New at The Cornell Lab: Inside Birding and A New Neighbor

Something new on the revamped All About Birds website: Inside Birding, a video series hosted by renowned birders, and Cornell Lab staffers, Chris Wood and Jessie Barry.

Whether you’re new to birding or a seasoned expert, interested in sharpening your identification skills or wondering how to clean your binoculars, you’ve come to the right place.

On Inside Birding, hosts Chris Wood and Jessie Barry share all of the tools, tips, and techniques that will allow you to start birding like the pros. From where and when to find birds, to the clues that will help you identify them, Inside Birding provides the information that you need to make the most of your birding experience. So check it out and take your birding to the next level.

Check out the first few episodes on the Inside Birding website.

Jumping out the virtual world and back into the real one, we have new residents moving into the Sapsucker Woods neighborhood. A pair of Great Blue Herons spent much of today fashioning a stick nest in the middle of Sapsucker Woods. The snag sits in the middle of Sapsucker Woods Pond and often serves as a perch for Osprey, hawks, Red-winged Blackbirds . . . too many to list, really. It even hosted a Western Kingbird, nearly a decade ago when I first started working at the Lab.

Friday morning a pair of herons was observed "being amorous" on the snag, the male offering the female a long, multi-pronged branch, which she placed on the snag. Today, Monday, the birds were in full nest-building mode, it seemed the male flying in with a new stick every few minutes. He transferred them to the female who placed it on what seems as stable as a deck of cards: one wrong move, the whole thing comes tumbling down.

The male watches as the female places a stick. I'm no
architect, but I'm thinking vertical isn't the best orientation.

I spent a few minutes towards the end of the day watching what promises to be a fascinating breeding season. Here is a sequence of shots of a stick transfer, click on an image for a larger image to see the details.

The male heron arrives with a suitable stick for the nest. In the
background USAir flight 4685 arrives (early) from LaGuardia.

The male heron transfers the stick to the
female, who accepts it in a bowing posture.

The female heron places the stick in the nest as the male watches, then . . .

. . . the male is off to find yet another stick.

To be continued . . . .

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