BirdNote Daily

From his start in 1937, the gangly, black-feathered Daffy Duck was a cartoon original: wildly outspoken, volatile, and confrontational — a truly daft duck. Daffy was one of the most memorable characters from the golden age of cartoons, paving the way for other screwball cartoon personalities to come.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org.Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A century of logging and fire control has taken its toll on the mature pine forests of the West, the preferred nest site for this Lewis's Woodpecker. But there is hope. Lewis's Woodpeckers also nest along rivers in large cottonwoods, trees of little value for timber. Also, many remaining tracts of old-growth ponderosas are protected on public lands, and the trees are growing larger day by day.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org.Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A bird known as Titanis walleri made its home in Florida just a few million years ago. Titanis, as its name suggests, was titanic indeed — a flightless predator, 5 feet tall, with a massive hooked bill. Titanis and other birds related to it belong to a group some paleontologists call the "terror birds." They were dominant land predators in South America for tens of millions of years. Paleontologists still aren’t clear about why Titanis and its kin went extinct. But whatever factors ended the era of the terror birds also made it a lot less risky to go out and fill your bird feeder.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org.Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Every bird species uses its wings a little differently, and some are specialized for highly efficient flight. But that means going without other abilities. Swallows and hummingbirds, like a Talamanca Hummingbird, capture their food on the wing, but they can’t walk. Swifts, which are acrobatic in the air, can’t even perch. Yet they dazzle with the maneuverability made possible by their aerodynamic bodies.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org.Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

To hear a Common Loon in the wild during summer, you’ll need to find a northern, freshwater lake where a pair is nesting. But to find that same Common Loon in winter, you’ll likely need to look on a saltwater bay. This shift from fresh to salt water would kill most animals. But loons — along with many ducks and other water birds — have evolved to make that move. It’s possible that breeding adults nest on fresh water in order to save their energy for raising chicks.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org.Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.