We will follow Donald Kroodsma though the year as he listens to his local heroes — the birds that create the wonderful sounds that are around us every day and are as fascinating as any at the far ends of the earth. To start the year, we might listen to a young female pileated woodpecker going to roost on New Year's Day. How about a January all-nighter in the Whately robin roost, listening to the robins as they arrive in the evening and depart in the morning and all that goes on in between? Jump to May and hear a mimicking brown thrasher, or duetting Baltimore orioles over the Norwottuck rail trail, and  kingfishers on the Connecticut River. How about crows, house finches, and Blackburnian warblers in June or scarlet tanagers and indigo buntings in July and cedar waxings in August. Maybe we will listen for baby songbirds practicing their songs for next year on an August outing to the rail trail, and just what does a wood thrush have to say as it goes to roost during early September? Come listen on Quabbin Hill as migrants pass overhead. Hear a ruffed grouse drumming in October and a growling mockingbird awaking on her roost on Thanksgiving day. Did you know that the winter solstice is actually the first day of spring, and if you listen to the birds they'll tell you so?

Biography

DONALD KROODSMA, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, has studied birdsong for more than thirty years. He was recognized as the "reigning authority on avian vocal behavior" in the citation for his 2003 Elliott Coues Award from the American Ornithologists' Union. His book The Singing Life of Birds: The Art and Science of Listening to Birdsong
won the 2006 John Buroughs Medal "for outstanding natural history writing" and the American Birding Association's Robert Ridgeway Award "for excellence in publications in field ornithology."