Deb Hirt

6 days ago | muskogeephoenix.com | Deb Hirt

Several years before I met my first birding buddy, I knew my hotspot like the back of my hand. Writer knew where every unturned stone was, when the best times to go out were, what side of the lake that we wanted to be on at any time of day so we wouldn't be trying to photograph birds pointing the camera into the sun.

1 week ago | muskogeephoenix.com | Deb Hirt

For half a century, people have been told not to anthropomorphize the thought process of animals, especially birds. That means not to give them more intelligence than they have. Animals are more sensible than we give them credit for. YouTube is filled with crow experiments, where they solve rather complicated puzzles to get a reward. Then it was Blue Jays with the wherewithal to put a walnut or similar under car tires at a red light to crack nuts for them.

3 weeks ago | muskogeephoenix.com | Deb Hirt

Since the advent of eBird and technology alone, science has made some very important strides in bird behavior knowledge. Along with each university that has courses designated on the topic, they have produced a number of excellent individuals that that have been working in an ethnoornithological field. What prompted these events was the article on the loss of three billion birds, which shook education to its core, prompting many of us to take as much direct action as possible.

4 weeks ago | muskogeephoenix.com | Deb Hirt

Writer has read several pieces of literature on the virtues of Baja California from the general peninsula to Sur, and naturally, Cabo at the very end of the peninsula. Over the years, the material has been intriguing, with much good advice, including a native guide and a driver that is an expert birder and knows the area well. Baja has just six endemics, but there are numbers of subspecies, which include the California Towhee and California Scrub-Jay.

1 month ago | muskogeephoenix.com | Deb Hirt

Late August 2025, a pair of Military Macaws were photographed at Big Bend National Park in Texas. This record may be the first confirmed, but this is not the first report. August 1992 provided data about a party of seven individuals in Patagonia-Sonoita Creek Preserve, Santa Cruz County, Arizona, attributed to Hurricane Lester. The Military Macaw is endangered in Mexico, where it has a weak stronghold, globally vulnerable, in 35 fragmented groups across 16 Mexican states.