Friday Feathered Feature
Showcasing a different bird species each week
As we turn the corner into September, bird-watchers look to the skies. Birds of all sorts are on the move, some new to migration or making the return trip yet again. Soon, warblers will begin migrating from northern Wisconsin to Central America, bugling sandhill cranes will make their way to the Gulf Coast, and American kestrels will take the short trip to Illinois.
Photo by Brenna Marsicek/SoWBA
No bird is a pastiche of the late summer prairie better than the American Goldfinch. With its yellow body, the bird could hide among the goldenrod, except for the male’s black wing bars and orange bill and legs. It’s well documented that the goldfinch is one of the latest nesting songbirds in Wisconsin.
Photo by Mick Thompson
Helping the American kestrel increase its numbers and providing data to the American kestrel Partnership has all the qualities of a good citizen science project for Madison Audubon. Madison Audubon’s volunteers began directly helping kestrels in 1985 when Mark, Sue, and volunteer Greg Geller began erecting kestrel nest boxes at Goose Pond around 1985. The kestrel nest box project really started to take off in 2009 with a coordinator (me) assigned to the project, and then again in 2012 when Mark and Sue ask me to check the nest boxes using a spy camera, a major advancement in the efficiency and effectiveness of monitoring.
Photo by Phil Brown
