Innehållsförteckning för Winter 2025 från Audubon Magazine

Every evening from November through early April, Roseate Terns return from long days of foraging at sea to roost on the beaches in Galinhos, a peninsula in northeast Brazil. The elegant and imperiled seabirds have long found a haven there, but offshore wind development poses a growing risk. For the past two years, an international team of researchers has visited Galinhos to outfit terns with GPS tags (opposite) that communicate with radio receivers (this page). The scientists are gaining an unprecedented understanding of the birds’ movements—data they hope will help protect Roseates and other seabirds while allowing renewable energy development to advance. With its strong, consistent gales, the Galinhos coast is considered “the filet mignon of wind” in Brazil, says Rafael Revorêdo, a biologist at Centro de Estudos e Monitoramento…

Trash Birds Why exert energy flying after food when you could simply hitch a ride? In San Francisco, one Western Gull hopped on a garbage truck and rode it 80 miles to a compost facility outside the city in pursuit of tasty scraps. Researchers caught on to the joyride when they saw the bird’s GPS tag zipping along at much faster speeds than usual. Apparently, the grub was good: The gull repeated the trip just a couple of days later. Green Means Go In suburban New Jersey, a Cooper’s Hawk discovered a clever strategy for ambushing prey by syncing its attacks with a traffic light. A local biologist observed that when the clicking crosswalk signal went off—indicating a long red light—the young hawk would perch in a tree and wait.…

SITTING ON MY DESK IS A well-thumbed copy of The Audubon Ark. I have flipped through it countless times, immersing myself in Audubon’s history. The book, which traces the evolution of the organization from the late 1800s, is a feat of reporting, a definitive account of the people, places, and events that shaped Audubon’s mission and work. It’s a book only Frank Graham, Jr., could have produced. Frank wrote the Ark during his tenure as Audubon magazine’s field editor—a position he held for 45 years. In that span Frank crisscrossed the country some 200 times on reporting trips that he transformed into remarkable stories. Though Frank retired as field editor in 2013, his contributions to Audubon remained so indelible that—out of respect and admiration—we continued to include his name on…

GROWING UP ON THE ROLLING pastures of River Valley Farm in New Jersey, Bryce Cotton remembers hearing birdsong across the cattle ranch—the cries of kestrels and the trills of Killdeers. That started to change when his family leased the land out for conventional row crop farming. By the time Cotton took over the property nearly a decade later, the soil was depleted and the chorus had gone quiet. Across a variety of landscapes, the sights and sounds of these and many other familiar birds, from finches to blackbirds to sparrows, are similarly waning. Per a recent assessment by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, 61 percent of all avian species are declining globally, largely due to loss of habitat. And mounting evidence shows that rare species in far-flung places…

ON A MISTY AUGUST MORNING in Cannon Beach, Oregon, Rebecca McGoldrick’s neon-yellow boots gleam like little lighthouses on the wet sand. Her attention is riveted to a tripod-mounted camera with a telephoto lens focused on a large sea stack. She counts to herself as curious beach-walkers drift over one by one. Soon, she’s drawn a crowd asking what she’s looking at. “Puffins,” McGoldrick says. Puffins on the Pacific Coast? Yes—Tufted Puffins. In their breeding attire of bulbous orange bills, white masks, and pale-yellow plumes flaring from their faces like Gandalf’s eyebrows, the West Coast’s Tufted Puffins are every bit as cute as their Atlantic Puffin cousins—if not as well known. Visitors to this resort town go from incredulous to thrilled when McGoldrick points out the upright black figures with bright…

WHEN FRANNA LUSSON EMBARKS ON ONE OF HER WILDLIFE PORTRAITS, SHE DOESN’T BOTHER with practice sketches. She dives in on the final sheet of paper, drawing and redrawing in expressive lines until she’s satisfied. “I work very instinctively and intuitively,” says Lusson, who practices with Creative Growth, an Oakland nonprofit that supports artists with developmental disabilities. Her mixed-media pieces aim to capture not only physical traits but also what she calls the “elemental aspect” of an animal. For her portrait of the Wood Stork, she was struck by the bird’s dignified presence. “I wouldn’t call Wood Storks pretty birds,” she says of the bald-headed waders, “but I just loved them.” Working from reference photos, she laid out a general figure in charcoal, smudged the outline to create shadows, and added…

Across the country, communities that attract birders see a cascade of benefits. FESTIVAL FIGURES During six weeks of spring migration in 2024, an estimated 70,000 people visited Ohio’s Magee Marsh Wildlife Area, one of the central locations of the annual Biggest Week in American Birding festival. Based on visitor surveys, they spent $53 million in the region. Festival cofounder Kimberly Kaufman uses such data to spark discussions with local businesses about conservation. Today, many of nearby Toledo’s building owners participate in a Lights Out program to protect avian migrants from collisions. REMOTE RESOURCE In Alaska, birders are more likely than other tourists to venture off the beaten path. If they are mindful to hire local guides and businesses, they can offer isolated communities a sustainable source of income, says University…

SUSTAINABILITY Piece of Cake Who knew that delicious, planet-friendly baking could be this easy? THINK “SUSTAINABLE FOODS,” AND you might not picture indulgent dessert. But Le Cordon Bleu–trained baker and writer Caroline Saunders makes the case that Earth-friendly confections can be both delectable and simple to make at home. When devising recipes for her newsletter, Pale Blue Tart, Saunders considers both the carbon footprint and the long-term climate resilience of ingredients. She knows that climate change, which imperils both food systems and wild birds, is a heavy topic to discuss. A tempting dessert helps bring people to the table, literally, to face the facts and dream up solutions. As Saunders puts it: “How much more inviting can you get than offering someone a slice of chocolate cake to start the conversation?”…