Author: Neil A. Case

Two nuthatches flew to the feeder outside the dining room window as I sat eating breakfast, and watching the birds outside, of course. Nuthatch, I read in a book titled “Words for Birds,” is a corruption of the word nuthack. And nuthatches do ... Read more

In “A Field Guide to the Birds” Roger Tory Peterson described the sandhill crane as “a long-legged, long-necked gray bird with a bald red forehead.” Standing, a sandhill crane is over five feet tall. Peterson described the great blue heron ... Read more

This article is about birds of the night; owls. These are birds that are active when most other birds are sleeping. Owls have always been of particular interest to me. As a boy, growing up in northwest Iowa, I was interested in all birds but particularly ... Read more

A white-throated sparrow is a rare bird to me. It has always been a rare bird to me. Its nesting range is Massachusetts and northern New York north into the evergreen forests of northern Canada, well north of my home in northern Iowa when I was a ... Read more

I’ve been duck hunting recently, with a pair of binoculars. I’ve driven to a pond or lake with a road along the shore, then driven slowly along the shore, stopping often, scanning the shore, the water beyond, and the sky above the water. ... Read more

Butterflies were numerous then, in summer and into the fall, when my brother and I were boys. Butterflies were common and numerous. My brother and I each had a net on a pole, a butterfly net, and we chased butterflies, often. Those we caught, and ... Read more

What kind of bird is this, a friend asked, showing me a picture she had of a brown thrasher. I doubt my friend would have asked me the name of that bird many years ago. It was a common summer bird in Iowa where I grew up and in most of the other states of ... Read more

I saw a firefly, one firefly, early one morning, before dawn, near the end of last month. It was the first, and only, firefly I’ve seen this summer. I used to see dozens, hundreds, of fireflies every night in summer when the weather was fair. ... Read more

It was late evening, after dark, and I was going to bed. But, before going to bed I decided to get a drink from the kitchen. Going through the dining room on the way to the kitchen I turned the dining room light on and looked at the bird feeders outside ... Read more

A mink bounded across the road in front of my older daughter and plunged into the marsh at the edge of our pasture a few days ago. My daughter was walking along the side of the road with our dogs when the mink crossed their path. ... Read more

A friend told me a few days ago that she thought I should write about a mammal. “You’ve written several articles about birds recently,” she said, “and you’ve written about the weather. How about a mammal?” ... Read more

It’s a dark and dreary winter day. The sky is gray. The temperature is below freezing by our thermometer. There’s a cold wind, I found when I went out with our dogs soon after getting up. Snow fell last night and covers the ground, though it’s only ... Read more

Dark-eyed juncos and tree sparrows fly back and forth to the bird feeder outside my dining room window every day now, except when the wind is strong and the weather especially wintry. They’re winter visitors, birds from northern Canada. On ... Read more

George Bird Grinnell, that’ right, George Bird, has been called “America’s Environmental Pioneer.” He had what was described as a “restless drive to save the West.” Yet he was not a westerner. He was born in Brooklyn in 1849, moved with his family ... Read more

I was driving on a highway through a woodland one cloudy, cold winter day recently. Trees and brush lined the road. It was a quiet road, no critters, not even a single bird. Then, suddenly, a deer bounded out of the cover ahead and across the road ... Read more

The sky is gray. The temperature is near freezing. The wind is raw and leaves are falling from the trees, coloring the ground with flecks of brown and red and yellow. It’s a dreary day, a day when I plan to stay indoors, to read, to write and to observe ... Read more

I was driving near home one cool, clear pleasant morning recently when I saw the birds. Two of them. They flew up from the side of the road, almost beside me, then across the road in front of me. The instant I saw them, instinctively, I stomped on ... Read more

As I drove into town one clear morning recently, looking for birds along the road as I always do, I saw fifteen birds, just fifteen; fourteen swallows perched on the power line along the road and one robin that flew across the road ahead of me. Fifteen ... Read more

My cuckoos are calling; the cuckoos in my clocks, three of them, coo-coo coo-coo coo-coo. They’re telling me it’s now noon. They don’t distinguish between day and night and give me the same signal at midnight. I have a fourth cuckoo in a clock ... Read more

There’s one house finch on the thistle seed feeder outside the window in front of my desk and a cardinal on a branch of the tree nearest the platform feeder but there are no birds on that feeder. There was a goldfinch on that feeder a few minutes ago ... Read more

Robins make nests from grass and sometimes a strip of cloth or a piece of string. They line the inside with mud, molded by the female to the shape of her breast. They locate their nests on horizontal branches of trees and on window ledges and other ... Read more

“Turtle,” I said to my daughter when I saw one in the road ahead. My daughter, who was driving, had seen it too and was slowing the car as I spoke. There were no other cars on the road so my daughter stopped the car a few feet from the turtle and I opened ... Read more