BirdNote is a new weekly feature on VPR. We'll learn about birds from around the world and hear their songs.  Listen at 8:57 on Saturday mornings.

This week on BirdNote, how birds use basalt cliffs as shelter. As the winter sun sinks over the Coulee Lakes, hundreds of Gray-crowned Rosy-Finches suddenly appear, an undulating cloud that swarms into the upper levels of the basalt cliffs.

The finches nest high in the mountains in summer, and roam the countryside in large flocks in winter. Gray-crowned Rosy-Finches roost for the night in a colony of abandoned swallow nests on basalt cliffs.

Learn more about basalt cliffs and BirdNote.