Avian Behavior International

06/16/2025

Our team had a great event at Chirp Nature Center in Big Bear Lake this past weekend at their inaugural Nature Festival. It was great to be part of an adventurous group of bird nerds and nature lovers!

06/06/2025

The behaviour has spread among a mob of more than 100 sulphur-crested cockatoos that roost in the Western Sydney Parklands.

06/01/2025

It takes a whole team! Our Andean condor Suyana has progressed by leaps and bounds in the last few months. She came to us already knowing many cues beneficial behaviors, but this was the first big change in her whole life and she needed to rebuild a new foundation with new trainers, a new job title, and an entirely different environmental set up than her previous home. We have seen her confidence increase steadily (usually), but sometimes her improvement flatlines and we have to decide if we are on the right track and this is part of the process or we need to change our tack.

We have had some incredibly capable interns the last few terms, and their skills have also grown. Here is Samantha practicing with the window feed method with Suyana and doing a great job! Our other intern Nolan is working the crate.

05/31/2025

It’s World Parrot Day, and we are celebrating the Blue Throated Macaw. Parrots around the world are considered one of the most threatened of bird groups, and blue throated macaws are critically endangered. Kingston came to us from the Bird Endowment as he was not able to be part of the breeding stock. The inimitable late Laney Rickman has done incredible work for this species, and her sister Dorothy Patterson carries on her work.

In conserving a species, there are many different paths to forge in increasing their numbers. You can breed for release, like they are doing with the Spix macaw. You can increase nesting opportunities. You can identify poaching threats, which is what I looked at with the Indonesian Parrot Project. And you can look at habitat loss and destruction. Each species is different, and needs a careful, scientifically based plan that incorporates local knowledge and values as well as an adaptive management plan in place for monitoring results. Some approaches sound more glamorous than others, but lack the scientific foundation for success and can do more harm than good. Along with .bolivia , the has had incredible success with their focus on this bird in the last few years.

05/16/2025

Owls are ambush predators with keen senses of hearing and eyesight. Did you know they can move the feathers on their face to pivot towards sound like you would move a satellite dish to capture a signal from afar to triangulate a sound even better? If you are up close, you can see these feathers move all together towards a sound. So cool!
Beatrix the barn owl and Guinness the Eurasian eagle owl at practice this week staying fit for their Owl Prowl falconry experiences!

05/11/2025

Happy Mother's Day to all those moms out there! Being a mom is tough work, and no matter what kind of mom you are, human mom, bird mom, or mother of dragons, you help make the world go 'round. Thanks for watching over us, teaching us the easy way, letting us learn the hard way, and holding your breath when we learn those rocky first flights. Thanks, moms, for all that you do. But, ahem, also more mice please ;)

05/05/2025

Hey Avian Behavior community! At long last, we are re-vamping our volunteer program for 2025. We are taking on new volunteers as we shift into gears into some exciting new territory into our conservation and outreach projects, and we want to bring our loyal community members with us! We have an exciting new curriculum and we are thrilled to have some great volunteers on board already. We have two orientations coming up, so get your applications in if you want to join our incredibly capable team of dedicated trainers, educators, and volunteers.
https://avian-behavior.org/volunteer/

05/01/2025

News about bird populations isn’t looking great.

Study using citizen data finds three-quarters of nearly 500 species in decline, with steepest trend in areas where they once thrived

04/28/2025

Hornbills helping hornbills for reintroduction efforts. We need your help at the Conservation Rearing Centre! These funds will be used to provide a self sufficient supply of power and water in South Africa. Help Kipling raise funds!

https://africanhornbill.org/donate/

04/18/2025

It’s International Dark Skies week! Come visit us Saturday at 6pm at the Rancho Peñasquitos Ranch House. https://darkskysandiego.org
I always say: our role as conservation educators doesn’t stop at what happens in the programs. It’s about helping people understand how the choices we make ripple outward—sometimes literally into the night sky.

Animals of all kinds influence the movements of other life forms, whether they are pushing or pulling them in certain direction. As humans, we have a disproportionate impact on all life around us, whether intentional or not. Even leaving a light on attracts insects which can pull birds towards us, which increases their risk.

Even small changes make a difference when you’ve got hundreds of birds flying overhead.

- Turn off exterior lights overnight during peak migration (April through May and again in September through November).
- Switch to motion sensors instead of leaving lights on all night.
- Use downward-facing fixtures that don’t spill light into the sky.
- Close curtains and blinds at night if you’re leaving lights on inside.

04/07/2025

A Hawk Walk experience is a falconry class that shows the difference in how two bird of prey species, hawk and the falcon, forage for their prey and work with the falconer. There are a lot of visual anatomical differences that help us understand these contrasts, from tail and wing shape to their toe conformation. Interesting, even the rate at which a hawk and falcon can see is different. This is called flicker fusion rate, and it allows the falcon to make those split second decisions in mid-air as they pursue aerial prey.

In our classes, we usually have a basic structure of how the birds will fly and come to the glove, but changes in the weather or general environment will inform our day. The winds picking up make for some really interesting flights, as Oakley the Harris's hawk showed earlier last week. Halley the Saker falcon can also do some pretty sweet moves as she chases the lure, which keeps the falconer on their toes!

04/04/2025

Episode 78 on the Avian Behavior Podcast is out! From our recent intern and Avian Behavior Lab member Levi Soucek:

“It’s not just about getting the bird in the crate. It’s… offering degrees of freedom. Positive reinforcement is one thing… but witnessing birds that are offered choices and degrees of freedom... it’s just a marvel.”

You can check out the episode here https://avian-behavior.org/78-wildlife-rehab/ or wherever you get podcasts