Every Mainer knows a snowbird: Someone who is here for the summer, but spends the winter somewhere warm, like Florida or Arizona. You may even be one yourself, but do you know Maine is actually a winter destination for some actual snowbirds? Many birds spend their summers in the Canadian boreal forests or the Arctic tundra, feasting on the plentiful insects, or breeding on remote water bodies. But when winter hits the Arctic gets a whole lot loss enjoyable, so lots of these birds escape to the

Have you ever seen a flock of pigeons flying over Portland and thought about eating one? Just grabbing and chowing down on one of those little bread-crumb-fattened birds on your way to the office? It’s not such a crazy idea – after all people pay through the nose for a squab dinner at a fancy restaurant – but I’d guess that wild-caught pigeon is not on the menu for most of us. It’s a different story for Cooper’s hawks, the most fearsome aerial predator in the city of Portland. These birds love

I’ll write about a lot of animals in this column about Maine wildlife, but I won’t write much about the phoenix. Because, you know, it’s not real. The phoenix is a part of ancient Greek folklore, a giant bird associated with the sun. It’s said to have lived for 500 years before dying and being born again, though there’s disagreement about whether that rebirth occurs in an explosion of flames or after regular decomposition. There’s also disagreement about what the phoenix looked like. It was of