I saw the funniest video yesterday (that is totally safe for work) during a workshop presented by Debby Kaspari of Drawing the Motmot. She’s in the Amazon recording how she sketches and gets a surprising but not helpful visitor: You can read the full account about it in her blog here.
First, Penn Jillette has a segment on Crackle.com called Penn Says. This time he’s talking beekeeping and Mr. Neil and I are referenced in it (Mr. Neil more so than me), but still super cool to hear someone in the mainstream talking about a subject I love. There’s really nothing quite like sitting in a [ Read More ]
You can almost see the surprise and “dang it” in the bird’s eye aa a black oil sunflower seed slips from the vice like grip of its bill.
Moving quickly into hot trend of 2004, we present the first Birdchick podcast. Sharon and Bill discuss the upcoming Lesser Prairie Chicken Festival where Sharon will be delivering the keynote address. Listen online: [audio:http://www.birdchick.com/wp/podcast/podcast-1-lpc.mp3] Download the MP3. If there’s another topic you’d like us to tackle in the future, please let us know in the [ Read More ]
It’s currently illegal to keep bees in Minneapolis, one of the many reasons I share a beekeeping operation with Mr. Neil. There’s been a move with the Minnesota Hobby Beekeeper Association to change the law so people could keep a hive in their yard. There’s an article in the Star Tribune and I noticed commenter [ Read More ]
I went to Journey North’s website to check the status of the ruby-throated hummingbird migration and it looks like they’re about to hit Minnesota and are already hitting Wisconsin. Orioles should be a couple of more weeks out yet.
So, in an effort to find out what bird species made the Mystery Nest, I did a bit of searching on Google. Rick Wright mentioned that yellow warblers sometimes make multiple nests and so I googled the words “yellow warbler nest cowbird” and found a link to a bald cardinal feeding a young cowbird (cardinals, [ Read More ]
Boy, spring hormones are kicking in with the local peregrine falcons. I was walking from the Mississippi National River & Recreation Headquarters to the visitor center in downtown St Paul when I heard a familiar “Per-chup per-chup per-chup.” Sure enough, the local breeding peregrines were circling and diving towards each other. It didn’t look like [ Read More ]
Man, this was a busy Tuesday: I started with a volunteer shift at The Raptor Center, then on to some grocery shopping, did a little bike riding, saw an off course Sage Thrasher, then made dinner, and off to a Minnesota Hobby Beekeeper’s Association meeting to get geared up for the spring season. The highlight [ Read More ]
We still have juncos moving through, many were starting to sing some of their territory songs over the weekend. Some even chased each other through the brush piles as the flocks start their northward migration. Lorraine has been gleaning honey from the remainders of the Kelli and Kitty hives. As she put the wrecked frames [ Read More ]
