Category: Spark Birds

My name is Nicholas Yerkes and I have been an avid bird watcher for almost 5 years now. I bought a house during COVID, and since everything was shut down, so were all of my out-of-house hobbies. I realized I needed a new hobby I could do from almost anywhere, that was free, easily accessible,…

Bufflehead. What a great name. It belongs to a small duck with a striking black-and-white body and a gloriously oversized head that shimmers green and purple in the light. That puffy head is what earned it the name bufflehead, a nod to its “buffalo-headed” appearance. I wasn’t a birder at the time, not even close. But this…

My name is Melissa Hafting and my spark bird is a Black-capped Chickadee. The first time my dad taught me how to feed one (at five years old) on my hand, I was hooked. I put sunflower seeds on my hand and the cute chickadee landed on my hand and made the soft “chicka-dee-dee” call.…

I never expected birdwatching to become such a big part of my life. It started quietly in the spring of 2023, shortly after my dad passed away. I found myself spending more and more time in my Michigan backyard, sitting in silence. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but I started to notice the…

I’ve always had a DSLR camera around, mostly to capture moments of my kids playing sports as they grew up. But once they went off to college, the camera ended up on a shelf, collecting dust. One morning, I was in the backyard throwing a frisbee with my dog when I spotted a Pileated Woodpecker…

I was 14 when I first picked up a pair of binoculars. I had just started volunteering at an environmental center in West Philadelphia, and the director — a man named Tony Croasdale — was a hardcore birder. He would take us out onto the trails to identify birds. There were about six of us:…

Birding and being To wrangle the disciplines of ecology and philosophy and neatly package seemingly diverse teachings and guidelines seems improbable and ambitious with lofty, unattainable aspirations. Let us not overthink it as we set out on this journey of being. Let us not think about it at all. Before we can explore the concept…

The Tri-colored Heron: My Spark Bird for Artistic Photography Every photographer has a starting point—a moment, a subject, or a spark that lit the fire. For me, that spark was the Tricolored Heron. At first glance, it was just another bird. But as I watched it move—graceful, focused, and striking in its contrast of blue-gray,…

I didn’t set out to become a bird photographer.  It happened the way the best things often do: by accident, curiosity, and a bit of optimism.  On a foggy morning in Borgarfjörður Eystri, Iceland, I found myself perched on a damp hillside, wondering if the puffins were going to cooperate or mock me by hiding…

My Spark Bird – The Fieldfare It was January and we woke up to what for us here in the south east of England was a heavy fall of snow. Several inches covered the garden, the branches of the trees and the roof tops of the nearby houses. The sky was blue – it was…