https://roostmagazine.co What's at the feeder, what's overhead, what's gone. en-US Sat, 13 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-cuckoo-that-disappears-in-june/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-cuckoo-that-disappears-in-june/ Sat, 13 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Edith Crale migration Satellite tracking has finally answered the oldest question in British ornithology, and the answer involves the Congo basin and a remarkable amount of bad luck. https://roostmagazine.co/post/winter-roosts-and-the-brush-pile/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/winter-roosts-and-the-brush-pile/ Fri, 12 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Pell Murphy backyard The cheapest and most effective backyard habitat improvement is a heap of branches in a corner. The state of Ohio recommends them. Tidy neighbours object. https://roostmagazine.co/post/red-cockaded-woodpecker-family-group/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/red-cockaded-woodpecker-family-group/ Thu, 11 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Edith Crale species At Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge in early May, a family group of five red-cockaded woodpeckers worked four cavity trees within a hectare. The youngest helper bird at the cluster was a male hatched in 2024. https://roostmagazine.co/post/florida-grasshopper-sparrow-captive-release-osceola/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/florida-grasshopper-sparrow-captive-release-osceola/ Thu, 11 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Marius Doyle endangered On the dry prairies of central Florida, a subspecies that nearly disappeared in 2017 is being rebuilt one captive-bred release at a time, with results that are encouraging and not yet sufficient. https://roostmagazine.co/post/urban-cemeteries-as-migration-stopover/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/urban-cemeteries-as-migration-stopover/ Tue, 09 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Jasper Wynn habitat Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been a working migrant trap for a century and a half. The cemetery model is being quietly replicated, with varying success, in cities across the eastern United States. https://roostmagazine.co/post/anahuac-coastal-prairie-may-rails/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/anahuac-coastal-prairie-may-rails/ Mon, 08 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Inara Khan field-reports A controlled prairie burn at sundown, three rail species in a single sweep, and the cooperative banding crew that has worked this marsh for twenty years. https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-bird-banding-laboratory-records-going-back-a-century/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-bird-banding-laboratory-records-going-back-a-century/ Sun, 07 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Marius Doyle citizen-science Volunteer banders have placed leg bands on over 78 million North American birds since 1920. Marius Doyle reads from the lab's recovery records. https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-tui-of-zealandia/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-tui-of-zealandia/ Sun, 07 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Jasper Wynn songs Inside the predator-fenced sanctuary of Zealandia in Wellington, the tui has recovered to densities not seen on mainland New Zealand in over a century. Jasper Wynn records its strange, mechanical, mostly inaudible song. https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-eleonoras-falcon-and-its-late-summer-clock/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-eleonoras-falcon-and-its-late-summer-clock/ Thu, 04 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Marius Doyle migration A small Mediterranean raptor breeds two months later than every other Western Palearctic falcon. The reason involves migrating songbirds and the wind on the Aegean. https://roostmagazine.co/post/common-nighthawk-over-american-cities/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/common-nighthawk-over-american-cities/ Wed, 03 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Inara Khan species At 8:46 p.m. on May 30, on a flat-roofed parking garage on Broadway in Saskatoon, a common nighthawk hunted moths against a sodium-vapor glow. The roof had hosted nighthawk nests since at least 1979. The next renovation, scheduled for 2027, will install a green roof. https://roostmagazine.co/post/reservoir-shorelines-as-wintering-habitat/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/reservoir-shorelines-as-wintering-habitat/ Tue, 02 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Pell Murphy habitat On the exposed mudflats of Kentucky's Lake Barkley in early winter, a small revolution in waterfowl distribution is playing out. Reservoir shorelines, managed for hydrology, are quietly producing some of the continent's most productive inland wintering habitat. https://roostmagazine.co/post/planting-for-the-birds-you-already-have/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/planting-for-the-birds-you-already-have/ Tue, 02 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Inara Khan backyard A landscape architect in Asheville spent six years converting a half-acre lawn into a bird-supporting yard. The species count tripled. The water bill dropped. https://roostmagazine.co/post/rufa-red-knot-delaware-bay-2026/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/rufa-red-knot-delaware-bay-2026/ Tue, 02 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Pell Murphy endangered On the Delaware Bay beaches in May, a shorebird population whose collapse paralleled the horseshoe crab harvest of the 1990s posted its best refuelling season in eleven years. https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-great-backyard-bird-count-a-four-day-snapshot/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-great-backyard-bird-count-a-four-day-snapshot/ Sun, 31 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Jasper Wynn citizen-science Every February, hundreds of thousands of people count birds for four days. Jasper Wynn examines what such a brief survey can and cannot show. https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-cardinal-in-winter/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-cardinal-in-winter/ Sun, 31 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Pell Murphy songs The Northern cardinal is one of the few common North American songbirds that sings substantially in winter, and one of the few in which the female sings nearly as often as the male. Pell Murphy listens through a North Carolina January. https://roostmagazine.co/post/wisconsin-point-november-jaegers/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/wisconsin-point-november-jaegers/ Sat, 30 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Marius Doyle field-reports From the easternmost rocks at 8:14 a.m., three jaeger species in ninety minutes and the lake birders who drove from St. Paul. https://roostmagazine.co/post/whip-poor-will-silence-appalachian/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/whip-poor-will-silence-appalachian/ Thu, 28 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Pell Murphy species On a ridge above the Greenbrier River, the writer's grandfather counted whip-poor-wills by ear from a screened porch each summer evening between 1958 and 1992. The 2026 count, from the same porch, was zero. https://roostmagazine.co/post/what-the-yellow-sea-mudflats-still-hold/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/what-the-yellow-sea-mudflats-still-hold/ Thu, 28 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Inara Khan migration Two decades of seawall construction took most of the East Asian-Australasian Flyway's critical staging habitat. What survived is now under intensive watch. https://roostmagazine.co/post/amsterdam-albatross-ile-amsterdam-disease/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/amsterdam-albatross-ile-amsterdam-disease/ Wed, 27 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Edith Crale endangered On an island in the southern Indian Ocean, a fungal disease that nearly took a 170-pair seabird population is, after a decade of intervention, finally on the back foot. https://roostmagazine.co/post/saltmarsh-sparrow-the-tidal-edge/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/saltmarsh-sparrow-the-tidal-edge/ Tue, 26 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Inara Khan habitat On the high marsh at Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, the saltmarsh sparrow is timing its nesting to a tide cycle that no longer offers the margin it once did. The species may not have the decade. https://roostmagazine.co/post/what-the-cat-takes-from-the-yard/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/what-the-cat-takes-from-the-yard/ Tue, 26 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Edith Crale backyard A camera-trap study in three Massachusetts towns put numbers to the household cat's contribution to backyard bird mortality. The numbers are not small. https://roostmagazine.co/post/nestwatch-and-the-quiet-discipline-of-watching-a-cavity/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/nestwatch-and-the-quiet-discipline-of-watching-a-cavity/ Sun, 24 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Edith Crale citizen-science For two decades, NestWatch volunteers have produced one of the most detailed records of avian reproductive success in North America. Edith Crale visits a participant in upstate New York. https://roostmagazine.co/post/subsong-the-quiet-rehearsal-of-young-birds/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/subsong-the-quiet-rehearsal-of-young-birds/ Sun, 24 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Inara Khan songs Before a young songbird produces full adult song it goes through a long quiet practice called subsong, which sounds like nothing in particular and is, in fact, where everything is learned. Inara Khan visits a Bombay rooftop where a juvenile magpie-robin is at work. https://roostmagazine.co/post/kirtlands-warbler-jack-pine-dependency/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/kirtlands-warbler-jack-pine-dependency/ Wed, 20 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Marius Doyle species In a stand of young jack pine in Crawford County, Michigan, on May 28, a male Kirtland's warbler sang from the same square metre of branch he had sung from the previous afternoon. The pine was eleven years old. In four more years, the bird would not return. https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-bar-tailed-godwits-eleven-day-flight/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-bar-tailed-godwits-eleven-day-flight/ Wed, 20 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Jasper Wynn migration What a single juvenile godwit named B6 told a research team about the absolute limits of non-stop migration. https://roostmagazine.co/post/regent-honeyeater-lost-song-victoria/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/regent-honeyeater-lost-song-victoria/ Tue, 19 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Jasper Wynn endangered In central Victoria, a species reduced to roughly three hundred wild individuals is losing not only its numbers but the cultural inheritance of its dialect. https://roostmagazine.co/post/platte-river-crane-staging-march/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/platte-river-crane-staging-march/ Mon, 18 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Edith Crale field-reports From the Rowe Sanctuary blind at 6:42 p.m., 78,000 sandhill cranes coming down to the river in a wind that smelled of wet snow. https://roostmagazine.co/post/powerline-rights-of-way-as-grassland/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/powerline-rights-of-way-as-grassland/ Mon, 18 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Marius Doyle habitat Across the eastern United States, transmission corridors managed on a six-to-ten-year cutting cycle now hold some of the region's best remaining grassland and shrubland bird habitat. The utilities, mostly, did not plan for this. https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-water-feature-as-bird-magnet/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-water-feature-as-bird-magnet/ Mon, 18 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Pell Murphy backyard A heated birdbath in a Cleveland suburb produced more species in one winter than the same yard's feeders had produced in eight. https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-international-shorebird-survey-volunteers-counting-at-the-tideline/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-international-shorebird-survey-volunteers-counting-at-the-tideline/ Sun, 17 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Inara Khan citizen-science Since 1974, an unusual network of amateur counters has tracked the shorebirds that move between the Arctic and Patagonia. Inara Khan walks a count site at Plum Island. https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-veerys-overlapping-voices/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-veerys-overlapping-voices/ Sun, 17 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Jasper Wynn songs The Veery's spiraling, descending song has long been a puzzle. Recent work has shown the bird sings two simultaneous notes from its two-sided syrinx, producing the harmonic blur that gives the song its character. Jasper Wynn explains. https://roostmagazine.co/post/cape-may-warbler-morning-may-second/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/cape-may-warbler-morning-may-second/ Tue, 12 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Edith Crale field-reports The Higbee Beach dike at 5:42 a.m., a north wind, and the first wave of warblers dropping into the wax myrtle. https://roostmagazine.co/post/mourning-dove-quiet-decline/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/mourning-dove-quiet-decline/ Tue, 12 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Pell Murphy species The breeding bird survey route runs from a gas station in Adams County, Ohio, up through 24.5 miles of farmland. In June 2026, the mourning dove count was 41. In June 1990 it was 112. https://roostmagazine.co/post/a-month-of-stopover-on-the-texas-coast/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/a-month-of-stopover-on-the-texas-coast/ Tue, 12 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Inara Khan migration At High Island and Sabine Woods, the difference between a good migration year and a bad one is measured in caterpillar abundance and the wind on the Gulf. https://roostmagazine.co/post/california-condor-lead-poisoning-pinnacles/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/california-condor-lead-poisoning-pinnacles/ Tue, 12 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Pell Murphy endangered Twenty-three years into the southern release programme, the condor's recovery is real and the cause of nearly every preventable death is still ammunition fragments in carrion. https://roostmagazine.co/post/riparian-corridor-restoration-on-the-klamath/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/riparian-corridor-restoration-on-the-klamath/ Sun, 10 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Edith Crale habitat Eighteen months after the last of four dams came down on the Klamath River, a slow-moving willow restoration is reshaping the riparian corridor and the bird community that depends on it. https://roostmagazine.co/post/suburban-hummingbird-year-by-month/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/suburban-hummingbird-year-by-month/ Sun, 10 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Jasper Wynn backyard From the first April male at the willow bud to the last October female at the salvia, the ruby-throated year in a single Massachusetts yard. https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-white-crowned-sparrow-dialects-of-san-francisco/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-white-crowned-sparrow-dialects-of-san-francisco/ Sun, 10 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Pell Murphy songs Since Peter Marler's 1970 maps, the Nuttall's white-crowned sparrow has been one of the most thoroughly documented examples of song dialect in any bird. Pell Murphy walks three neighborhoods to hear what has and has not changed. https://roostmagazine.co/post/project-feederwatch-and-what-the-numbers-have-quietly-shown/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/project-feederwatch-and-what-the-numbers-have-quietly-shown/ Sat, 09 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Pell Murphy citizen-science Forty years of counts at suburban bird feeders have produced an unusual dataset. Pell Murphy looks at what it has told us about a continent's winter birds. https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-night-radar-sees-what-the-eye-cannot/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-night-radar-sees-what-the-eye-cannot/ Mon, 04 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Pell Murphy migration How NEXRAD weather radar, designed for storms, has quietly become the most important tool in North American migration science. https://roostmagazine.co/post/spix-macaw-return-to-caatinga-2026/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/spix-macaw-return-to-caatinga-2026/ Mon, 04 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Inara Khan endangered Five years after the first reintroductions in northeastern Brazil, the released birds are forming pair bonds, defending territory, and producing the species' first wild-hatched chicks in twenty-six years. https://roostmagazine.co/post/hermit-thrush-song-eastern-broadleaf/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/hermit-thrush-song-eastern-broadleaf/ Sun, 03 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Jasper Wynn species At 4:42 a.m. on May 14, in second-growth hardwood above the Greenbrier River, the first hermit thrush of the morning began its phrase. The recorder caught it cleanly. The bird had been there for nine days. https://roostmagazine.co/post/mockingbird-mimicry-the-research-record/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/mockingbird-mimicry-the-research-record/ Sun, 03 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Marius Doyle songs The Northern mockingbird has been the subject of mimicry research for over a century, from Frank Chapman's 1916 census of borrowed phrases to David Gammon's recent work on song accuracy. Marius Doyle reads the record. https://roostmagazine.co/post/conowingo-dam-eagles-january/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/conowingo-dam-eagles-january/ Sat, 02 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Pell Murphy field-reports Below the Susquehanna's last dam, eighty-three eagles in a single morning, and the photographers who have stood there for fifteen years. https://roostmagazine.co/post/suburban-yards-reconfigured-for-bluebirds/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/suburban-yards-reconfigured-for-bluebirds/ Sat, 02 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Pell Murphy habitat Margaret Eldridge has run a five-box bluebird trail through her cul-de-sac in Cary for nineteen years. The data tell a story about what suburban land can still do, when one person decides to do it. https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-second-breeding-bird-atlas-of-pennsylvania/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/the-second-breeding-bird-atlas-of-pennsylvania/ Sat, 02 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Marius Doyle citizen-science After five years of fieldwork by 2,100 volunteers, the second Pennsylvania Breeding Bird Atlas is in print. Marius Doyle reads it slowly. https://roostmagazine.co/post/nest-box-plans-for-eastern-bluebirds/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/nest-box-plans-for-eastern-bluebirds/ Sat, 02 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Inara Khan backyard The North American Bluebird Society's standard plan has not meaningfully changed since 1978. A retired carpenter in Vermont explains why. https://roostmagazine.co/post/high-island-april-fallout/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/high-island-april-fallout/ Tue, 28 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Edith Crale field-reports Smith Oaks at 11:14 a.m. on a wet south wind, and the rose-breasted grosbeak in a hackberry that did not move for twenty minutes. https://roostmagazine.co/post/what-the-monarch-shares-with-the-songbird/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/what-the-monarch-shares-with-the-songbird/ Sun, 26 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Marius Doyle migration Two migrations, one continental, one hemispheric. The parallels are stranger than the differences. https://roostmagazine.co/post/bachmans-warbler-memorial-i-on-fields-near-i-on/ https://roostmagazine.co/post/bachmans-warbler-memorial-i-on-fields-near-i-on/ Sun, 26 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Marius Doyle endangered The last accepted sighting was in 1988. In April, a small group gathered in the South Carolina lowcountry to walk the canebrakes where the bird used to nest.