News Birdsafe Design Proposal In Calgary:: From Urban Birdscapes is a story about the approval by the Calgary Planning Commission of Bird-Safe Urban Design Guidelines (PDF). Bats and Lighting Research Project:: This is a really interesting website documenting a research project by a PhD student at the University of Bristol. VIDEO: New cameras reveal secret [...]
News:: La Petite Ceinture de Paris:: This blog post from Nature urbaine features railroads that have been abandoned where nature has started to reclaim them, with some rather beautiful results. Twitter in the city: The urban life of birds:: An article from The Independent describes how urban birds are changing their calls by singing louder or singing [...]
The tiny Bushtit (Psaltriparus minimus) is the lone representative of its family, Aegithalidae, in the New World. The Long-tailed Tit is likewise, the only member of the family in Europe, although it is not confined to Europe and ranges into Asia where the rest of the species in the family live. While the descriptions about this little [...]
For as long as we’ve made dwellings for ourselves, many birds have sought to cohabit them with us. In past times beliefs and folklore made them welcome visitors and some were even sought after, while at the same time, many birds were (unfairly) feared and discouraged. Today we still welcome many species while discouraging others, [...]
Running now through May 15th of 2011 is Presidio Habitats in San Francisco. It is a joint venture between FOR-SITE Foundation and Presidio Trust and started running May 16th of this year. The Presidio has a long and interesting military history starting in 1776 with occupation under Spain followed by Mexico and finally the United States [...]
One of the most popular of urban birds has to be the Peregrine Falcon. They are watched, monitored, talked about, written about, recorded and rescued in cities around the world. In London they can be seen at the Tate during their nesting period where volunteers are on hand with telescopes for several hours every day. [...]
This was mentioned in a recent Foragings post, but it has such great design implications that I wanted to feature it in more detail. Over several years a landowner has turned previous agriculture land into a wetland habitat. Natural England helped with this transformation through their Higher Level Stewardship program which “aims to deliver significant [...]
Another year of Funky Nests from Celebrate Urban Birds provides a whole new range of places that birds will nest. As I talked about in the Funky Nests in Funky Places post from the contest of the previous year, it is always amazing how resilient some species can be. Some of the prizewinning entries from this [...]
Interesting Nature The Beauty of Insect Eggs:: From the latest issue of National Geographic shows a fascinating side of insect eggs, through a microscope. The details of these structures are simply amazing. Ladybug:: Also from National Geographic, this profile of our aphid-fighting friend highlights some fascinating facts such as there are over 5,000 species worldwide. [...]
This is my comprehensive project that I completed in my final year of the Landscape Architecture program at the University of Oregon. The two-term project was the culmination of my educational career and I wanted to choose something meaningful that would relate to my main interest of creating and designing urban wildlife habitat. I started to [...]
When we talk about a nest box we usually envision a wooden structure, often in the shape of a human house, hanging from a tree in the backyard. However, if you talked about a nest box in the UK, they may have a different idea. The RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) has [...]
The Nighthawk is a bird that used to be abundant throughout the US but has been in decline in recent years. There are many potential reasons for this, among them is a change in the construction of roof tops. Nighthawks have been known to nest on roofs with gravel tops, but since most roof construction [...]