The wide-open winter landscapes in the Delta can make many birds easier to hear than see among the stubble of soybean, cotton, and rice fields. Some of you will be joining us for a winter birding field trip this weekend, but even if you’re not, here are five bird sounds (none sparrows!) that are worth studying before a winter trip through the Delta.

…shorebirds as a group have found the evolutionary bleeding edge of the physiologically possible and have resided there competently for millennia, out-flying Peregrine Falcons, out-distancing the seasons, and circumnavigating hurricanes at sea by methods still invisible to us.