Five months after I bought my first pair of binoculars, I attended my first birding event: a swift-watching party, hosted by the Atlanta Audubon Society. These kinds of gatherings take place every fall across the country to bring awareness to the issues plaguing Chimney Swifts, a North American species that’s plummeted by as much as 53

For a decade, a team of ornithologists with Operation Wallacea, an international conservation research organization, summered in a cloud forest in northwestern Honduras, some 7,000 feet above sea level. These weren’t luxury vacations, though: they spent much time hiking through elfin forest, also known as dwarf forest. Monte Neate-Clegg, a PhD student at the University of Utah and the leader

It’s that spooky time of the year! Some parrot species seem to especially mesh with a Halloween theme. Here is a lighthearted look at parrot species that bring “trick or treat” up a notch. African grey If there was one parrot that could put together their own “haunted house,” it would be an African grey

Sometimes I think about the kinds of choices adults make. We choose where we work, who we marry, what and where to eat. We choose practical things like our homes and vehicles and fun things, like which books to read, what hobbies to pursue. We choose our vacations. We browse the internet for hours, or

Jenny Drummey has volunteered with the Phoenix Landing Foundation since 2003, serves on the Board of Directors, and has been an Adoption Coordinator for the last 11 years. Her books, Project Parrot: A Behavior Guidebook for You and Your Bird and Biting Matters: Living Bite-free With Your Parrot, have helped hundreds of readers live successfully

Jennifer Cunha is an attorney who formerly taught inner-city children how to read. With that experience, she began teaching her cockatoos phonics and reading skills through a modified approach to systematic phonics instruction. She uses strong conditioning techniques to build vocabulary, and has taught her parrots to correlate phonics to vocabulary development for purposes of

Grey parrots may sometimes be impulsive—think about how often you may have had to give your bird multiple timeouts for the same behavior (like chewing on your sunglasses) in a very short time period. However, my students and I have shown that our parrot, Griffin, can actually exhibit quite a bit of self-control. We found

The experience of bird-watching has become a social phenomenon. Although many of us have always loved the sight of birds in our yards, or in wildly exotic vacation locales, an increased emphasis on conservation, protection, and the sheer joy of experiencing birds in natural settings has upped the interest levels of the public to historic

Gertsman’s image of Cobalt-winged Parakeets gathering around a clay lick won the Youth category and landed on the cover of Audubon’s Summer issue. Photo: Liron Gertsman/Audubon Photography Awards The art of photography is a combination of a gifted view of beauty and a practiced patience that is necessary for capturing shots and allowing them to

How Our Parrots Adjust to Changes in Personnel I’ve been told that many parrots may “glom” onto one person in a family, and then act aggressively toward most of the other humans they encounter. Fortunately, I haven’t had that experience with my birds. Each may have his or her favorites among the various research assistants,

As the world changes, it’s not a pleasant thought that some things will go out of existence. For decades, science and biologists have combined to try to encourage the proliferation of our declining bird populations, many times with little luck. Unfortunately, the prolonged efforts simply aren’t enough to prevent the disappearance of many of our