Bird
Story Stream
What an Owl Knows July 06, 2023
In her new book, Jennifer Ackerman, bestselling author of The Genius of Birds, takes us on a journey of discovery into the world of owls, exploring both their mystery and the new science that is revealing their complexity. Along the way, she introduc...
On 'Showing Up' April 10, 2023
The Portland, Oregon art school featured in Showing Up, Kelly Reichardt’s eighth feature film, may divide audiences into those who view a temple of rug-weaving, earthwork, and “thinking in movement” as either an Edenic wonderland or a crochet-laden c...
A Portrait of Leonard Cohen as a Young Artist April 03, 2023
One legend about Leonard Cohen goes like this: It’s the early 1970s, and the Canadian musician and poet is performing in Jerusalem. As was his custom at the time, he and his band are on a tremendous amount of mescaline. He feels self-conscious and fe...
On the Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon April 03, 2023
The United States is hardly deficient in natural wonders without equal in the world: the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, the California redwoods, the Everglades, and Yellowstone, to name only a few. But there is at least one incomparable American natura...
Summer Books 2020: Nature May 23, 2020
When we hear the word “bee” we’re likely to imagine the common honey bee or bumblebee. But there are as many as 25,000 recognized bee species in the world—more than birds and mammals combined. Most of these lesser-known bees don’t live in hives, many...
Why Birds Do What They Do May 18, 2020
Bushtits—almost impossibly tiny gray birds that live in flocks across the western United States—are not hard to spot in the Bay Area. I usually become aware of them by noticing a chorus of peeping in part of an oak tree that seems to be jiggling. The...
‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,’ Rebooted May 15, 2020
Wrapping up one of his recent panoramically authoritative surveys of our altered landscape, inner and outer, my Atlantic colleague Ed Yong put it like this: “In the classic hero’s journey—the archetypal plot structure of myths and movies—the protagon...
