While we are still enjoying the variety of bird songs that have provided background music for a couple months now, we uncovered a recent article that provides a new research on bird songs, especially the songs of female birds. We have long known that bird songs serve 2 primary purposes: To establish and defend a territories and to attract mates. Songs often carry long distances and display the singer’s health and vigor, which should warn potential competitors and attract a potential mate.

Although we generally think of male birds as being the ones that sing, in recent years, ornithologists have turned fresh attention to female songs. Female song has now been documented in 70 percent of songbird species, but it’s especially prevalent in birds that live in the tropics, which helps explain why it’s been largely overlooked. The birds of North America and Europe have historically been much more thoroughly studied than their tropical counterparts, creating something of an information bias.

Female birds sing for similar reasons as males, including to defend territories and communicate with mates or potential mates. Women researchers have been the key drivers in recent studies of female bird songs, which stands an example of how opening up science to underrepresented groups leads to new challenges toward established assumptions, adding new ideas, and uncovering new information.

Learning Species-Specific Songs

Young birds typically learn their songs by listening to and imitating adults. Because songs are passed down from one generation to the next, some species have regional dialects, with noticeable differences between individuals’ songs that live in widely different parts of a species’ range. Read more

June 26, 2023 — Most people are acquainted with honeybees and bumblebees and their importance in nature. There are 4,000 bee species in this country that pollinate 80 percent of all flowering plants, including more than 130 types of fruits and vegetables. In fact, every year, they pollinate $15 billion worth of U.S. crops, the very food we eat.

Despite their critical role in nature and the economy, bee populations continue to decline in range and abundance. One of the major causes of pollinator decline is habitat loss. That is why Forest Service scientists at the Northern Research Station created the Pollinator Habitat in Log Landings Project. The project is a three-year study on developing pollinator habitat on log landings (places where loggers stack, sort, and load timber into trucks) following timber harvests. “What we’re doing on national forests is really to benefit a diverse range of flora and fauna,” said Lauren Pile Knapp, research ecologist. “And this project is just one piece of that.”

“The project was brought to us by [land] managers …to really work through some problem-solving exercises to see if we could rapidly create ephemeral pollinator habitats on these highly degraded sites to be able to provide floral resources for native pollinators,” added Pile Knapp.

Trees are removed from national forests for a variety of reasons, including meeting the nation’s timber needs, as well as protecting and restoring ecological systems, such as restoring oak. The logging trucks and piles of logs waiting to be transported can compact soil and impact vegetation in a small area of the forest.

“So, we’re harvesting timber, we’re getting a product out of that,” said Pile Knapp. “But by doing that, we’re also creating habitat for birds and bees.” Read more

Outdoor industry marketing agency TBA Outdoors is expanding its influence with the organization’s podcast aimed at helping outdoor brands grow and connect with their customers. Hosted by TBA Outdoors President, Todd Fuller, the Behind The Brand series features monthly guests including outdoor brand business owners discussing a myriad of topics that relate to brand-building in the outdoor world specifically.

On Episode 20 of Behind The Brand, Fuller takes a look inside a grassroots brand, Pop’s Birding, which took an idea originally created by Bethany Sloan’s grandfather, William O. Sloan, to an operation reaching the ever-growing birding community. Fuller is joined by Bethany Sloan and Pete Stankovich of Pop’s Birding, to explore how mesmerizing little hummingbirds were the catalyst for creating a global brand.

“My grandfather was always a tinker,” said Sloan. “He created tiny swings to place near feeders and began making them for friends and neighbors. It wasn’t until 2006 that we actually took the product to market.”

“One of the biggest misconceptions about hummingbirds is that they actually spend about 80% of their time perching,” added Sloan. “So, we had to first focus on product awareness and educating people about the actual behavior of hummingbirds.”

Prior to COVID, Pop’s Birding, like many manufacturers, relied on manufacturing in China.

“We have experienced a lot of peaks and valleys over the last few years,” Stankovich said. “Our biggest triumph was actually finding a wire form manufacturer that could create these swings in America.”

From those humble beginnings, the brand is poised to grow and is adding additional products to their offerings including nectar, wildflower bird seed, proprietary feeders and more.

To take a closer look, listen to the entire podcast for insight on how Pop’s Birding turned a global pandemic into an opportunity to bring all manufacturing back to Made in the USA. Read more

WESTFIELD, Massachusetts – June 23, 2023 – Savage Arms announces the release of its latest Savage Journeys episode: The Duren Family Farm. This complete story, by Savage Journeys and Savage Arms Affiliate Doug Duren, follows the 400 acre farm that’s revolutionizing conservation and community. This farm has been in Duren’s family for 120 years, and is located near Cazenovia, in a portion of southwest Wisconsin known as the Driftless Area. The farm contains extensive farming and wood spaces–it’s here that Duren encourages conservation through a new project. One that allows visitors access to his land in exchange for their assistance with maintenance and management projects on the farm.

Viewers can follow along as Duren provides the backstory on this farming and hunting project that is thriving on his family’s land. He attributes the project’s success to its values, which are rooted in the works of Aldo Leopold. Many people know Leopold as a pioneer in wildlife conservation and are familiar with his life story and major accomplishments. Leopold’s collection of essays “A Sand County Almanac” is iconic in many conservation, environmental and hunting communities–and Duren will be the first to agree with its importance.

“Leopold, that little book, and his other essays have continued to speak to me throughout my life,” Duren said. He adds that, “Leopold and a fascinating project: The Riley Game Cooperative,” were a great inspiration to this experiment in conservation on his farm. “At Riley, Leopold and some folks from town became friends with a group of local farmers. They worked together to improve marginal land for all wildlife, especially game species. Cooperatively they shared the work, the hunting and recreation benefits of their efforts.” This Riley Game Cooperative is greatly similar to the operation run by Duren, shown in this Savage Journeys story. Read more

Birders around the world are fascinated by vagrants – birds that turn up in unexpected places well beyond their species’ normal range. Vagrancy can be caused for a variety of reasons, but an interesting article published in Audubon magazine provides a new perspective on “lost” or “rare” birds. Ornithologists from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) recently found a new reason that birds go astray by analyzing 60 years of bird banding data. They demonstrated that the frequency of vagrant birds increases during periods of geomagnetic disturbance – during a distortion in the Earth’s magnetic field, or a space storm.

Benjamin Tonelli, the study’s co-author, began his Ph.D. program at UCLA working under co-author Morgan Tingley during the summer of 2020, and by accessing data from the US Geological Survey’s Bird Banding Laboratory – more specifically, records of 2 million captures of 152 land bird species spanning 60 years – Tonelli and Morgan were able to look for connections between the rate of vagrancy over time relative to other factors, including geomagnetic disturbance and solar activities.

A clear pattern emerged: Vagrancy during fall migration increased during disruptive periods to the Earth’s magnetic field. Increased levels of geomagnetic disturbance were associated with a 250 percent increase in the number of re-captures of banded birds from unexpected places or time periods; and the effect was even more pronounced for long-distance migrants. These are the birds we read about weekly in the American Birding Association (ABA), Rare Bird Alert. Read more