Author: BrantaMedia.Com

_{This YouTube video was produced by the American Bird Conservancy.}

The elusive Bicknell’s Thrush (Catharus bicknelli) was once considered an isolated population of the Gray-cheeked Thrush. Then, in 1995, ornithologists decided that differences in plumage, size, song, and range warranted splitting the two into distinct species. Distinguishing the two is no easy task — they’re best identified by their songs, but the shy and furtive Bicknell’s Thrush is not always very vocal. Unlike other, more colorful and common thrushes such as the Mountain Bluebird and American Robin, the Bicknell’s Thrush is seldom seen. It’s most often glimpsed on its remote

_{This YouTube video was produced by the American Bird Conservancy.}

Each spring heralds a unique spectacle on the brushy western plains of North America. Year after year, male Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) congregate on ancestral display grounds known as leks. There, the males strut about, fanning spiky tail feathers and raising feathered white collars while inflating bright yellow throat sacs — all the while making a weird assortment of booming, swishing, and popping noises. Choosy female sage-grouse, the object of all this parading, look on with a critical eye.

Although male birds of other species, from the Greater Prairie-Chicken down

_{This YouTube video was produced by the American Bird Conservancy.}

The rufous-breasted Red Knot (Calidris canutus rufa), once known as the “Robin Snipe,” is a champion long-distance migrant, flying more than 9,000 miles from south to north every spring, then reversing the trip every autumn.

One tagged Red Knot lived to at least 19 years old. Over its lifetime, researchers estimate that this bird traveled farther than the distance from Earth to the Moon, hence its nickname, Moonbird.

The rufa Red Knot is one of six subspecies, three of which are found in North America. The rufa Red Knot’s migration