News:
Eurasian jay dodges a sparrow hawk Matrix style.
Bird Jobs:
If you were unemployed for a few months, which job would you take:
Tundra Nesting Bird Internship at Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
or
Birdchick Blog
News:
Eurasian jay dodges a sparrow hawk Matrix style.
Bird Jobs:
If you were unemployed for a few months, which job would you take:
Tundra Nesting Bird Internship at Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
or
Did I ever tell you about that time I went camping and birding in Sweden?
Probably not in the blog. This is another in a series of adventures that happened in the last few years that has made it in some of my keynotes or conversations over libations at Birds and Beers, but never made it here.
So...Sweden:
Believe it or not, this trip was work related but I still look back on this trip and wonder...did that really happen? We were based at Kolarbyn Ecolodge which literally bills itself as "Sweden's most primitive hotel." But even though it's primitive, it's still beautiful and your experience is more relaxing than you'd think. It's about a two hour drive northwest of Stockholm.
Imagine if some designers from IKEA went out into the Swedish wilderness and designed very tasteful, elegant and minimalist huts with trees, dirt and mosses--you'd have Kolarbyn. The camp specializes in giving you a complete outdoor and survival experience. They were a bit baffled by birders. They expect their guests to be ready for hikes--which birders are but when they hear good birds, they are going to plant ourselves to observe and identify. Even experienced bird trip leaders know that guiding birders is like guiding cats. They walked us past an area that had nesting a family of black-throated divers (aka Arctic loon in North American field guides) and we planted to enjoy not only the view of the birds but the sounds as well. But I think they gradually got the hang of birders.
The food was wonderful. Sometimes a chef cooked for us and there were times when we helped prepare the meal. One of the experiences you can have at Kolarbyn is learning to identify edible foods in the Swedish mountains. During our trip in September, blueberries and lingonberries were plentiful and a handy snacks. There were also a variety of edible mushrooms which tasted great sauteed in butter over the campfire.
My first morning when I joined the camp for some coffee, the owner of Kolarbyn offered me some caviar from a tube. I soon learned that I could get meat and cheese from a tube as well. You really haven't lived until you have had reindeer meat squeezed out like toothpaste onto toast heated over a campfire. As I marveled over this strange food, they asked me what food I would have in Minnesota that they might find weird in Sweden. "Lutefisk," I said without thinking--it's the grossest thing people eat here. Fish soaked in lye with the consistency of Jell-O is enough to weird most people out. But I forgot where I was and the Swedes looked at me in astonishment and said that they loved lutefisk. Of course.
Now typically on these sorts of trips, the end of the day is capped off by a large meal and a few drinks. Our first night we sat down to an early dinner. The plan was to go out on a moose and wolf safari in the dark. The beverages were presented in the form of juice and non-alcoholic beer. Everyone looked confused and asked where the real booze was hiding. Our safari host smiled and said, "We have learned that if we don't give you alcohol you are much quieter and we have a better chance of finding wolf and moose."
More than one of us lamented that we hadn't hit the duty free shop at the airport before arriving to the camp.
The moose safari did not disappoint--we saw several. Moose are kind of a confusing thing in Europe. Over there, they call moose "elk." What we call elk in North America, they call "wapiti." We have had a steep decline in the moose population in my home state of Minnesota so it was a real treat to see so many. One of the moose we saw had a fresh injury on its nose, like a chunk had been bitten out of it--perhaps by wolves. Actually, I can understand why Minnesota had so many Swedes settle here. The landscape is very similar--as is the wildlife. Not only did we see moose but we had divers (loons) and wolves.
We saw lots of evidence of wolves--especially their poop. We staked out a spot on a trail to one of their dens in the hopes of one or two passing by. Though we didn't see the wolves, we did have some capercaillie settling into a roost tree near by--those things are so huge, their bodies cracking branches sounded more like Big Foot was coming through the forest than grouse. We never did see wolves on this trip, but we did hear them howl. I've seen wolves in Minnesota and Israel (though that one looked more like a coyote) but getting to hear a pack howl on one of our nighttime safaris was one of the coolest non-birding things I have ever part of--and worth a bit of sobriety. Sitting in utter darkness and in such a remote area of the Swedish wilderness under innumerable stars on a carpet of spongy mosses and a pack of wolves starts howling...I get goosebumps now remembering.
Speaking of sounds, get a load of this video:
One night they brought in a woman named Christina Holmström who does "kulning" which is a method of calling in livestock from the mountains. On our final night they allowed us to cut loose and have some wine around the fire. As we were sipping and toasting, this song started echoing off of the lake. Her evening song was just has haunting as the wolves howling. By the way, Kolarbyn also has a floating sauna on this lake which I highly recommend using, if you get too hot simply jump in to cool off or sit on the dock marveling the stars or northern lights.
After camping we headed back towards to Stockholm but did a bit of wetlands birding along the way. I was excited because we met up with Daniel Green of Bird Safaris Sweden who I have met before on my travels in Israel and south Texas. A great birder who is a great guide for Sweden or anywhere else you'd wish to travel around the world.
I was excited for this spot because it was chock full of barnacle geese. This is a glassy looking goose that I've always wanted to see. Thanks to television, they're also known as the "base jumping goose."
But there were all sorts of waterfowl and shorebirds here including lesser white-fronted goose (which my pictures are terrible and are not here). It was a great trip and between the food and the birds, I think Europe is one of my all time favorite birding destinations outside of the United States.
More birds below:
This flamingo report popped in the news just after I left Florida. Also...I don't think this person knows what a "money shot" is.
Weezer sold a crazy package of birding in the Galapagos.
Join the American Birding Association and say we sent you.
Vultures are spying on polluters in Peru and sadly being falsely persecuted for it in Lebanon don't worry it's been exonerated.
Guys, guys, guys! The Dutch police are training eagles to attack drones.
Fear mongering at its best: "The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey now has the legal right to kill almost any bird on its property--as long they declare it an emergency."
Valley Meadows. #nsfw
This podcast is brought to you by Refrigirware! I've been wearing the Women's Vertical Puffer Jacket and it's compact and warm.
Wildside Nature Tours offers a lot of trips! Come with me to Honduras or even better...Israel.
Do you know a birder between 16 - 20? Apply for this scholarship.
You may have heard that we have an ivory gull in Minnesota...it cause some drama. I made up a post of some of my favorite memes and gifs as well as memes made during the ivory gull saga to sum up what an emotional turmoil these gulls have caused.
Some guys defending poachers who were convicted of arson of covering their crimes have taken over Malheur NWR and birders are supposed to take it back. Anonybirders.
Birding Star Wars shirts for birders who are protesting the new Star Wars movie.
I realized that as my life has shifted to more professional writing, I don't write for my blog like I used to. Once I've written something that ends up over at Outdoor News or Audubon, there's no need to put it here. But I do a lot of writing for other things like Encyclopedia Shows so rather than just leaving that to be scratches in one of the myriad of notebooks Non Birding Bill and I keep, I thought I might as well put it out here for better or for worse. So here is this week's Encyclopedia Show entry on Cheerleading. There is some profanity (gasp).
I don't get cheerleading. I'm not disparaging people to have cheered or currently cheer but I don't get the concept as a whole. But then again, I'm often perplexed by sports ball. We cheer for people with tremendous athletic ability who can tackle each other, or throw and catch an oddly shaped ball from one end of a field to another, or for being able to dodge of bunch of dudes while bouncing a ball and periodically tossing it into a round net. I find the find the sports industry as strange as I find the spectacle of the fashion industry.
Maybe it’s because most of the things I do aren’t cheer related events like birding or paint by number. No one ever cheers you while birding:
“2-4-6-8!
Who just got a magnificent frigate?
Birdchick! That’s right, bird-bird-bird-bird Birdchick!”
For me personally, I don't find cheerleading useful. Every now and then I get in my head to do a 5K. I'm not great at it. My rules for a 5K are:
1. Finish.
2. Don't die.
3. Don't be last.
My reasons for doing 5ks isn’t any deep spiritual thing. It’s to keep eating in the manner in which I have become accustomed and if there ever really is a zombie apocalypse I'll have a reasonable chance of surviving the first round of killings. I've never experienced the "runner's high" that people talk about, but then again the people who tell me about it tell I need to do a longer run and that you really feel it at the 8k mark. Blah. I'm lucky to make it to the 5k mark.
When you run at events, there are people who are cheering you on...complete with cowbell, usually at the halfway mark or towards the finish. When I get to that point I'm not that thrilled with the cheering because my brain is generally to the point of, "Hey, you know a walk/run is a perfectly valid way to finish this and would probably burn more calories...aw, fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck, people are cheering us, we can't stop and walk now we have to show them their cheering is working, keep running. Fuck. Keep running."
But I have had occasion to see birders cheer odd things like actual life and death instances. I was co-leading a trip to Kearney, Nebraska to see a million snow geese and about 40,000 sandhill cranes pausing in their northward migration to their arctic breeding grounds. The highlights are going to the roost at dawn and at dusk to see the massive congregations of birds. When you aren't in the crane blinds you drive around to watch the birds forage for waste corn in the surrounding farm fields. Our group was watching a large flock when the birds suddenly spooked and took to the sky forming a huge gray crane tornado.
We soon saw what panicked the birds--an adult bald eagle was making tracks for the center of the tornado, its sites clearly set on one particular crane. The eagle made contact and clipped the crane, the bird flipped, the eagle rounded again and went to catch it. Meanwhile, everyone in my group was cheering. Half the group was cheering for the eagle and the other half were cheering for the crane to get away. As opposed to a football or a basketball game, they were literally cheering a life and death situation. One bird was trying to avoid starvation, the other bird was trying to avoid being eaten.
The eagle again dove for the crane and this time made actual contact. The crane was literally upside down and the eagle had at least one foot-full of talons lodged in the crane's belly. Bald eagles and sandhill cranes are roughly the same weight, averaging about ten pounds (give or take a pound or two). Even if this had been a twelve-pound eagle, it can only carry half its weight in flight. The captured crane flapped its wings and was able to dislodge itself from the eagle's grasp. The crane managed to right itself and fly away from the eagle.
Then it did something interesting—the crane made a beeline for our cheering group. The eagle turned and was in hot pursuit. The crane left the flock and flew right over our bus, meanwhile the eagle paused and went around our screaming group giving the crane some much needed distance to try and flee the eagle. In hindsight I wondered if the crane sensed the eagle would be wary of humans or was just so terrified of being eaten that it didn’t notice us? The surrounding din of thousands of cranes would have easily drowned out our voices. Eagles do not like to fly over anything dangerous so our group would have given it pause. But the eagle increased speed and continued after the crane. Both birds flew well out of sight and we never saw the finish but that adult eagle seemed determined and depending on how injured that crane was, it was very likely the eagle caught up to the exhausted crane and finished it off.
The adrenaline of the group wore down but we all noticed how strange it was to cheer and shout for that battle. What did say about each other and the side we chose?
I wondered if there were instances of birds cheering. I scoured my bird books and wondered if perhaps parent birds cheer on their kids when learning to fly?
No, not really, they either kind of sit aloof watching what happens. If anything, they taunt their young by not feeding them. And then perching some flight distance away starving the kids into flight.
Birds definitely scream and yell, usually when a predator is present and they are screaming and yelling: “Hey guys, there’s a thing right here that’s trying to hide and kill us!”
But I think the closest I came to finding a bird cheering is from a book called Mind of the Raven by Bernd Heinrich (which is a fantastic book).
The story is about a 98 pound woman who didn’t even clear five feet in height. One evening she was working behind her Colorado cabin. For about twenty minutes a raven had been annoying her because it was “putting on a fuss like crazy.”
“I never paid much attention to ravens,” she told me, but this one was so noisy it was downright irritating. The noisy raven kept coming closer…Hannum had never before noticed ravens “cackling like crazy.” Was this raven trying to say something? She started to listen more closely.
The raven was close, and it made a pass over her calling raucously then flying up above her to some rocks, where she finally saw a crouching cougar, twenty feet away, ready to pounce.
The lion moved his head just a bit as the raven flew over. That’s when I saw him. I never would have seen him otherwise. He was going to jump me. That raven saved my life.”
The event was declared a miracle in the news.
Heinrich saw a miracle but not the way Hannum saw it. Ravens have no interest in helping people, especially someone who never paid them any attention or fed them. That raven wasn’t warning her. That raven was cheering on the cougar. The idea is that the raven saw the woman as a source of food. Not having the talons or teeth to kill her itself, it noticed a cougar nearby and called it in to kill her. The cougar wouldn't eat her all but would open her carcass enough and leave enough behind for the raven to feed on.
That raven noticed a cougar nearby and a small human that raven was cheering that cougar. Perhaps it sounded something like this:
“Hey, you could kill this right now!
Go Cougar go!
Pounce Cougar pounce!
Kill Cougar kill!
Go! Pounce! Kill!"
What? We are giving away something from Mincing Mockingbird? It's the third book Prolonging Revenge Through Reincarnation: The Paintings of the Mincing Mockingbird Volume III Hardcover Art Book.
If you don't win the book, buy something from Mincing Mocking bird--his stuff is great and a perfect gift for birders of all abilities. How can you not love this cardinal?
We are also giving away notebooks and honey in this podcast.
And here's George Plimpton's Video Falconry.
A story with links to video of golden eagles hunting reindeer calves.
Non Birding Bill's other podcast: Movie Date With Bill.
Here's a great video of humans cosplaying as the Superb Bird of Paradise:
Here's a video showing the actual bird and it shows how the feathers create the shapes.
Some political candidate doesn't do well with a bald eagle in a photo shoot.
Wisdom the albatross has returned and at age 64 she's mating...will she lay an egg?
Best birding headline of the year.
Taylor Swift and the dotterels.
Owl lands on a birder's head and everyone got pictures.