For some reason, somebody took this guy seriously about his ivory-bill sightings. Seriously, he's been at this since the original sightings.
Falcons on a plane.
Great news, updated Warbler Guide app and it's now available for Android!
How To Look Like A Bad Ass Birder
Have you ever been out birding with your digiscoping kit or traditional camera equipment and wondered if there was an easier and more comfortable way to carry your camera and binoculars at the same time? Did you ever hope you'd look like a total bad ass while doing it? Well, I have three words for you: Tactical Birding Harness.
Actually the real name is the CCS Binocular & Camera Harness and as soon as you put it on, you feel ready for what my friend Ben Douglas would call "beast mode birding."
The CCS Binocular and Camera Harness from Cotton Carrier.
Initially, I was skeptical about this harness on two fronts. First, I'm female and I'm a well endowed. Though I enjoy using binoculars harnesses for comfort, it can be a challenge to get those to work around a curvy chest. Many of these products are built for guys and well, the products get weird when applied to a woman's body.
Image of a guy using the Binocular and Camera Harness from the Cotton Carrier website.
The second concern is that I had is that I have a low center of gravity and I wondered if having this stuff hanging on me was really going to be anymore comfortable than my usual set up of a traditional binocular harness with my camera slung over my shoulder while carrying my scope on a tripod.
Me wearing the binocular and camera harness.
To my surprise, the tactical harness can be quite comfortable. As soon as I put it on, I felt a bit like Bruce Wayne suiting up for a night with the Joker. Being short, I had to do a lot of cinching of the shoulder straps, but once I got the harness snug against me, it wasn't bad at all. The fitting of this harness is really key (and gents, you may want to skip to the next paragraph as I'm going to get into some serious boob talk here). Ladies, if you leave it slightly loose, the harness shifts a bit as you move and then you're left with that look many of us dread: one of your breasts is randomly hanging out on the side. Don't make it so tight it hurts to breath, but have someone help you tighten it on the shoulders and the waist to keep in in place.
Once fitted well, it doesn't move as much as a traditional binocular harness. Many women tell me that they find the traditional binocular harnesses uncomfortable. I think one reason is that people don't pay attention to where the leather patch is in the back. Sometimes it has a tendency to ride up just below your neck, when really it should be squarely between your shoulder blades and depending on how active you are in the field, you periodically have to pull it down. This harness stays in place for the post part when snug.
You'll note there are straps with clips to help secure your camera and binoculars to the vest should they become dislodged from the vest, preventing them from dropping to the ground. I like how the binoculars are flat against the chest and don't flop around. I'm using 8x32 ELs which are compact and lightweight, it might be a different story with larger barrel binos.
The harness comes with adapters to attach to the bottom of your camera and around the barrel of your binoculars. The washer has arrows that when aligned correctly will secure your optics to your harness.
The harness has an adapter and velcro strap to attach to the barrel of your binoculars and a tripod adaptor for your camera. These have large washers that will lock your optics in place on the front of the harness, and off to the side (you can adjust whether you have the second piece on your right or left to favor which side you use most). I did notice that after awhile the velcro strap on my Swarovski ELs would come loose and slide a little bit and I'd have to retighten it to keep it aligned with the harness.
I also had to get used to my binoculars and camera in a new area. If you've had your digiscopign set up for awhile, using them has become second nature. This is a bit of a different configuration and it takes some getting used to the different way you have to holster holster and reholster your bins, especially if you're excitedly looking at a bird. Here's a demo of the binoculars being holstered:
A small pocket in the belt holds a cover to put over camera to keep them dry if it's raining while you're out in the field. There's even a holder just inside the front of the harness in case you have an umbrella with a thin rod that you want to put over yourself to stay dry. Just wearing the whole set up around for an hour was not bad and the best part was that my binoculars and camera felt secure and not like they were bouncing all over the place. This is something I might use while at a birding festival or birding remote areas. I wish I had this back when I was doing bird surveys. I'm not sure if I would wear this set up in an urban park, it might be a bit much and cause neighbors to question you. But if you are going to wear it in an urban park, go big or go home:
The harness accessorizes well with a Batman Cowl.
Birdchick Podcast #217 Ross's Gull Drama
This winter's gull drama involves a Ross's gull. Here's one heck of an eBird list with pictures.
Bald eagles might be more of a problem on free range chicken farms than we realized.
Newer podcasts to check out:
The Update to Baby Porcupine Eating Banana with Hiccups
Ten years ago while volunteering at The Raptor Center I went to my friend Gail Buhl's office. Though she's in charge of the eduction birds, she's a licensed wildlife rehabber and sometimes takes in other creatures. That day she had a porcupet aka a baby porcupine that had been found on the side of the road next to its dead mother who had presumably been hit by a car. I took a video of it eating a banana while having the hiccups. It's had over 2 million views and that doesn't count the times it's been stolen from my channel and placed on someone else's. After the porcupine was old enough he went to Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center where he's lived ever since teaching kids and adults what's true and false when it comes to porcupines.
Recently I went to a conference at Wolf Ridge and got a chance to not only see him where he lives but to also see him in action in the classroom and outside during a tracking workshop. What a treat! So above is a ten year update.
Birdchick Podcast #216 Panama, Subarus and Species
Thank you to everyone who became new members of the American Birding Association last year and sited us as a reason. We won the trip to Canopy Tower in Panama! I was there back in 2012 and I've always wanted to go back!
Some Subarus now include an app that directs you to birds reported to eBird.
The debate goes on over how many species there are in the world.
Again if you are looking for other birding podcasts, there are some new ones. Check out the American Birding Podcast and Out There With the Birds.
Birdchick Podcast #215 2017 Goals and Podcasts
Are you in the mood to travel? Want to go to Cuba? Come with me!
There are some new podcasts in town that you should check out! One is from the American Birding Association and the other is from Bird Watcher's Digest.
Here's a sum up of the people who did a 2016 North America Big Year. And then there's Arjan and his word-wide Big Year. But then there's the worldwide big year from Arjan...
Orange-crowned warbler chowing down an a marshmallow. I know, it's weird.
Birds Eating Marshmallows
If you ever go birding around Falcon Dam in Texas, one of the routes to take to look for birds is through the campgrounds. There are some birds moving around and even better, campers often put out food for birds. You expect things like peanut butter and orange halves, but one camper put out marshmallows. And the birds were into it. Here's a video:
One of the things I noticed with that may not be evident in the video is that the birds seemed to recognize marshmallows as something worth while to eat, but they didn't stay and keep eating at it like I've seen birds do with suet, fruit or seed. It's like they got their fill of the flavor after only three or four bites.
Now the natural question is: are marshmallows good or at least safe for birds to eat? Wouldn't all that sugar be a bad thing? Maybe. But what about the food we already feed and recommend to birds like grape jelly or peanut butter? Let's look at some ingredients and by that I mean the garden variety stuff, not the fancy pants organic stuff at Whole Foods or your local co-op. Stuff the average bear would offer at their bird feeders.
Marshmallows: corn syrup, sugar, modified corn starch, dextrose, water, gelatin, artificial flavoring, trasodium pyrophosphate (whipping agent), artificial color (blue 1).
Peanut Butter: peanuts, sugar, molasses, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, fully hydrogenated soybean and rapeseed oil, mono and diglycerides, salt.
Grape Jelly: grapes, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, fruit pectin, citric acid, sodium citrate.
Are these commonly fed items any better for birds than marshmallows? In some ways, I think birds know to limit things, they're better at than humans. Orioles, for example, go wild for grape jelly during spring migration, but once the insect hatches hit and they have chicks, they eat that and ignore the grape jelly until the chicks fledge. But we don't know about what the effects are long term. To my knowledge we don't have the studies to know if these foods are harmful in the long term, it's anecdotal at this point.
Should we stop offering this foods now? I don't know. But it is something to think about.
The Fabulous Hummingbird Bar At Rio Santiago
One of the coolest places I visited in 2016 also gave me one of the most unexpected experiences I've ever had in my life. While in Honduras we visited the bar at the Rio Santiago Nature Resort which is known for maintaining over 200 hummingbird feeders daily, including keeping them clean and full of fresh nectar throughout the day. The video above gives you a hint of what the hummingbird activity is like, but that really only scratches the surface. The sheer amount of hummingbird mass in the air and zipping around your head coupled with the wide variety of species is mind-blowing, especially for someone like me who lives in Minnesota with only one species regularly occurring.
But hummingbirds are not the only reason to visit and as much as we all wanted to plop down, have a beer and soak in some hot hummer action, our guide Elmer Escoto took us on a walk for something "very special if we are lucky." We meandered the trails on the resort property and found a few North American breeders that were just beginning their northward movement like wood thrush and gray catbird. But we also saw masked tityra, shining honeycreeper, brown jays and yellow-throated euphonias.
The fabulous golden-hooded tanager seen as soon as we were in the parking lot at Rio Santiago.
Always fun to see birds like this wood thrush that spend the summer with us in the United States wintering in Central America.
This was the bird Elmer was hoping to show us--a young spectacled owl. This bird was already out on it's own but still had some downy feathers around its face.
Elmer found us a young spectacled owl. They are just a little smaller than a great horned owl and eat a wide variety of small prey. This is a young bird that still had some white around the head but was already formidable in its adult size. And something as cool as an owl is definitely worth tearing some birders away from over 200 hummingbird feeders. We headed back down the trail and back to the bar...the better to work up a sweat for an ice cold beer.
A lovely violet-crowned woodnymph coming in to the hummingbird feeders.
So we settled down with our cameras and beers at the hummingbird feeders to take advantage of the dwindling daylight to get photos--though I was having more fun getting slow motion video of the hummers with my iPhone and my scope. Moments like this are one of my favorite parts of travel. We had already had a few days of glorious hiking and fabulous birds. The afternoon was a nicer relaxed moment to just sit and enjoy the colorful avian bounty around us. The air was hot, heavy with humidity (as welcome change from the still frigid Minnesota) and the beer was cool, You have the blissful moment of thinking how far from home you are, how different life is here and you still have a couple more days of adventure to go. I love moments where I can stop, be still and drink it all in, it's pure contentment.
And then a baby ocelot walked into the bar.
You read that correctly, a baby ocelot walked into the hummingbird bar.
My mind went into overdrive. With mammals, especial predatory nocturnal ones, I never expect to ever see one outside of a zoo, I'm content to know that they are out there in the world. I never have to see them. That's something biologists and wildlife guides soaked in sweat, bug bites and intestinal parasites see--that's their reward. When I'm down at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge in south Texas and see the ocelot crossing signs, I do keep watch but realize that I'm not going to see one. To have an ocelot show up and have it be an adorable young one to boot was over the top unexpected. It explored the bar, it killed and ate a mouse, it ran within feet of me.
The ocelot hopped on a table and we completely surrounded it. I asked the question that we all wanted to know but were afraid to ask.
"Can we touch it?"
"Sí."
Nothing in life could have prepared me for the honor of being chewed on by an ocelot.
What is it about us that we have to feel something with our hands to get a full and true experience? Seeing and hearing is wonderful, and I'll be honest smell is pretty up there with me (and yes, I sniffed the ocelot more than once). But touch...no observation is ever as deeply satisfying as the ability to touch the subject. I think with ocelots in particular since they are as masterful at camouflage as an owl, primarily nocturnal and will do whatever they can to avoid being seen by us, living their life on the their eating small mammals and birds. The colors and patterns of their fur hiding them from me in plain sight.
The young ocelot eventually made it over to the bar.
Since my Spanish is dodgier than my French, I asked Elmer what the back story was behind the young ocelot. He said that it had been found on a trail on the property as a small kitten, about the size of a human hand. It was brought and the decision was made to feed about house it until it was large enough to be on its own. The resort did this before with another ocelot several years ago. They raised a young female kitten and when she was old enough she roamed the yard and eventually disappeared when she was an adult. She returned a year later, denned up and and raised kittens.
The plan with this ocelot was to let it roam the property, learn to hunt--which it clearly was and keep inside at night until it was big enough to defend itself from larger predators.
What else do you do when a baby ocelot hops on a bar? You take a selfie and post it on all of your social media accounts!
Look at those adorable white spots behind the ears! The fur was strange, simultaneously soft, but not the soft velvety feel I get from rabbits. Almost like really fluffy felt. What an opportunity to feel that fur on top of a warm, active body.
Right after this was taken, the young ocelot noticed its own face in the front screen of my phone. It pressed its ears back, gave a tiny growl and wanted nothing to do with me after that. Smart cat.
As the group settled in to one more beer and talk of ocelots, I did what any modern woman does these days when something cool shows up--I took a selfie and immediately began posting it to social media.
Most of my friends' reaction to the ocelot selfie.
But not all of them...
Some of my friends are well aware of the wild cat trade and they begged me to remove the photos because they felt they glorified wild animal ownership. When I pointed out that this was a not a pet but meant to be released to the wild when it was old enough, some of those friends were dubious of the young ocelot's origin. Was this truly found as an abandon kitten or was the mother killed so this kitten could be a tourist attraction?
All I know is that I know Elmer and I trust him so I trust the story of the ocelot's origin at the resort. The bar has over 200 hummingbird feeders and a steady birding clientele, why add a baby ocelot when the experience is already outstanding? The young ocelot appeared healthy, able to hunt mice on its own and had minimal interest in us apart from fingers it might chew on. In fact, compared to most of the animals I'd seen in Honduras, this was an exception because you could not see it's ribs. Several cows, horses, dogs and even pigs were emaciated by United States standards.
At the end of the day, Honduras is not the United States. It does not have the wildlife rehabilitation network and advancements we do here. People do the best they can with what they have and for many it is barely enough to take care of themselves and their children. I walked around that beautiful and wild country with a spotting scope that cost more than what many Hondurans make in a year.
To me travel is as much about learning as it is about experience. Sometimes you just have let an experience wash over you and learn from it. And when Life hands you a baby ocelot in a bar in Honduras, you go for it, douse yourself, revel in it.
Ocelot and beers. The women who helped tend the young ocelot until its big enough to roam the forest on its own.
Darkness descended and the hummingbirds disappeared. It was getting to be the time of night when the young ocelot would need to go inside and we had to head back to the Lodge at Pico Bonito for dinner. We escorted the ocelot to its night retreat. And we got another great look at a formidable predator.
"Pardon me, folks, but could you get out of the way so I can swoop down on that young, tasty kitten?"
The young spectacled owl had flown from its secluded spot to go hunting. It seemed quite interested in the small mammal in our midst. But soon that wild cat will be too big for the owl and join the nocturnal fray.
If you're ever interested in traveling with me, check out my events page. If you have a group of 8 or more people who'd like to go somewhere with me, let me know sharon@birdchick.com.
How can you not feel like you're on an adventure while birding in a landscape like that? This was taken at Los Naranjos Eco-Archeological Park.
Not Getting a Quetzal
One of the reasons we started our Wildside Nature Tours Honduras trip at Panacam Lodge was that it is close to Santa Barbara Mountain National Park. Resplendent Quetzals are possible there, however, that appears to be my worldwide nemesis bird and we didn't see it. I'm beginning to think that is a bird I am simply not destined to see in the wild because I've been to a number of places where is should be "no problem" for me to find one and all I've gotten is the call and shadow. But I'm not a one bird woman and there were plenty of other birds for me to enjoy in our spot for resplendent quetzal.
White-eared hummingbird I got video of in slomo mode on my iPhone. This bird was in our mountain guide's backyard.
Coffee and corn grow side by side on the Santa Barbara Mountain. I'm sure the corn kind of makes it shade-grown coffee, right?
Coffee flowers and beans up close.
Coffee bean with the husk removed, showing the sweet fleshy part that surrounds the bean we like to roast, grind and drink. The flesh was vaguely sweet with just a hint of coffee flavor. It was a pleasant thing to suck on while we hiked up.
The trails were rocky and slick with moisture. All of us had to take careful steps in our hiking shoes. A doctor once informed me that I have "weak kneecaps" and prone to things sliding out of joint. I try to exercise in a way to minimize that, but I'm also very careful about my footing in such situations, especially when I'm balancing my gear. Our mountain guide clearly lived in the area his whole life and easily managed the trails swiftly in only sneakers.
Despite the general lack of quetzals, we had great birds like flame-colored tanager, collared trogon, bushy-crested jay, golden-winged warblers and white-faced quail-dove. You can see our eBird list here.
Craptastic picture of a bird with a glorious name: common chlorospingus.
A slate colored solitaire. What they lack in color, they more than make up for in song. Check out some of their songs over at Xeno-Canto.
Cinnamon Hummingbird.
The poultry posse in our guides backyard. These critters looked fairly robust. Most of the livestock around Honduras is much thinner than their United States counterparts.
After our morning romp on mountain trails we were ready for some lunch at D&D Brewery. I took the Birds and Beers sing as a good omen.
Rice, beans, plantains...a common addition to most meals in Honduras. Mmmmm. The lovely thing about the beans in Honduras is that they have a loverly caramelized, earthy flavor. I'm sure this is some form of lard added to it. But they are delicious.
After lunch we birded Archeological Park Los Naranjos. There are Mayan ruins that are about 28,000 years old and lots of lovely birds. You could easily spend three hours just around the main entrance. There were motmots, oropendolas and even a few North American songbirds to found.
The social flycatcher is a daintier version of the great kiskadee you can see in south Texas.
A summer tanager. Since it was early March when this was taken, it would be in the US in just over a month.
These birds are EVERYWHERE--the Montezuma oropendola! This is also the bird that non-birding friends email me about whenever they are in Central America.
Rufous-naped wren.
Yellow-winged tanager.
Turquoise-browed motmot.
Lake Yojoa
And though we spent most of the late afternoon grabbing lifers and didn't really look at the ruins, we did make a quick walk to Lake Yojoa which was an outstanding view of the mountains (one of which we had been on top of in the morning). As the sun descended on this magnificent view we saw bare-throated tiger-herons, northern jacana, snail kite and purple gallinule. Just when we thought the view couldn't be more magical a few dozen nightjars filled the sky with their bouncy flight. The big treat for me was that it was a mix of common nighthawks and lesser nighthawks and what a treat to be able to study the differences side by side.
6 Reasons To Come With Me To Cuba
Space is filing up on my Cuba trip for April 2017, but we still have some room left if you'd like to join us. If you are on the fence, here are some reasons to go...
1. Commercial service to Havana began in November 2016 with non-stop service available from ten major US cities including Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, Tampa, Atlanta, Charlotte, JFK, Newark, Houston, and Los Angeles. There's been news since last summer that Twin Cities based Sun Country Airlines as been approved to fly to Cuba, but I'm not sure how soon they will be selling tickets.
Plaza Vieja in Havanna. Photo from Wikimedia Commons.
2. Wouldn't you love to be able to say at parties, "So I was having breakfast in Havanna...," when starting a story? This trip will give you that.
Bee hummingbird. Photo by Debbie Sturdivant.
3. Go pick up a penny. Hold that in your hand. Really feel that penny. That weighs more than the bee hummingbird, the world's smallest living bird endemic to the Cuban archipelago. To give you an idea, here are photos of them perched on thumbs and pencils. That's how tiny they are.
Cuban today photo by Sharp Photography. One of the many birds you can only get in Cuba.
4. And speaking of endemics--Cuba has 25 species of birds that you can only see there! We're talking blue-headed quail-dove, Oriente warbler, the Tocororo (Cuba's national bird) and Zapata sparrow (a colorful sparrow--that's crazy talk). I love the songs of solitaires and I'm pretty excited to hear the endemic Cuban solitaire.
I'm all about relaxation.
5. As much I love birds and base my travel around it, I want you to go home with a little bit of rest. And you can't go to Cuba with out getting in some culture. We'll visit the cave Che Guevara hid out in during the Cuba Missile Crisis, tour a tobacco plantation and even have time to explore Old Havanna.
I'll help you digiscope all those endemics with your smartphone.
6. I'll teach you all I know about smartphone digiscoping (and regular digiscoping too). At the end of each day, we'll use wifi to taunt our fiends with slomo video of bee hummingbirds and time lapse photography of flamingos while we sip cocktails. It will be delicious.
For more information, or ask logistics questions or sign up visit Holbrook Travel.