Back in 1977, Laura made flashcards from the illustrations in her original Golden Guide. She still has them.

This thrush with the ethereal, spiraling song keeps many secrets that scientists keep trying to tease out.

Seeing ourselves as the one species at the pinnacle of evolution is as wrong-headed as seeing our planet at the center of the universe.

To know them is to love them. But first, we have to be aware of them.

Seeing or even hearing one of these rare birds is a matter of the “3 P’s”: Patience, Perseverance, and Providence.

Two warblers were on the official Endangered Species List in 1973. Now they're both off the list, but for opposite reasons.

Last Tuesday, Laura and her friend Bernie found a Wood Thrush at one of Laura's favorite birding spots in Duluth. She hopes it attracts, or already has, a mate. (The [blogpost](https://open.substack.com/pub/lauraerickson/p/searching-for-wood-thrushes?r=aaa7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true) for this program is much longer and more fleshed out, with lots of photos.)

A cute little predator on the Endangered Species List for Wisconsin and Minnesota has been turning up here and there in both states this spring.

On Saturday, Laura went to Ashland County, Wisconsin, to look at a very lost tropical falcon, a Crested Caracara.

BB's fine but somebody isn't.

An unprecedented number of Scarlet Tanagers turned up on Peabody Street this year, and Laura was thrilled.

A beautiful, useful, and engaging tour de force.

It's a red-letter day when we see one of the prettiest woodpeckers of all.

Laura recalls the birds who inspired her baby daughter's second word.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has created two extremely useful apps for birders. Merlin is wonderful and useful, but far from perfect.

Laura sparked unprecedented anger in a listener last week because of a program and blogpost from 2007. (All my blogpost/transcripts have photos, and some are longer than the program itself, but this program's linked transcript/blogpost has a *lot* more information than I could include in the program, along with pertinent photos and a video.)

*The Birds That Audubon Missed* by Kenn Kaufman is a clear-eyed and surprisingly exciting portrait of a time and place that have long ago disappeared, and an important and timely book as well. Laura can’t recommend it highly enough.

Kenn Kaufman has written an important new book. Laura begins her review by talking about her own personal feelings about Audubon and his work before Kaufman's rich and enlightening book gave her a broader, more truthful picture of a deeply flawed yet important human being and his contemporaries.

Laura's been in love with a pretty little sparrow since she first saw it in 1977.

With birds, as with her children, Laura has trouble picking a favorite.