Chicago Academy of Sciences Blog
Articles tagged Ornithology
September 12, 2024
Falling Leaves, Falling Feathers: How Birds Create Colors
Fall and the changing colors of leaves are so tied together, that there’s a good chance that the mere word “autumn” likely conjures a palette of orange, reds, and yellows. But the plants aren’t the only ones that shift into different hues as the temperature drops. Birds too will change colors as their now worn-out and damaged summer feathers drop off and are replaced by their (often less colorful) winter plumage. And while the color-changing properties of leaves come from chlorophyll breaking down and revealing the warmer pigments below, things get a little more complicated when we start talking about feathers. For starters, the colors we see when we look at a bird are not all due to pigments. Some colors are due to the microscopic structure of the feather itself, and these structures can even produce a shimmering iridescence. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s start with something a little more relatable to us humans.
June 15, 2024
Content Warning: The following blog post contains imagery and descriptions of specimen preparation. Did you know that not only are all of the animals on display at the Nature Museum real, but the steps involved in their preparation have been more or less the same for hundreds of years? Despite changing opinions on chemical preservatives, the process you can see happening today in the Beecher Lab would have happened in much the same way when our earliest specimens were being prepared for the collection.
November 12, 2021
Fall brings lots of seasonal changes. Leaves turn yellow, orange, red, and then fall; temperatures drop; the amount of daylight grows shorter. Animals prepare for winter or migrate. Some animals may also change their color. Ever wonder why?
September 28, 2021
Did You Know That Some Birds Can Weave? In the family of Ploceidae, there are multiple species of weaverbirds. As their name suggests, these birds can weave their nests on upper branches of trees. Weaverbirds are mainly found in Asia, Australia, and sub-Saharan Africa. A weaverbird nest is easily recognizable for its shape–a round enclosure, sometimes with a long entrance, that looks a lot like a tunnel. In the wild, the entrances protect the nest from tree snakes. Each nest can host up to two adult birds and their eggs. Some weaver species build nests together in the same tree, like an apartment building, that can reach 16 feet across! These examples of weaverbird nests are all part of our oology collection.
June 7, 2021
Chicago is positioned in one of the main bird migratory routes in North America, called the Mississippi Flyway. Natural areas along this route such as Chicago’s Lakefront, green spaces, and regional forest preserves, provide important rest stops for birds along their journey. Just as hundreds of species fly through the region, there are numerous species that live here year-round. Bird watching is a great activity to connect people and nature. It can be done at home or in a local natural area. And it’s an activity that kids and adults alike can participate in and develop their skill as much as they want. At the Nature Museum, the Birds of Chicago exhibit features 115 bird species found in the Chicago region. All the specimens are from the museum’s ornithology collection.
June 7, 2021
Making observations with William Dreuth
Documented bird observations are incredibly useful for understanding species migration and shifts in species populations or range as well as phenology (the timing of seasonal natural events such as plants blooming and bird migration). In the Academy’s collections, we have field journals recording Chicagoans’ observations from 100 or more years ago, allowing us to peak into our regional history. One of these naturalists was William Dreuth.
April 25, 2021
Have you ever seen a flapping sparrow, a gliding seagull, or a soaring hawk? What do their wings have in common? You might notice long feathers, short feathers, dark colors, or light colors. What is different about their wings? One main difference is their wing shape! Since birds live in many different environments, birds come in all shapes and sizes with wings that are adapted for their survival needs and habitat. There are four general types of wing shapes that are common in many birds. Let’s take a look at them!
April 20, 2021
Bird migration through the Windy City
You might not associate a big city like Chicago with a nature lover’s hot spot, but the Windy City is a great location for bird watchers. Chicago sits in one of the major bird migratory routes in North America, known as the Mississippi Flyway, so each spring and fall, there are hundreds of species that fly across the region.
March 23, 2021
In honor of Women’s History Month, we’re taking a closer look at the life and work of some of the women who were important figures in the history of the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum of the Chicago Academy of Sciences. For this final installment, we’re taking a look at Margaret Morse Nice (1883-1974).