Jonathan Cohen's photos with the keyword: birds

With help of its friends worldwide, the Jewish National Fund has developed the Hula Valley Nature Reserve into an internationally acclaimed bird watching park. The Park also won international recognition in 2009, when BBC Wildlife declared it one of the most important observation and photography sites in the world. It was ranked ninth out of a selection of twenty outstanding sites all over the world chosen by 300 experts including scientists and photographers.

In the arid Arizona desert, where cacti thrive but trees are scarce, the Gila Woodpecker and this Gilded Flicker carve out nest cavities in living saguaros. Tall, old saguaros may be pocked with twenty or more nest holes, bearing witness to decades of woodpecker families. The woodpeckers excavate a new nest every year, leaving the old, now-empty cavities behind. But they don’t stay empty for long. Elf Owls, Ferruginous Pygmy-Owls, Purple Martins, and Brown-crested Flycatchers all find the slightly used woodpecker cavities superb nest sites. Saguaros benefit wildlife in other ways too, providing nectar and fruit for birds, bats, and insects. These majestic cacti are now protected by law in much of the Southwest, so that desert habitats and wildlife will not be deprived of an essential and iconic natural resource.

This mural has appeared on a wall of a public storage building on the south side of College Street just east of Spadina that had been a site of continuous tagging no matter how many times it was painted over. The owners contacted a city-sponsored group called StreetARToronto (StART) which has the mandate to promote street art while counteracting graffiti. The artists for this mural were Viviana Astudillo and Logan Miller.

After most of the snow had stopped falling, about 15 of these beautiful birds visited our back yard. Having endured almost 24 hours of blizzard conditions, they must have been very hungry because they were so preoccupied with feeding -- there were some dark purple berries on a large bush next to our deck -- that they quite ignored me and my camera.