Category: Wildlife Weekly

It’s a long journey for Swainson’s hawks (Buteo swainsoni) from South America to the San Joaquin Valley. The semiannual trek to their summer breeding grounds has ended for most of them and now they are being seen in large...

Animals are often named after some physical characteristic they may have such as the black bear or the white-tailed deer or the duck-billed platypus. They may also derive their name from a sound they make such as the screech owl...

Birders from all around the globe often come to central and northern California to observe a member of the corvid family that exists nowhere else on the planet. The yellow-billed magpie (Pica nuttelli) is not only native to the...

The Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetus) is a feathered superlative. It is the fastest, biggest and most global of all North American large raptors. Its territory is so widespread the bird has earned the title Holarctic, meaning it...

Birds are smart critters. Anyone who has watched tractors discing fields in advance of planting has seen hawks circling above watching for a vole or gopher forced into the open by the passing blades, an easy meal for any...

Last year was big for the American Ornithological Society – you know, the people responsible for the official standardized list of North American birds. It’s dinner table quality excitement we’re talking here. “Honey, did you...

It’s said that in 1595 a peregrine falcon owned by Henry IV pulled a u-turn while chasing a bustard over a field in the French countryside, flew all night and the next day before finally landing in a tree in Malta, 1350 miles...

It wears a black mask, not a COVID mask but one about the eyes like the Lone Ranger or Zorro. It can hover like a helicopter or fly fast like a fighter plane. And its actions when feeding itself have earned it the frightening...

It looks like R2D2 from a George Lucas episode of Star Wars, except it has yellow eyes and feathers and can fly. But one doesn’t have to go to Tatooine or the forest moon of Endor to see the little guy. Just visit any local...

Anyone who writes a list of bird sightings at local wildlife refuges in the winter months would be well advised to bring more than a single sheet of paper on which to write and a spare pencil or two, as well. A study, published...

The fastest animal on earth, one that can achieve speeds of more than 200 miles per hour, lives just up the road this time of year. While found in coastal and northwestern California all year, peregrine falcons (Falco...