Category: Wildlife Weekly

Late winter and early spring bring so many colors to the Central Valley: White almond blossoms, pink peach blooms, dark green valley oak leaves and in the sky, flashes of brilliant orange. Bullock’s orioles (Icterus bullockii)...

It is a fine line between feisty and fierce, one defined by the beholder. The long-tailed weasel (Mustela frenata) straddles that line, feisty as it stands up to a curious coyote and fierce as it attacks and kills a rabbit for...

The zoological term sexual dimorphism doesn’t define anything as weird as one might think. Translated to common speak it means male and female birds have different colored feathers. In general, the boys sport the brightly...

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...