Dumb Stupid Birds

The greater sage grouse is the largest grouse in North America, eats almost nothing but a single shrub, and every spring performs a dawn courtship ritual so elaborate it has its own name, its own ancestral venue, and its own sound that no other animal on Earth makes. It has also lost 80% of its population since 1965 and nobody outside the American West knows it exists.

The greater roadrunner does not go beep beep, cannot outrun a coyote, and is not fast. What it can do is kill a rattlesnake with coordinated ambush tactics, survive a desert on almost no water, and leave footprints specifically designed - by accident - to confuse evil spirits.

The peregrine falcon: two hundred miles per hour, thirty-six ounces, extinct east of the Mississippi in 1965, nesting on your office building today. The greatest conservation comeback in the history of American wildlife.

The American woodcock is a round, leaf-colored forest bird with its ears on its face, currently shutting down Bryant Park with a dance that isn't actually a dance.

The mallard is the most successful waterfowl on Earth, ancestor of nearly every domestic duck alive, and the one bird that decided to colonize human civilization from the inside.