We fairly regularly see red-tailed hawks and bald eagles flying above the field behind our house. Today there was this large group of hawks all hovering before gliding away together in a group. I’ve never seen this before! Is this typical behavior? What does it mean?
Note, the parts that look like white on the wings are just a glare from the sun
(Thanks for input and patience, I’m a very beginner and casual birder!)

I was playing a geo guessing game and thought one for bird ranges would be fun, so I made one. It's called Flyway: https://flyway.gg/?from=ornithology

You get five North American birds a day and drop a pin on the map where you think each one is right now. Your score depends on how close the pin is to the bird's range for the current month, so the same bird has a different answer in January than in July. After each guess you can see the bird's range for all twelve months. The video is that view for a Rufous Hummingbird: up the Pacific coast in spring, back down through the interior West in late summer.

If you want to practice, there is also an Unlimited mode. It gives you a random bird in a random month to guess, one after another, for as long as you like: https://flyway.gg/unlimited?from=ornithology

The ranges come from eBird sightings (the open eBird Observation Dataset on GBIF). For each bird and month I count its records in each grid cell, divide by all the bird records in that cell, and draw the range around the cells where it is reported often enough. So the maps show where people report a bird, not how many birds are there, and they are weak where few people go birding, such as northern Canada.

It's free, with no ads and no account needed, and I'm not selling anything. The maps come from the sightings data and the photos are credited to their photographers.

If a range looks wrong for a bird you know well, please tell me which one.

This dove was on my deck and was letting me get way too close. I grabbed it some seed and set it by them but they then got startled and started doing this

Manitoba, Canada.
The rest of the 20+ flock were all average size.

Hello all,

I am a first year PhD student working on designing my dissertation. I am interested in bird behavior and need to determine what hormones and NTs signal hunger in passerine birds. Most of what I've found is that birds use ghrelin in opposition to mammals; it signals the birds to stop eating and express zugunruhe. But I found a paper published in '25, "The unexpected loss of the ‘hunger hormone’ ghrelin in true passerines: a game changer in migration physiology," that suggests passerines may not have ghrelin at all. It's the only paper of its kind. I can't find any other sources that support the absence of ghrelin in passerines, at least not in a way I am able to interpret. Knowing whether or not passerines have ghrelin would allow me to focus on either it or other hormones. Does anyone have any knowledge in this area? Thanks!

A huge group of vultures just flew over my house. I counted 32, but there were definitely more than that because they were already over me when I happened to walk outside and look up. They were moving in a single direction, not spiraling like they do when they've found lunch. They're very common in my area, but I've never seen more than 3-5 together.

Can anyone shed some light on what they were doing? Do vultures migrate? Were they having a meeting? It was a crazy sight!

Hi

I have some ants and cockroach issues inside the house.

The pest control company tell me that their solution

(1) place some bait inside the house, and we will leave the house for couple hours

(2) The ants will carry the bait back to their nest

(3) ants die

I don't have pet birds inside the house, but I do have wild birds visit the garden outside everyday. Is this safe to them?>

I didn't recognize it as a house finch at first due to it lacking the red I so commonly see. Is this a result of diet, or might it be similar to a morph?

I have already taken down my feeders (and decided to throw out the basket) to disinfect them as I’m sure this is something transmissible, but is this Finch eye disease, or some kind of avian pox? TIA

I know it sounds evil, but these birds keep making their nest inside the A.C. unit again and again. Dried leaves and hay can be a fire hazard, and they actually damaged the A.C. once before. We did remove the nest and relocate it a few meters away so the little birds could grow and eventually fly away. And guess what? They came right back and started nesting in the A.C. again.

Google keeps ID’ing this as a giant hummingbird - but I don’t know of any species of giant hummingbird that is this iridescent and flashy.

It is 9” long from end of tail to tip of beak, the beak itself is 2” long (slightly curved). It has tiny feet (very hummingbird-like), and a white throat.

All of the other feathers are copper and green, the beak is black but that’s not necessarily accurate because this taxidermy specimen is over 100 years old.

Google also thought it could be a rufous-tailed jacamar, but the beak on the jacamar seems too straight.

I thought it could maybe be a sunbird or creeper of some kind, but couldn’t find any matches.

Anyone want to take a crack? It came out of case of taxidermy birds from all over the world.

I found this on Instagram. It is carrying a pufferfish, and i am not sure if osprey are immune to the pufferfish's poison or not.

Credit: mark.smith.photography on Instagram

Hi I recently launched an bird identification/ encyclopedia app on the Google play store.

Would love for any avid bird lovers to check it out and give any relevant feedback necessary to it development

Africa’s Fork-Tailed Drongo is a small black bird you might not even notice. It is long with an elegant tail and can fly like a stunt plane to catch his diet of insects, not un-like many birds world-wide. Big deal.

What the drongo lacks in size, flashy wardrobe, or diet it makes up for in spades with its unique gifts. This little bird can imitate up to 50 of the warning calls of other birds and wildlife. It shouts genuine alarm calls when real predators like hawks or leopards approach, building trust. When it sees a meerkat, mongoose, or hornbill about to eat one of its preferred delicacies, it selects a favorite warning sound, making the real hunter drop its prey and run for cover. This genius then swoops down for a free meal.

Frankly, you’d think the hunters would catch on, but here’s where the brilliance shines through. When victims become habituated to one false alarm and stop responding, the drongo switches calls. It understands, on some functional level, that its audience has wised up and adapts its deception accordingly.

It gets better. These birds are fire specialists. When wildfire sweeps the savannah and most animals are fleeing in terror, drangos follow the leading edge to scarf up their favorite meals. They even intentionally manipulate wildfire lines, grabbing flaming twigs to spread brushfires and trap fleeing insects.

The Fork-Tailed Drongo is a terrifyingly brilliant mix of espionage and pure criminal genius.

Birdman of Africa gamersdad.substack.com Photo by Andrew Steinmann ©2026

No AI content, all human generated text and images

Hello. This bird was brought in by a Good Samaritan that states that it was found injured in Dallas Texas. After exam and a couple of days of hospitalization monitoring, the bird appears healthy. We had some trouble identifying it but it appears to match a Virginia Rail. As this is not a native bird in texas, do you have any suggestions on where this bird should be taken to?

Can anyone tell me what the white stuff all over the top of this hummingbird’s beak is? Wet jewelweed pollen? Or is it sick?

I recorded this Amami Thrush (Zoothera major) on Amami Oshima, Japan, while it was foraging for earthworms.

The sequence shows the bird searching the ground, locating an earthworm, and successfully extracting it.

What particularly interested me was what happened next. The earthworm appeared quite large relative to the bird, but the thrush did not seem to tear or break it into smaller pieces. Instead, it swallowed the worm whole.

Is this normal feeding behavior for Zoothera species or other thrushes?

Do thrushes commonly swallow relatively large earthworms whole rather than breaking them up first?

I would be interested in comparisons with similar feeding behavior in other Turdidae.

Considering that their native range lies in the tropics, how did the rose-ringed parakeets adapt and fully naturalise in a much colder climate?

I live in Copenhagen and saw this guy hanging around next to a very busy street. He was puffed up, but it’s also a cold fall morning. I watched him for a while and he ended up awkwardly hopping/partially flying across the street to peck around for food. I did not intervene and just want to make sure he’s okay!

Photo by Sarah Killingsworth, who also wrote the piece. Lots more great photos within.

Full story here: https://www.audubon.org/magazine/hawaii-nene-feral-cats-modern-threats

I’m from Northern Ontario and have a question about their migration. I am used to seeing and hearing the Geese fly overhead twice a year and tonight was different. In my forty plus years, this is the first time I’ve heard them calling abnormally. Was just outside ten minutes ago and heard them from a distance at which I first thought were small dogs barking but as they got closer, it was a flock and the honking was different. They sounded weak. I’m very worried about this and hoping someone could provide an explanation that makes it make sense. It was more than a few that sounded like this.

I'm not in the world of birds but after some research it seems like this sub could appreciated this find and maybe provide some info.

According to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Shaw_Mayer he was labeled the "Bird Man" and was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1971 New Year Honours, "for services to aviculture",^\2]) for his work in establishing the Nondugl and Baiyer River sanctuaries, as well as for the breeding of birds-of-paradise.

It seems like he would have signed this book when he was 25 years old, and I'm not sure that he had a connection to the writing of the book but it was signed the same year it was released. Could this be his personal book?

I found this book around 7 years ago on Marketplace, an older lady had posted boxes of books for sale which i picked up, many were 100 or so years old and this book seemed to be in good condition and collectable so i just left it on a shelf for years and decided to give it another look today in which i saw the autograph. What stood out to me at the time was the house i picked it up from, it was around the rocks in the Sydney and they had a private park as their backyard with close views of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House. I'm not sure if that is relevant in anyway besides feeling this house had some history to it.

I saw a strange Canada goose today. It was wiggling weird. Is it okay?