When I was a young girl I didn’t think much about how birds sleep. I just assumed they went to their nest each night and slept like we do. It is true that birds, like mammals, experience both non-rapid eye movement sleep and rapid eye movement sleep, although both cycles are shorter in birds than […]
Most people who know me soon learn that falcons, especially Peregrine Falcons, are one of my favorite birds. Not only are they beautiful raptors, with their stream-lined bodies and long pointed wings, but they are also very interesting birds. In this blog I will address 4 facts that many people may find disturbing but also […]
For many people owls are a favorite bird, with Short-eared Owls being just one of more than 200 species worldwide. The smallest, the Elf Owl, resides in the south western part of the United States to Central Mexico, and Baja California. The largest, the Blakiston Fish Owl, lives in Siberia, NE China, and Hokkaido Island […]
If I had eyelids like a bird, I wouldn’t have to worry about the Wyoming wind. Raptors and other birds not only have two eyelids, they have a third eyelid as well. Two of their eyelids are like ours, moving up and down to close their eyes. Like us, owls close their eyes by moving […]
The name “nighthawk” causes some confusion as it suggests that this might be a true hawk. This bird, however, is not even related to the hawk family. The nighthawk received its name because it resembles small hawks when observed in flight. Nighthawks are in the Caprimulgiformes order, where falcons are in the Falconiformes order, and eagles […]
When I think of the birds in our Draper Museum Raptor Experience education program and the golden eagles in our Draper Natural History Museum’s Bighorn Basin Golden Eagle Ecology research project, I think of how difficult it is to be a raptor and how hard the parents work. All of the raptors that I am […]