Birding Oaxaca Mexico June 2025

My buddy Ed said he was going to a conference in Oaxaca, Mexico and was tacking on a few days to go birding. Does anyone want to come? he said. Yes, we (Ian and I) replied. YES, we screamed. We bought tickets.

Ed had already hired a guide before we even knew we were coming. I don't usually hire a guide on birding trips because I like the feeling of finding stuff myself. But I think I'm over it! We hired a guide, who also picked us up and drove us in his own car, for the full three days of birding and it was so, so worth it. 

Day 1

The guide's name is Eric Antonio Martinez of BirdingToursOaxaca.com. He was awesome: knew all the spots; knew all the birds; knew all the plants and insects and other things; knew the history; knew the good lunch spots (!); and just knew everything. I can't recommend him highly enough.

With Eric leading the way, everything was easy. He picked us up the first morning at the Hotel Victoria, a charming and affordable spot a short walk from downtown, and five minutes later we're at this beautiful stream in the hill country just knocking out Oaxaca endemics. White-throated Towhee, Golden Vireo, Oaxaca Sparrow, Dwarf Vireo, check check check. It's gorgeous, and we're birding hard.

I should say here that something that added to the gorgeousness of our entire time in Oaxaca was that it was the rainy season. Lots of travelers hear those two words and start looking for vacations somewhere else, but I tell you, the rainy season is a great time to go. It rained like once! For a few minutes! Not a big deal! But the real benefit of the rainy season is that it's green. Everything was blooming and verdant and luscious. I expected a palate of nothing but yellows and browns, but green was the color of the trip. Don't be scared of rainy season.

The blooms contributed to maybe my favorite moment of the whole trip - right there during our first checklist. We walked up a rise and looked out over some massive agave flowering in front of us. The stalks were huge, probably twenty feet tall, but because we were elevated the flowers were at eye level - huge masses of yellow flowers. And buzzing around those flowers were dozens of hummingbirds. Dozens! Mostly Berrylline but with a few Rivoli's mixed in. I'd never seen so many hummingbirds at natural food before (like, I've seen large numbers at Patton's, for example), and it was spectacular. They zipped around like it was a big beehive. So cool.

Done there and feeling fine we started up into the mountains. Several mountain chains come together in the state of Oaxaca, and the city is surrounded on all sides by peaks reaching more than 9,000 feet. Cool birds to be found.

We stopped at a bend in the road in some lush forest. We were at about 7500 feet, and the birds were all different. Mountain Trogon, Crescent-chested Warbler, the endemic Gray-barred Wren, the Middle American subspecies of Steller's Jay (Cyanocitta stelleri restricta I think) with its impossibly floppy mop crest. Plus, somehow just as fun, were some familiar birds that I wasn't expecting. I didn't know American Robins lived in Southern Mexico! This is literally as far south as they go! (See photo below) Red Crossbills were here too! Hello my friends!

We continued uphill and stopped for lunch in the town of Benito Juarez. I couldn't wait to eat on this trip! I am an avowed fan of Mexican food, but had never actually eaten in the country before. Oaxaca is known as a culinary mecca, and not so much for the north Mexican taco-type food that I'm used to in the U.S. border states, but of more exotic foods like tlayudas (a kind of quesadilla, sort of), moles, distinct cheese, and mezcal. I studied Oaxacan food much more than the birds in preparation for the trip.

Eric took us to a tiny little kitchen in the town. Now, I try to be careful about the word "authentic." I don't think it means that much, really, and it's not a good way to judge whether food is good or not. The search for authenticity can be a kind of unfulfillable fetish, leaving people questing for some kind of imagined ideal rather than dealing with the reality in front of them. But I tell you, there was nothing faked or pretentious about the meal in Benito Juarez. Just a couple of women in a kitchen with a pile of masa making delicious, simple food. After a morning of seeing awesome new birds, a plate of memelas (tortillas with chorizo, beans, and cheese) and incredible cinnamon-y coffee made for one of the best meals I've had in a long time. I was in heaven, and there were more birds to find.

We continued up to a ridge about 9,000 feet. The highlight here was the Red Warbler, one of the most famous birds in southern Mexico. What a little guy! Bright red with white cheeks? Who is in charge here? How are birds like this allowed?? What a beauty. We were satisfied in all directions, and headed back down to Oaxaca.

Eric pulled us up to a nondescript, weedy field next to a small agave plantation, and we immediately started nailing cool birds. This kind of local knowledge is where it really pays off to have a guide, as there's no way we would have found this spot ourselves. Endemic Gray-breasted Woodpecker! Endemic Boucard's Wren! Cool local subspecies of Horned Lark! Good stuff.

We were done for the day, an incredible Day 1 in Oaxaca.

Day 2

We were back at it and headed up the mountains again, this time in search of another sought-after Oaxacan specialty. Corvids are a beloved group, and jays are the most colorful and playful bunch (in North America, at least). The smallest jay in the world is the Dwarf Jay, and it's found only in the mountains above Oaxaca. We headed to the famous La Cumbre park (ecotourism area? I'm not really sure) and Eric had us on a couple of Dwarf Jays within minutes. There was heavy cloud cover (so no sun to help with color), and the birds displayed an impressive ability to stay directly above our heads, but we all managed good looks, if not good photos. What a bird! We were all relieved at connecting with this species, one of the easiest to miss on the trip.

We continued on, Eric landing us crushing looks at species like Golden-browed Warbler, Collared Towhee, and many more. Satisfied in the mountains, we headed back down to a valley a little further south. We never got the name of this place -- a popular spot for local hikers -- but we named it "Valle de las Mariposas" because of the butterflies that were literally everywhere along the damp ground. Check my iNat page if you want to see more - my favorite was a Bumblebee Metalmark. 

Anyway, we cleaned up here with our final Oaxaca City-area endemics. Our most wanted as the Slaty Vireo, an absolutely awesome, evil (?) looking bird. Not the easiest looks, but we all got it. Same for Blue Mockingbird, which we'd glimpsed several times but not seen well. We did get great, though distant, looks at one here, along with our long-awaited Ocellated Thrasher. Day 2 was in the books.

Day 3

We hit it so hard the first two days that Eric had a free day to play with, and decided to take us further afield. For a three day trip, the third day is often used to clean up birds you may have missed due to weather or bad luck, but we were all too good for that. Let's go find some new stuff.

For us, that meant driving an hour and a half south to a nondescript wash where we absolutely nailed some cool new birds. This was new habitat; gone were the lush mountain forests and in its place was hot desert. It was a nice change of pace. This place that Eric took us was perfect. Maybe the first bird we heard out of the car, chipping in some scrub, was an Orange-breasted Bunting, just a beyond-colorful bird that we didn't at all plan for or expect because we only really prepared (such that it was) for Oaxaca City. What a bird!

Deeper into the wash we found beautiful and cooperative White-lored Gnatcatcher (always a favorite group), a Plain-capped Startthroat, Dusky Hummingbirds, a White-throated Magpie-Jay (!), a Varied Bunting, and more. We watched a Russet-crowned Motmot dive into a hole in the banking and waited for it to come out (but it didn't). We heard some tooting overhead and were treated to a point-blank Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl. Couldn't get better views if we paid it.

We didn't get the best bird of the morning until we were almost back at the car. Eric had heard a strange call early on but wasn't able to place it. When we returned we heard it again, loud and clear. A Laughing Falcon, well out of place outside of its normal tropical forest haunts. Eric said this may be the closest ever sighting of this species to Oaxaca City. We got good photos and Ian recorded it calling for more than 2 minutes straight. 

Further down the road, Eric was telling us about how there was a slight possibility we'd run into Cinnamon-tailed Sparrow, a range-restricted endemic that sometimes moves up the valley in summer. Almost as soon as he was done speaking he slammed on the brakes and turned off into a roadside pullout. Sure enough, Cinnamon-tailed Sparrows. No way we would have found these birds without him. 

We made a couple final stops and saw species including Green-fronted Hummingbird, Russet-naped Wren, and a heard-only Lesser Ground Cuckoo, as well as Yellow-winged Cacique and Melodious Blackbird along the river. We headed back as champions. We said goodbye to Eric, our amazing guide, and thanked him for three days of incredible birding. I really do hope you hire him if you're anywhere in Mexico!

We weren't done, though. Early in the trip Ian had seen a sign for a local luchador wrestling match billed for our final night in town, and urged us to go. We were sort of on the fence, being tired and all, but we went and it ruled. It was probably the most local-feeling thing we did (even though there were more gringos there than anywhere else we'd seen), and vibes were high in the venue. 

It was fun, but mistakes were made. All week, Ed, who travels frequently, made sure that we didn't drink tap water or have drinks with ice. Our tummies would pay for it, he knew. We did a great job until that last night, when I spotted a woman making delicious-looking micheladas. I love a good michelada, and bought one, not even noticing that it was filled to the brim with ice. It was good, and I passed it around to the other dudes. We had a fun last night and flew home, thankfully uneventfully.

Then things were eventful. All three of us got stomach bugs and spent a few days each doing the things that one does. Look, it happens, and it wasn't anything to put a damper on an amazing three days in an amazing city looking at amazing birds. I'd do it all again, and just ask for my drink without ice.

Tufted Puffin in the Gulf of Maine

Warming temperatures in the Arctic are keeping the Northwest Passage open longer, making it easier than ever for seabirds to move between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. It's happening in drips and drabs (is that the expression? what the hell is a drab? No, I will not look it up), but it's happening. There's been a Northern Gannet on the Farallones. Ancient Murrelets have been seen off the coast of Maine and Iceland. 

There's also been a Tufted Puffin in Maine. First seen in June 2022, the single bird has spent summers bouncing around various of the Gulf's seabird nesting islands, including Petit Manan, Seal Island, Machias Seal Island, and Eastern Egg Rock. The entire rest of its population spends the summer nesting in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, but this individual spends its breeding season wandering around Maine looking for a familiar face. In the winter, it presumably migrates with other Atlantic Puffins to the open waters off southern New England and the mid-Atlantic.

It's a mega rarity, and one that Maine birders would love to see. But the unpredictability of its movements and the difficulty of getting out there to even take a look (you need to pay to join a whale watch boat), means that very few folks outside island-based researchers have been able to see it.

I've tried at least three times. (One of those whale watch trips was free because we didn't see any whales the trip before and they give you a coupon when that happens.) No luck. But, the bird keeps coming back. It was first seen in late May, with a mind-blowing from-land record near Portland. [It's worth lingering on this record for a moment. It's crazy. Despite how famous Atlantic Puffins are in Maine they are NEVER seen from the mainland. I don't think I've ever heard of one seen from shore, though I'm sure there are records. The fact that Noah and Stacey spotted not just a puffin but THE Tufted Puffin -- the only individual in the entire Atlantic Ocean -- from shore is just bonkers.]

My family told me that I should go birding on Father's Day (love them), and so I booked a ticket on Cap'n Fish's Whale Watch out of Boothbay Harbor, which visits the Atlantic Puffin colony at Eastern Egg Rock. The Tufted Puffin had been seen a couple of days before by researchers at Seal Island NWR, about 40 miles away, so I didn't really think I'd see it at Eastern Egg Rock. Still, you can't win if you don't play, and I always love getting out into the Gulf, so it was worth the effort.

I was rewarded. Almost immediately after the boat arrived to the island (we don't stop and debark, only bird from the boat) I spotted a larger, all-black-looking bird flying down the island. It was the Tufted. I gasped, and fired off some out-of-focus photos (even more out-of-focus than normal). I alerted the crew, who were thrilled, not having seen this famous bird yet despite daily trips to the island. The boat also let the island's research staff know, who hadn't apparently seen the bird yet either. 

It was awesome. The bird was almost constantly on the move, perching for a few moments on the highest rocks with Atlantic Puffins, then appearing -- almost if by magic -- in rafts of birds in front of the boat on both sides of the island. Great bird! Great day! 

The first view of the Tufted Puffin, in flight past one of the island's bird blinds. I can't believe I managed to get any images at this moment, I was so excited.

The bird seemed to appear everywhere - including at one moment in the water on the west side of the island.

My favorite view of the Tufted Puffin - hanging out with Atlantic Puffins on the south end of the island. 

Somerset County (Maine) Big Day 2025

[Adopted from a post I sent to the Maine Birds listserv]

Every year a group of us tries to spend an intensive day of birding in a county outside our Cumberland County homes. This year we set our sights on Somerset County. Yesterday, Monday May 19, a group of us including Doug Hitchcox, Ed Jenkins, Brendan McKay, Michael Tucker and Franklin County guest star Tim Flight worked to find as many species as we could within Somerset County lines.

Somerset is an interesting county. It's the longest north-south county in the state--stretching from Fairfield all the way up above Baxter SP to meet Aroostook County--but offers very little east-west movement. That orientation makes a day's birding pretty straightforward: start in either the north or the south and head in the opposite direction. Our accommodations were at Sugarloaf (in Franklin Co.), so we started in the forests around Flagstaff Lake and worked our way to the extreme south of the county. 

Starting out just east of Stratton, ME

Being a bunch of dudes with jobs and families meant that we didn't have the luxury of choosing the "best" day to bird, and the weather was a constant annoyance. We didn't see a ray of sun all day, and were constantly plagued by drizzle, rain, and at times gusting winds. But things never got nearly bad enough to quit, or anything, and while the weather certainly contributed to some misses, there are so many damn birds in northern Maine right now that we couldn't miss. We had 10 species of warbler in the drizzle at our first stop of the morning on just over the Somerset line near Stratton, and songbirds were abundant at every stop as we made our way along Big Eddie Rd. up and over Flagstaff Lake towards Long Falls Dam. Despite dedicated effort, though, we were unable to connect to any of the boreal specialties -- Boreal Chickadee, Black-blacked Woodpecker, Canada Jay, or Spruce Grouse -- that we hoped to find up there. More scouting would have helped, but those birds are tough to find. Rising winds and the drizzle kept things pretty quiet around the lake, though we did have some nice surprises, including a flock of 22 White-winged Scoters migrating north, a pair of American Bitterns, and an American Herring Gull on the lake. We headed south, out of boreal habitat.

Great Moose Lake

We were invigorated by our next stop, an out-of-the-way boat launch at the north end of Great Moose Lake, near Hartland. That place was great, and featured about a dozen birds that we didn't see anywhere else in the county, including Black Terns, a majestic Sandhill Crane flyby, Northern Harrier, Pied-billed Grebe, and more. Any future Somerset County listers need to make sure this site is on their radar.

We kept moving south. A coffee break at a convenience store in Athens yielded a silent Black-billed Cuckoo in a tree across the street, reinforcing the truism that there are no bad birding spots in mid-May. We hit our first eBird hotspot of the day (and just one of three total) at 3:13pm, getting skunked in the rain at Lake George State Park. A steady diet of passerines and sharp-eyed pick-ups got us to the KVCC Alfond campus just north of Fairfield at 95 species, where we picked up Savannah Sparrow, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Baltimore Oriole, Wood Thrush, and our century-mark clinching Willow Flycatcher.

Celebrating 100 species at Kennebec Valley Community College

We got ice cream and celebrated with one last stop on Libbey Island in Fairfield. It was really birdy, though, and we ended up adding birds like Tufted Titmouse, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Tennessee Warbler, and Blackpoll Warbler. (Those last two brought our day's total to 22 warblers, missing only Prairie, Mourning, and Louisiana Waterthrush for Maine breeders.) We ended the day with 109 species in Somerset County.

We left a LOT of birds on the table -- Indigo Bunting, House Sparrow, House Finch, Great Blue Heron, etc. -- so another attempt with better weather and more efficient routing would certainly result in more birds. But we had a hell of a lot of fun, and saw a lot of beautiful places we'd never seen before. Until next year!

eBird Trip Report: https://ebird.org/tripreport/373865

Our checklists overlaid on a map of Somerset County. Courtesy Doug Hitchcox

Birding Arenal Observatory Lodge

Is Arenal Observatory Lodge the White Lotus for birders? 

Is that reference to a 2025 tv show going to stand the test of time? Who knows, but Arenal Observatory Lodge is a wonderful type of birding that I've never experienced before. It was great.

For me, a dirtbag, "birding hotel" means the first hotel by the highway interchange, the kind of place with a key on a brown plastic diamond and stains on the carpets. That's not what Arenal Observatory Lodge is.

my typical birding hotel key

The Arenal Observatory Lodge is high in the Caribbean foothills of Costa Rica, with a point-blank view of the famous Arenal Volcano. It's an all-inclusive property: 870 acres of primary and secondary rainforest, gardens and lodging, and pasture. The vast majority of that land is open for exploration, meaning birders and guides can wander around the look for birds and other wildlife to their heart's content, and still make it back to the restaurant for meals.

For a first-time Costa Rican birder like me, Arenal Observatory Lodge was paradise. It's completely self-contained, meaning I didn't have to worry about any of the things I may have to worry about if I were birding just out in the wide world: parking; language barriers; finding bathrooms; finding food; any of that stuff. Plus, it was also easy for my non-birding-but-wildlife-interested wife and son, who could safely wander the grounds at their own pace, hang out at the fruit feeders to see incredible, colorful birds up close, or take advantage of the other amenities.

Those other amenities are what made the place feel a bit like Birder White Lotus. There was a spa! There was a gorgeous pool and hot tub! There was a museum! This wasn't just a birding lodge, it's got something for everyone.

And, of course, the birding was incredible. I don't really know what to say. I hired a guide the first morning, Néstor Villalobos Rojas, and he was great. We didn't leave the central area for two and a half hours but got 66 species, most of them lifers. I regret not hiring him for the rest of the day, actually, because I would have gotten more birds but also learned a little bit more about where to focus on the other trails around the property. Alas.

On subsequent days and afternoons I explored almost all the other trails. Traveling out and around the pasture was lovely, and helped me get some species that aren't found near the main lodge like Chestnut-headed Oropendola, but to be honest I don't think birders need to leave the area of trails right below the restaurant and around the canopy tower. That's likely the best place to see some coveted mixed flocks and other goodies. The Waterfall Trail also goes through some great forest, though the water noise overwhelms birdsong once you get too close.

Alright so for the rest of this I am going to post some pictures with some other info or tips about birding at Arenal Observatory Lodge.

This is a Red-legged Honeycreeper at the famous fruit feeders. These contraptions are right off the big main deck by the restaurant -- accessible to all -- and feature some incredible and beautiful birds, including Bay-headed, Golden-hooded, and Emerald Tanagers, and many more.

This is also from the feeder deck - a Grau-headed Chachalaca with the peak of Arenal Volcano in the background.

SIGN UP FOR THE NIGHT TOUR. Do it. It's so cool, and you get to see a lot of creatures -- mostly amphibians and reptiles but also sleeping birds and monkeys -- that you don't see during the day. This is a world-famous Red-eyed Tree Frog and a crazy Eyelash Pitviper! Do the night tour!

There are hummingbirds all over the gardens, viewable from most of of the rooms. It's great. This is a White-necked Jacobin.

One of my best birds of the whole trip was this Sunbittern, the only member of its family and one of the most beautiful birds on earth. I really wanted to see one of these birds because I was planning a trip with friends to Costa Rica a few years ago but had to back out at the last second. They all still went and saw tons of birds - but missed Sunbittern. I lucked into this stunning bird at the river crossing just below the main gate to Arenal Observatory Lodge. It appears to be a reliable spot, though crossing paths with a bird during its route up and down the river isn't guaranteed, so multiple stops may be necessary.

The eye-blowingly bright Scarlet-rumped Tanager is one of the most common birds in the main area of the Lodge.

I spotted this Yellow-throated Toucan peeking its head out of its nest hole just below the Frog Pond. Just another of the amazing wildlife sightings available at Arenal Observatory Lodge!

General tips for traveling in Costa Rica:

• Get cash at the airport. Like many places, tipping culture is important here (especially for bird guides), but ATMs are really tough to come by. Make sure you stock up on small bills before you leave the airport.
• The roads are fine. With the caveat that I was there in April, at the end of the dry season, I'll say that the roads and the drivers were both easier to deal with than elsewhere I've traveled in the Caribbean / South America. 

Cats and Birds LTE from 1923

Cats are known to be the leading predator of birds in the U.S.A, killing somewhere between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds per year. It's a major problem.

And there's a sense that it's a new one. The Scott Loss paper cited about came out in 2013, and seems to have marked a turning point in the discourse. "Did you say billion?" A growing number of people talk about the problem, and potential solutions, and a growing number of people get upset and defensive about feral cats. 

But it's not true that our understanding of the impacts of feral cats on birds are new. We've known for a long time. A friend, Tim Flight, passed along this Letter to the Editor from 1923 -- 101 years ago -- about the cat predation problem and how the Maine Audubon Society apparently had a bill to do something about it. (I can't find anything more about the text of the bill, but am looking.) The letter was published in the Evening Express, a daily paper in Portland, Maine that printed between 1882 and 1991, and except for a few outdated turns-of-phrase could have been printed this week. Let's review some of the choice bits.

We have seen two robins in the City the past week, and sad to relate, a neighbor's cat killed one of them; and sadder still to know that there will be one less family of robins reared in our City this summer; for most birds are monogonamic and unmated do not breed.

OK good start here, relatable, if quite the run-on. (Plus is "monogonamic" a word?) 

Cats are not to blame for destroying birds, for it is their instinctive nature to do so. What blame there is attaches to the owners of the cats.

True! 

This leads to the purpose of this article--to answer the many interesting, curious, and sometimes impulsive articles that have appeared in our papers concerning the efforts of the Maine Audubon Society to regulate the cat.

All that is just the long way of saying "people are PISSED."

Section 1 of the bill provided that all owners of cats should have them registered and taxed. Section 2 provided for the collection of such tax. Section 3 provided for the humane disposition of unlicensed cats. Section 4 for the humane destruction of predatory cats, and Section 5 made it unlawful for people to willfully abandon cats when changing their residence, leaving them to a precarious existence often to perish from starvation or cold.

Wow. To be certain, no one at Maine Audubon has any recollection of this effort. Every conservationist recognizes the impact of cats, but no policy like this would seriously be proposed today in the U.S., and it's frankly too bad that the inclusion of the more extreme measures (destruction) would poison the possibility of some of the more logical ones (registering cats in the same way that dogs are). Bold, and unhelpful.

Those who oppose this bill have unwarrantedly concluded that we are unfriendly to the cats and want them all destroyed. We ... challenge anyone to cite either in this bill or in our writings, and statement that justifies any such assumptions.

I'd say it was that stuff about "humane destruction" you just talked about.

The point has been made that cats do not want to wear collars. We don't want to put license plates on our cars. Adam and Eve didn't want to wear clothes.

OK. Interesting argument. It does illustrate how ideas become normalized, like, you don't read a lot of LTEs complaining about license plates any more. Adam and Eve are still pissed, though, chafing against their undergarments.

 We have stated our belief that there are 200,00 cats in our State. ... New York city disposes of as many stray cats as that annually. 

There's some math here that's pretty back-of-the-napkin, but is still valid in terms of how today, in 2024, we don't really know how many cats we have in Maine. Various unscientific-sounding resources say that Maine ranks second in rate of cat ownership, with nearly 48% of households owning a cat. We've got 1.4 million people here (not exactly sure how many households that is), so, I dunno, there's some math. And wait, NYC kills that many every year? Damn. 

How many insectivorous and game birds do these cats destroy yearly? The smallest possible estimate, taking into account the nestlings that are lost, would be five birds to a cat, and that would mean 1,000,000.

We're still doing this kind of math, but it's backed up by a lot more science. The 2013 Scott Loss and Pete Marra study is one of the biggest ones, but its conclusions have been verified time and time again, around the globe. Also a quick note here is how important "eating insects" was to conservationists in the early 1900s. "Protect birds because they eat insects that eat your crops" was how a lot of things were justified, including the establishment of Maine's state bird in 1926.

Unless you too, make an equal effort with us for a more humane and rational treatment of the cat, we shall challenge your assumption that you are a better friend to pussy that we are.

Ending on a high note! What a finish! I'm ready for action! 

 

 

New Book! Dinosaurs to Chickens: How Evolution Works is out now!

I'm really proud to announce that my new book, Dinosaurs to Chickens: How Evolution Works, is out now. 

This is a book that I would have devoured as a kid, as it makes critical connections between modern and prehistoric animals. Growing up it felt like we learned about two totally separate groups of animals: extinct dinosaurs and living everything else. The dinosaurs had their time, and now modern species had theirs.

But learning about animals that way left so many questions in my mind. Where did modern animals come from? What were they doing when dinosaurs were around? How are the two groups connected?

This book helps answer those connections, and helps kids understand how life is connected from across all ages of the earth's history. It celebrates the work of thousands of scientists working to piece together the stories of insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. 

What I did was take 30 modern animals and work backwards to understand how they got to be the way they are. How did evolution help some insects become bumblebees and other become butterflies? How did some amphibians become frogs and others cave salamanders? How did reptiles evolve from amphibians and then take over the world?

There are millions of questions to answer, and millions of stories to tell. Just taking one example at random: the Mexican Free-tailed Bat. Mammals have existed for hundreds of millions of years, but for most of that time we lived fairly hidden lives in the shadow of dinosaurs. Dinosaurs dined on early mammals, and so in response most early mammals evolved to keep out of sight: living underground and only coming out at night. Our senses of smell, sight, hearing, and touch improved to keep us safe and allow us to hunt in the dark.

Then, the asteroid came. Living underground and being able to hunt at night really helped us survive the impact and its aftermath, and mammals survived where dinosaurs did not. Mammals (and birds) evolved rapidly to fill the voids left by dinosaurs: without so many predators around mammals could safely grow bigger and stay out during the day, which in turn gave them freedom to develop in new ways.

Not all mammals did, of course. Being small and staying out of sight was still a lifestyle that worked, and many mammals kept on living that way after the dinosaurs disappeared. Many modern rodents live and look very much like ancient mammals.

But some did change. The ancestor of modern bats is believed to have been a shrew-like animals who lived in trees hunting insects. Maneuverability in the treetops was helpful for these creatures -- moving from tree to tree was safer than remaining on the ground, and the more acrobatic they were the better they could catch insects -- and the shrews born with adaptations that permitted them to jump, steer, and glide were successful. 

Gliding gave rise to flying over the course of millions of years. The oldest known bat, Icaronycteris, is dated to the Early Eocene, some 52 million years ago. But they weren't quite the modern bats we have today -- the retained a long, rodent-like tail and their wings didn't yet connect to their legs. There was more to come -- echolocation to help bats pinpoint prey in the dark; living in caves for safety. Scientists have traced all of these changes and more until we get to the modern Mexican Free-tailed Bat and all the other varieties of bats living around the world.

That's a lot, but it's so much fun. I learned so much while researching and writing this book, and I was consistently filled with gratitude for the scientists who work on these questions and, frankly, for the fact that I am lucky enough to live in this planet with so many incredible neighbors.

I hope you and your kids will like it, too. Buy it now!

Birds in Video Games: California Games and Town & Country Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage (NES)

I am old enough that I plated the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) when it was new. It ruled. We had our own console and games, but we also partook in the time-honored and must-missed pastime of shlepping to the video store to rent games.

Renting was a great system, because back in those days you could beat an entire video game in a night or a weekend, rather than spending hundreds of hours tweaking the length your avatar's moustache handles or whatever games are like now. Plus, you didn't feel bad about playing a crappy game because you were only out the cost of the rental.

Two of those crappy games were California Games and Town & Country Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage. 

I remember them specifically as rentals because each had its own eye-catching box art that was hard to miss on the shelves. California Games, from 1987, featured a babe in a yellow bikini. The cover of Town & Country Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage, from '88, was an absolute mess of shit including a surfing gorilla, a giant yin-yang, and some guy in like a tribal mask? It looks like hell, but I remember it clearly.

Both games looked to cash in on the late-80s popularity of skateboarding, surfing, and other "alternative" sports. Town and Country Surf Designs, aka T&C Surf Designs, is actually a surf shop in Hawaii, which is, having been to plenty of skate/snow/surf stores in my day and meeting the owners, quite a goddamn coup if you ask me. 

Anyway, California Games lets players choose between skateboarding, surfing, footbag, "flying disc," roller skating, and BMX. T&C Surf Designs has just surfing and skateboarding. Wikipedia tells me that California Games was a massive blockbuster, selling more than 500,000 copies. T&C Surf Designs was less of a blockbuster, and, in my experience as a player, sucked ass and was wicked hard.

But since they are both outdoor games they both have birds in them. Let's start with T&C Surf Designs.

Players, like this cat in a tuxedo (??), encounter a gull-like bird during the surfing stage. The bird flies in from stage left and tries to knock the player into the water. It's not a very well rendered bird. Logic would assume it's a gull, but there is nothing that black and white anywhere, and the bird is proportionally more like a goose with its big head. Frankly, I don't like it and don't want to talk about it any more.

There's a better-looking gull in California Games. 

This bird flies over the players head during the footbag stage, and the player can kick the sack up and cause the bird to flip out of control. It's a well-done gull! Gray wings with black tips and a yellow bill. The unmarked yellow bill makes this a pretty good fit for a Short-billed Gull (though the proportions and size are off), which can be found in the Bay Area in winter. The extremely revealing shorts that Alex is sporting in this screencap aren't maybe ideal for winter (though they are ideal for showing off those buns! Get it, Alex!), but there appears to be snow on the mountains in the background so who knows.