RED-COCKADED WOODPECKERS: ENDANGERED TO THREATENED

Red-cockaded Woodpecker

A Conservation Success Story In Progress In Oct 2024, Red-cockaded Woodpeckers were downlisted from endangered to threatened status under the Endangered Species Act. It is now April 2025. April is Earth Month. A month set aside to showcase all the days spent conserving, protecting, managing the nature that surrounds us. To showcase, with the 22nd […]

Read More

VEERIES: LONG DISTANCE MIGRATION CHAMPS

Veery Close Up

This Veery is a forest thrush & Yard-Lifer for our urban yard deep in metro-Atlanta. Veeries are long-distance migrants. They spend the summer in the forests of Canada & northern U.S. (& a few at the highest elevations of the southern Appalachian Mts) & winter in central and southern Brazil. To make this trip, they […]

Read More

RED-HEADED WOODPECKERS: STRIKING LOOKS, STRIKING POPULATION DECLINE

Red-headed Woodpecker Close Up

Red-headed Woodpeckers are striking North American woodpeckers. But their gorgeous looks have not kept them off the Partners In Flight’s Yellow Watch List, the list of species that require constant monitoring and long-term assessment to prevent further declines. In their case, further declines from the current 1%\year or 54% in total since mid-1960s. They are […]

Read More

CRESTED CARACARA: ICONIC BIRD OF SOUTH-CENTRAL FLORIDA’S DRY PRAIRIES

Crested Caracara

Looks like a hawk. Scavenges for carrion like a vulture. Is actually a falcon. Common in open grasslands, rangelands, and scrubby areas of South & Central America, a small population, about 1,000 individuals, lives in the similar dry prairies with scattered palm cabbage of south-central Florida. Most of which are within large private cattle ranches. […]

Read More

THE PRICE FOR NOT BEING CUTE

Nonbreeding Rusty Blackbird Close-Up In Good Light

Rusty Blackbirds are the Poster Birds for North America’s declining bird populations. In the last 40 years their populations have declined 75% across their range & plummeted 85-99% in some localities. This is even more rapid than their cousins in the Grasslands category of species that is leading the decline in North American bird populations. […]

Read More