The silence overwhelmed me just as the song overwhelmed me long ago. My first excursion as a naturalist to the western Great Plains of eastern Colorado occurred in the winter of 1981. It was a cold, ...

The lark bunting was designated the state bird of Colorado in 1931. Why was this bird chosen to be the Colorado state bird? The answer I found was that the lark bunting was chosen because their ...

Look in the foothills & mountain valleys of Colorado, and you’ll find the state flower – the Rocky Mountain columbine. The state tree is nearby – the blue spruce. As is the state animal, the Rocky ...

I don’t mean to cause a panic, but Colorado’s sweet little state bird, the black and white lark bunting, is on the decline. And it’s mostly because we’re destroying their beloved short grass prairie ...

This sparrow (mono­­typic genus) feeds on bare or sandy ground. When flushed, it flies to a high perch. Few other sparrows are likely to fly high overhead during daylight. They call both when flushing ...

The day turned out to be more an adventure of wandering my mind than exploring Pawnee National Grassland. I first visited Pawnee in early autumn of 1980. The lifescape had lost its verdancy — the ...

Take a look at the sparrows in your field guide and you’ll note a bewildering array of near lookalike species. Only with a fair amount of study do these “little brown jobs” start to become easier to ...

Icy weather left recent Christmas Bird Counts in Lancaster County with fewer observers and fewer miles traveled to count ...

Birdsong is more than just a way of identifying birds: it’s a way of identifying with the birds themselves, says author Donald Kroodsma. Get to know them with these audio samples and sonograms. Plus, ...