Music&Nature

Photo: Browerk

What might sound like one bird’s song is in fact a duet, and based on recent research, it may be one of nature’s most impressive.

Nothing quite like an animated bird with Steve Martin’s head to make Friday even better, right?

(Note, the end of the video uses some language that might be a tad crass.)

Wine-throated hummingbird (Photo: Laurens Steijn)

In need of a new or unique way to teach about migration? You may want to take a page out of Sandy Osborne’s playbook—or, rather, songbook.

 
Last night at the Grammys Lady Gaga hatched from an egg, begging the question: If Gaga were a bird, what kind of bird would she be? Discuss.

At once the sculptor and the sculpture, a beak can tell a
lot about a bird and its place in the world—as well as ours. In "Pecking Order" (Audubon Magazine, January-February 2011), writer Peter Friederici and photographer Joel Sartore probe the science behind bird beaks.

"Finches with their hefty seed-crackers; warblers with their forceps made slender for extracting small insects hidden among leaves and stems; raptors with their curved hooks for tearing; shorebirds with their probes, straight or curved, which help them extract foods buried on a beach or mudflat. Novice birders quickly learn that the wild diversity of bird beaks is among the most reliable means of quickly determining to what family, and often even what species, a bird belongs. When you’re faced with the bewildering array of avian life in a fall marsh or spring woodlot, that certitude is a comfort, something solid to rest on. But it’s a bit misleading, too. Birds’ beaks are, in fact, always changing..."

Ever wonder what Antarctica mixed with global warming sounds like? This DJ will hook you up with his interpretation of the (very far) south. For an Audubon exclusive interview with the spin master himself, click here.

Photo by Ken Strom, Audubon Colorado

That's the word from an amateur arborist (someone who studies trees).  Katie Haggerty believes it and has some study material to back her up as well as a peer-reviewed journal and a state university on her side so far.

Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death. I was in the Arctic when he died, at Toolik Field Station with a hundred or so researchers and nine other journalists. To mark the King of Pop’s passing, a couple dozen folks took part in what might be the northernmost performance of 'Thriller', at Toolik Field Station, North Slope, Alaska.

To celebrate Earth Day, the cosmetic company Origins is throwing a party next Monday, the 19th, in the form of a free concert with Macy Gray as headliner.

Artists Ryan Star and Jon McLaughlin will also perform.