Bird Card

A four-card field-ID dossier for Chipping Sparrow, from its rusty cap and gray rump to its one-note trill and sparrow look-alikes.

Ep 40/59: Common Yellowthroat is the masked little warbler of wet weeds and brushy edges, with quick clues for field marks, flight, song, and look-alikes.

Ep 39/59: The Yellow Warbler is a tiny lemon-bright songbird with rusty chest streaks, a thin insect bill, and a sweet rising song often heard around willows and wet thickets.

Ep 38/59: The Cedar Waxwing — silky smooth plumage, a bold black mask, and those unmistakable red waxy droplets on the wingtips that look hand-lacquered. A nomadic fruit specialist whose ghostly high-pitched trill is the sound of a flock you'll hear before you see.

Ep 37/59: The Pine Siskin — a heavily streaked small finch that reveals its identity with a blaze of golden-yellow wing edgings and tail flash the moment it takes flight.

The woodpecker that ditched the tree and went looking for ants on the ground.

Ep 35/59: The Killdeer — bold double breast-bands, an electric orange rump, and a piercing "kill-dee!" cry that rings across open fields and parking lots.

Ep 34/59: The Peregrine Falcon — fastest animal on Earth, clocking 240+ mph in a dive, with a bold black helmet and a comeback story that changed conservation history.

Ep 33/59: The Bald Eagle — flat-winged plank soarer with white head, white tail, and a call that sounds nothing like its Hollywood reputation.

The only North American raptor that plunges feet-first into water to catch live fish.

Ep 31/59: The banded forest raptor with a piercing kee-AH cry

North America's smallest accipiter — a square-tailed forest sprinter built for ambush.