Animals - Birds Archives - The Library of Podcasts

The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird

The bald eagle is regal but fearless, a bird you’re not inclined to argue with. For centuries, Americans have celebrated it as “majestic” and “noble,” yet savaged the living bird behind their national symbol as a malicious predator of livestock and, falsely, a snatcher of babies. Taking us from before the nation’s founding through inconceivable resurgences of this enduring all-American species, Jack E. Davis contrasts the age when native peoples lived beside it peacefully with that when others, whether through hunting bounties or DDT pesticides, twice pushed Haliaeetus leucocephalus to the brink of extinction. […Learn More]

The Glitter in the Green: In Search of Hummingbirds

An acclaimed natural history writer follows the trail of the remarkable hummingbird all over the world.

Hummingbirds are a glittering, sparkling collective of over three hundred wildly variable species. For centuries, they have been revered by indigenous Americans, coveted by European collectors, and admired worldwide for their unsurpassed metallic plumage and immense character. Yet they exist on a knife-edge, fighting for survival in boreal woodlands, dripping cloud forests, and subpolar islands […Learn More]

H Is for Hawk

The instant New York Times bestseller and award-winning sensation, Helen Macdonald’s story of adopting and raising one of nature’s most vicious predators has soared into the hearts of millions of readers worldwide. Fierce and feral, her goshawk Mabel’s temperament mirrors Helen’s own state of grief after her father’s death, and together raptor and human “discover the pain and beauty of being alive” (People). H Is for Hawk is a genre-defying debut from one of our most unique and transcendent voices. […Learn More]

What It’s Like to Be a Bird: From Flying to Nesting, Eating to Singing– What Birds Are Doing, and Why

The bird book for birders and nonbirders alike that will excite and inspire by providing a new and deeper understanding of what common, mostly backyard, birds are doing—and why

“Can birds smell?”; “Is this the same cardinal that was at my feeder last year?”; “Do robins ‘hear’ worms?” […Learn More]

The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Genius of Birds, a radical investigation into the bird way of being, and the recent scientific research that is dramatically shifting our understanding of birds — how they live and how they think. […Learn More]

Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl

A field scientist and conservationist tracks the elusive Blakiston’s Fish Owl in the forbidding reaches of eastern Russia

I saw my first Blakiston’s fish owl in the Russian province of Primorye, a coastal talon of land hooking south into the belly of Northeast Asia . . . No scientist had seen a Blakiston’s fish owl so far south in a hundred years . . .

When he was just a fledgling birdwatcher, Jonathan C. Slaght had a chance encounter with one of the most mysterious birds on Earth. Bigger than any owl he knew, it looked like a small bear with decorative feathers. […Learn More]