Bird Festivals « Birdchick

Unexpected Weasel Encounter In Utah

Yesterday I had some time to kill before my flight back to Minneapolis from Utah. I stopped for a wee bit at the Great Salt Lake Nature Center in Farmington to enjoy a final few moments of yellow-headed blackbirds. As I walked down the gravel road, I noticed a mammal hopping across the path. [...]

Midwest Birding Symposium Highlights

I’m just back from the 2009 Midwest Birding Symposium and this was the most insanely busy birding event I have ever been to. There was so much going on and so many people, my only complaint was that I didn’t have the time to have an actual conversation with many people from people I [...]

Some Phalarope Fun

I found some phalarope photos that I had forgotten about. These are some red-necked phalaropes that we saw on the Steppes in Kazakhstan. When you are learning shorebirds, phalaropes are ones that can be easy to distinguish from the others, they have a unique shape, can be quite colorful and they are [...]

A Piece Of Rail

Warning! The photos in this post might be gross for some for some readers. It’s about a piece of bird (most likely a rail) that I found on a barb wire fence.

One of the things that really surprised me about this year’s Potholes and Prairie Bird Festival was the amount of flooding that occurred [...]

Best Bird Festival Idea Ever

I have to say, that I enjoy attending bird festivals and events in general (I must, I go to more in a year, than most birders will in a lifetime). But, I was really struck by the Lesser Prairie Chicken Festival in Woodward, OK. Because the festival wasn’t just about seeing the festival bird, [...]

Oklahoma Porcupines

One of the fun things about the Lesser Prairie Chicken Festival that I attended in Oklahoma was the opportunity to see an area owned by The Nature Conservancy normally closed to the public called Four Canyon Preserve. It wasn’t very bird–the top of the canyons were so windy, you could barely hear any song, [...]

Other Oklahoma Birds Besides Prairie Chickens

For the record, I did see other birds besides lesser prairie chickens in Oklahoma. As a matter of fact, while I was focused on a pair of male chickens in the middle of a stare down, a yellow blur moved in front of them. I adjusted the focus of my scope to reveal a [...]

Lesser Prairie Chicken aka Jets vs Sharks

I’m wrapping up my time in Oklahoma. The Leks, Treks, and More lesser prairie chicken festival is still going on with a cool post tour to Black Mesa, but I have to return to the Twin Cities to do some park rangerin’ tomorrow. The festival had birding trips surrounded the Woodward area, but the [...]

Lesser Prairie Chicken Attempts At Mating

This has been a very popular video at the Leks, Treks, and More Festival in Woodward, OK. It’s a video from the lesser prairie chicken lek. I female has found a male she likes and attempts to mate with him. The other males in the lek are not happy about this.

Quick & Dirty Post From Oklahoma

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 [...]

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