(Illustration by Noah Woods)

8 Great Summer Birding Trails

From Maine to California, here’s our guide to planning your road trip around some unforgettable birding. These birding trails wend through charming towns and rural outposts, while also connecting the dots between many Important Bird Areas. The Central Coast trail in California, for instance, boasts charismatic Black Oystercatchers and Pigeon Guillemots—members of the puffin family—and spans four counties and 83 birding sites. Happy trails! Read More→

Atlantic Puffins are social birds, so Audubon scientists used decoys to help lure them back to historic breeding grounds. (Photo by Sandy Flint)

Live Webcam: Frolicking Puffins!

Need to take a moment? Bop on over to these live webcams featuring the playful Atlantic Puffins of Seal Island, Maine. One cam features the puffin-packed “loafing ledge,” a rocky outcropping where dozens of the comical birds hang out. The burrow cam offers a peek at a recently hatched puffling, still little more than a ball of downy feathers. Hunting once decimated puffin populations on Seal Island, but thanks to Audubon, these irresistible birds are breeding again on this and other Maine islands. Watch Live→

The graceful Whooping Crane, North America’s tallest bird at five feet, was cut down to just 15 individuals in the 1940s. Rescuing whoopers from the brink of extinction in recent decades is one of conservation’s great successes. But as water wars, drought, and climate change alter the equation in Texas—where the only self-sustaining wild population winters—conservationists are fighting to make sure this story has a happy ending. Read More→