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When I was a kid, my dad called them “flying stoagies”, something he picked up from an old ornithology professor.  I always thought it was funny even before I really got what a stoagie was, because there’s something inherently joyful about the chittering, chattering Chimney Swifts that circle just about every neighborhood in eastern North [...]

What a wonderful way to get people interested in birds!

While eating the nests of swifts is nothing new, the large-scale production of these nests is.  Already a $200 million a year industry largely concentrated in Malaysia and Thailand, the farming of swifts is now being ramped up in Vietnam.  Because they will rebuild the nests made of their own saliva when they are taken, [...]

The sky has been haunting me for days now. It is the featureless nature of the sea of blue, spanning from horizon to horizon, its neglect of offering a foothold to the wandering eye that binds my thoughts. They have gone. The dots in the sky, forming whirling, twirling and spiralling clouds, breaking into a dashing descent, tossing [...]