Seagull Sounds: The Long Call and Every Other Noise
The seagull long call signals territory and identity, and mates recognise each other by voice. Every call decoded, plus why gulls scream at 4am in summer.
The seagull long call signals territory and identity, and mates recognise each other by voice. Every call decoded, plus why gulls scream at 4am in summer.
Wrens, chickadees and hummingbirds all eat spiders, and parents select them deliberately for the taurine nestlings need. Which birds, and what really eats the most.
Northern flickers get half their diet from ants. Which birds eat them, why over 200 species rub live ants through their feathers, and what really eats the most.
A female cowbird is plain grey-brown with a blank face and a thick conical bill. Identification, why she builds no nest, and which birds reject her eggs.
Hawks, falcons, owls and shrikes hunt adult birds, while jays and grackles take eggs. Which predator is at your feeder and what you can legally do about it.
A female pheasant is a hen: mottled brown, no neck ring, no wattles, and a tail half the length of a cock’s. Every field mark, nesting, eggs and look-alikes.
A whip-poor-will says its own name hundreds of times without pausing. Why the call repeats, how moonlight controls it, and why you hear far fewer of them now.
A robin’s cheerily song plus six calls, including a hawk alarm designed to be impossible to locate. Why robins sing before dawn and what night singing means.
Pigeon cooing is almost always a male advertising a nest site. The perch coo, bow coo, nest call, wing clap and the hissing wheeze that squabs make.
Ospreys plunge, herons ambush, cormorants chase underwater. The five fishing styles, the birds that use them, and how to keep herons out of a garden pond.