About Marcus Ellery
Marcus Ellery is the editor of The Faunalist and writes the site’s bird coverage. He is a lifelong backyard birder who has spent years watching, feeding and photographing the species that turn up in ordinary yards, and he handles identification guides, feeding questions, behavior explainers and the regional roundups that cover every US state. Every guide he writes is checked against the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the National Audubon Society and state wildlife agencies before it goes live, and range or taxonomy claims are verified a second time because both change. As editor he also sets the sourcing rules for the rest of the team and reviews their work for accuracy. Marcus Ellery is a pen name used by a member of the Faunalist editorial team. He claims no ornithology degree, only field time, disciplined sourcing and a refusal to guess when the sources are unclear.
What Marcus covers
- Backyard birding
- Bird identification
- Bird behavior
- Bird feeding
- Bird migration
- North American birds
- Bird symbolism
- Pet birds
Browse every article by Marcus Ellery.
How these guides are researched
Bird guides here start with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society, then get filled in with state wildlife agency data for ranges and seasonal timing, and US Fish and Wildlife Service material for anything protected. Range and taxonomy claims get a second check because both move, sometimes annually. Feeding and attraction advice is weighed against what the research on feeder use actually shows rather than what gets repeated online.
Identification, range and safety claims are checked against at least two independent sources before publishing, and where the sources disagree the article says so instead of picking the tidier answer. The full process, including which institutions we treat as authoritative for each subject area, is on our editorial standards page.
A note on the byline
Marcus Ellery is a pen name used by a member of The Faunalist editorial team, and the portrait above is an illustration rather than a photograph. The person behind the name writes this subject area and nothing else. We do not claim degrees, licences or field credentials that our writers do not hold, and anything that needs a professional is sent to one inside the article. Our reasoning for working this way is set out on the editorial standards page.
Corrections and contact
Found something wrong in one of these guides, or have a question about a source? Write to [email protected] with the article name and what you found. Corrections are checked against our sources and made in the article itself.