close to some local favorites like turkeys, Blue Jays, Carolina Wrens, nuthatches, and chickadees. Their cameras capture the beauty of falling snowflakes as well as the resourcefulness of hardy birds. Some of the survival tricks captured in this episode include: “drinking” snow on icy days; an ingenious solution to the problem of cold feet; and the incredible warmth of a fluffy coat of feathers. (via All About Birds)

2. Winter is a great time for ducks you simply don’t see in other seasons - that said, not sure we’d call them “weird”: Though it might sound counterintuitive, the best antidote to a cold winter season is birding. Watching birds not only gets us outdoors, but it also gives us an opportunity to observe the many species that thrive during the time of year many of us spend largely indoors. The cartoonist and science communicator Rosemary Mosco has a nickname for birding in winter—weird duck time—because of the waterfowl that sport their spiffiest attire to attract a mate. Winter is courtship season in the duck universe. (via Sierra Club)

By Hap Ellis, Dunlin - Castle Island, Boston Harbor, MA.

3. “Remarkable” recovery in Louisiana: The red-cockaded woodpecker, which lived on the edge of extinction for more than four decades, is making a comeback in central Louisiana’s Kisatchie National Forest. Biologists have been tracking the small woodpeckers for years, finding their nests dozens of feet above the ground in the trunks of tall longleaf pines. They use cameras to peek inside the cavities and tag young chicks to monitor their movements. “She’s in the cavity. There’s, oh wow, there’s the two chicks there and look at about seven days old,” Matt Pardue, a biologist, said as he examined a nest 25 feet above the ground. (via Investigate TV)

4. A plea to birders to do no harm (to owls!) this time of year: For many photographers and nature buffs, owls are photogenic birds that are the ultimate winter catch when it comes to social media snaps and videos. “Owls have a piercing gaze. It’s like they’re perceiving you as you’re perceiving them,” says Jon Ruddy, owner of Eastern Ontario Birding. “Their gaze – whether it’s a small saw-whet owl or a big snowy owl – has a captivating quality. When they look at the observer, it’s a heart-stopping moment.” Though appealing, owling is not without ethical concerns as photographers chase the elusive creatures. The quest for photos brings carloads of bird paparazzi to “celebrity owls,” whose location becomes common knowledge through social media. (via The Globe and Mail)

5. What it takes - to see an Ivory Gull in New England: It’s shaping up to be one of those years where birds are pushed south by cold weather. One example: This week we had the good fortune to have an evening grosbeak show up in our neighborhood. It seemed odd to see one of these normally gregarious birds by itself when they are almost always in flocks. Over these last weeks there have been an uptick in reports of flocks of evening grosbeaks across Maine’s Midcoast region. Another bird that may have been pushed south by the cold was found by a lobster fisherman offshore in Penobscot Bay on January 1st—the very rare ivory gull. Ivory gulls are small, all-white (immatures have black flecks in the white plumage) gulls that nest in the Arctic and tend to stay in or near the Arctic most winters. They feed in polynyas (areas that stay ice-free all winter) and on the remains of seals killed by polar bears or Inuit harvesters. Imagine being out lobstering and finding a bird like this! (via Boothbay Register)

6. Let’s go back to when Europe was tropical (roughly 150 million years ago): Some 150 million years ago, Europe was tropical — and mostly underwater. The entire continent was closer to the equator than it is today, and what is now Germany and its neighbouring countries was submerged under a shallow inland sea, dotted with islands. On one cluster of islands, there were unusual creatures that didn’t fit in with the rest of the fauna. These were some of the earliest birds on the planet: about the size of crows, with black feathers, and probably partial to eating insects. (via Nature)

By Hap Ellis, Longed-tail Duck - Castle Island, Boston Harbor, MA.

7. Good news from the Adirondacks: For the first time in 24 years, the Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation counted more than 1,000 of the beloved aquatic birds during its annual loon census. Common loons are best known for their mournful calls synonymous with wilderness idyll, their powerful grace on the water, and their abject clumsiness on dry land. Listed as a Species of Special Concern in New York, loons are also a “sentinel species” said Griffin Archambault, ACLC research biologist, “because their presence and reproductive success on a water body can reflect the health of that ecosystem.” ACLC’s latest loon census took place July 19, 2025, between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. During the census hour, 815 volunteer observers fanned out across the Adirondacks and beyond. They sent in 401 individual reports from 306 unique water bodies—the highest number ever sampled in the census. (via Syracuse News)

8. From a simple starling to a window into the “magnificence of nature” - another paean to birdwatching: As the final hours of 2025 ticked away, I paused for reflection, including on mortality. We are mere mortals, after all, and can only hope to find a connection in our lifetimes to something larger than these bodies. For me, birds provide that connection. Birds and humans have a long history together. We have depended on them for food, clothing, and pollination. But we’ve also disparaged them as we became agricultural and industrial — they eat our seeds and berries; they fly into our buildings and cross our roads. At least certain birds intrigue us; the owl signifies mystery and suspense — a symbol of a world unknown to us. Wisdom, too, has long been associated with owls. In Greek mythology, the goddess Athena’s seer and messenger was an owl. (via Provincetown Independent)

9. From Audubon, turns out the rise of younger birders is one fun takeaway from this year’s Christmas bird counts: As a millennial who developed a bird obsession before the COVID-19 pandemic, my picture of what it means to be a “birder,” and especially a “young birder,” has changed quite a bit in the eight years since I joined my first Christmas Bird Count (CBC). And that’s a beautiful change for the world of birding and conservation. During my first December count in 2017, I was the youngest person in our group by a good margin. So I’m especially inspired by what I’ve seen more recently: my last two CBC team leaders were both high school students with a deep passion for birds. (via Audubon)

By Hap Ellis, Common Eider - Castle Island, Boston Harbor, MA.

10. The missing link?: Birds are the most diverse group of land animals on Earth. They’re also dinosaurs—the only ones that survived the mass extinction event 66 million years ago. To understand how birds evolved from their reptilian ancestors, and possibly uncover the secret to their survival, paleontologist Jingmai O’Connor, Ph.D., studies the oldest known bird: Archaeopteryx. Only 14 Archaeopteryx fossils have been discovered. Most are housed in Germany, where they were recovered. But a few have made their way to other collections. One of the best specimens ever found is now at the Field Museum. Known colloquially as the Chicago Archaeopteryx, it’s the best example of this fossil bird to date. (via University of Utah)

11. For the botanists among us, the “trickery” a climbing vine used to fool even the scientists studying it: Deception and intrigue are not limited to people or even animals. Plants, too, have evolved ways to fool their pollinators, their enemies and even the organisms that disperse their seeds. Now an international team has uncovered trickery in a climbing vine that fooled even them. The black-bulb yam (Dioscorea melanophyma )makes fake berries that help the species spread to new locations. By transforming the buds into fake berries that some birds eat, this yam now has a way to spread far and wide, a hedge against their local environment changing. “It’s a clever evolutionary workaround,” Suetsugu says.(via Science News)

12. Usually “rapid” and “evolution” are not used in the same sentence, but then there are these Dark-eyed Juncos: Dark-eyed junco songbirds have been serenading the University of California, Los Angeles campus for decades as they forage for food. The species from the sparrow family is not usually found in cities. But as the climate crisis affected their mountain forest habitats, they started taking up residence in Southern California’s more urban settings, including colleges such as UCLA. The city-dwelling birds have shorter and stubbier beaks, a stark contrast from the long ones their mountain counterparts use to eat seeds and insects. However, as UCLA researchers looked over data on the birds that have resided on their campus in recent years, they noticed something odd: Juncos that hatched in 2021 and 2022, after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, had longer beaks similar to those seen on the mountain birds. (via CNN)

By Hap Ellis, American Tree Sparrow - Millennium Park, Boston, MA.

13. Native Hawaiians absolved in this study on bird extinctions: Challenging a 50-year-old narrative about Hawaiʻi’s native birds, a new study from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa found no scientific evidence that Indigenous People hunted waterbird species to extinction. The research debunks this long-held myth and offers a new, integrated theory to explain the disappearances. Researchers found no evidence that Indigenous People over-hunted birds to extinction. Instead, the authors suggest a new theory: the birds died out because of a combination of climate change, invasive species and changes in how the land was used—most of which happened either prior to Polynesian arrival, or after the suppression of Indigenous stewardship. The study also noted that now-endangered waterbirds were probably most abundant just before Europeans arrived, when wetland management was a core aspect of Kānaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian) society. (via Phys Org)

14. Three Yale professors offer a quick look at possible areas of environmental progress this year: From Permitting Reform to Clean Energy: Despite the U.S. stepping back from some key international climate bodies and easing some environmental regulations, meaningful environmental progress is happening. In 2025, renewable energy surpassed coal as the world’s leading source of electricity — a historic first. Amazon deforestation also fell to an 11‑year low, and the High Seas Treaty reached the threshold to enter into force, advancing protection of marine life in international waters. From clean energy deployment to state-level action, YSE experts Kenneth Gillingham, the Grinstein Class of 1954 Professor of Environmental and Energy Economics, Reid Lifset, research scholar, and Narasimha Rao, professor of energy systems, outline the most promising avenues for progress in 2026. (via Yale School of Environment)

15. And finally, let’s finish with a wonderful story from Northeastern Brazil on “Rebirding” a mountaintop: On an early crisp morning in northeastern Brazil, a white Toyota Hilux pickup truck barreled through a dense tropical forest like a robber’s getaway car. Sitting next to the driver, I clutched two precious pieces of cargo in fabric bags that swung with every twist and turn up the never-ending rocky road. Each bag held a tiny bird, and I could only hope they weren’t half as anxious as I was. Two Cornell University undergraduates from the class of 2026, Lorena Patrício and Brian Hofstetter, gamely held on tight behind me, also gripping birds in bags. The birds were Ceara Gnateaters—small, chubby, orange-brown, insect-eating birds. Classified as endangered by the Brazilian government, they are at risk of disappearing along with the northeastern Atlantic Forests, their only home. (via All About Birds)

Bird Videos of the Week

Video by Anna Miller Multimedia, “The Snowy Owls of Logan Airport”.

Cornell Live Bird Cam - Northern Royal Albatross.

Cornell Live Bird Cam - Quoth the raven!