^{Pictorial Encyclopedia of Shakespearean Birds, by Missy Dunaway.}

What, is the jay more precious than the lark,
Because his feathers are more beautiful?

So asks Petruchio in a rhetorical musing from William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew (Act IV, Scene III), suggesting that appearance isn’t everything (“’tis the mind that makes the body rich,” he says). The metaphor is just one of many references the Bard makes to birds in his repertoire.

^{Common Loons washed ashore in October 2012 along a seven-mile stretch of Lake Michigan beach near Gulliver, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Photo courtesy of Damon McCormick/Common Coast Research & Conservation.}

In late September, the body of a 21-year-old male common loon washed up on a Lake Michigan shore. A band around its leg revealed a rich history: The bird was the last of a group of 13 loons marked between 1991-1993 in Michigan’s Antrim County, in the Lower Peninsula. It had logged some 42,500 miles and fledged 16 chicks over the course of 12 years. Other than a broken beak tip, the lifeless bird appeared to have been healthy enough, weighing a solid 10.2 pounds, according to a necropsy report.

^{The sanderlings were frantically feeding along the Connecticut shore as the tide went out. Photograph courtesy of Audubon Alliance for Coastal Waterbirds}

^{Audubon Connecticut director of bird Conservation Patrick Comins provides a firsthand account about how Hurricane Sandy affected the state’s beach habitat.}

^{A sooty tern. Photo: Duncan Wright, USFWS} 

After a dramatic event such as Hurricane Sandy, there is a tendency to want to engineer a solution to prevent a repeat occurrence. We need to be mindful that coastal habitats—barrier islands, estuaries, and more are inherently dynamic, shaped by wind, tides, and yes, storms.

^{Photo by ozan/stock.xchng}

As the northeast has experienced Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath, our Facebook fans have been right there, commenting on our coverage about everything from bird sightings to how climate change affects weather. See the buzz below, and like Audubon Magazine and the National Audubon Society on Facebook!

^{As Hurricane Sandy made a historic landfall on the New Jersey coast during the night of Oct. 29, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on NASA/NOAA's Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite captured this night-time view of the storm. This image provided by University of Wisconsin-Madison is a composite of several satellite passes over North America taken 16 to18 hours before Sandy's landfall.} 

“Frankenstorm” Sandy has thankfully died down, though millions of northeasterners are still trapped in a real-life Halloween horror flick: no power, no potable water, and no transportation. As we put our lives back together, we face looming questions: What role did anthropogenic climate change play? And what will the sequel be like in terms of hurricane activity?

^{White-throated sparrow, by John Muir Laws.}

You love birds. You fancy yourself somewhat artistic. And you really want to get into avian sketching, yet the whole process seems so hard. A grab-and-go field sketching kit will help you turn drawing into a habit.

Forget vampires, werewolves, and zombies. What really spooks me isn’t even supernatural. Put simply, frogs are the freakiest. So, as Halloween approaches, the timing is perfect to salute what I would consider its patron amphibian, the “Freddy Krueger frog.”

What birds do you associate with Halloween? Ravens, perhaps, or crows? Don’t forget vultures. What could be creepier than a bald bird that feeds on rotting flesh? Here's how to tell the differences between two common vulture species. 

Joshua Marowitz hasn't slept in his own bed in two months. He's been on the road, cruising cross country on a jam-packed motorcycle, ending each day at a friend's or a stranger's house, or maybe a campsite. For more than 9,000 miles, he's been exposed to heat, rain, and monotony, but also extraordinary beauty—all because of plants.