FourCast Interview

Man! A lot going on this week!

I flew in from South Texas (aka the land of the above green jay) Monday afternoon and hit the ground limping!  The limp was from the closing party at the Rio Grande Valley Bird Festival...I twisted my knee while singing karaoke--yes, that's right, that's how hard I bring it to fake singing!  Boy you know it's a good vacation when you come home slightly injured.  I think I aggravated the injury I got banding birds in May, or perhaps my body is trying to subtly tell me that my table dancing days are over?

Monday evening I recorded a podcast with one of my fellow Geek A Week cards, Tom Merritt.  He is cohost of a podcast called FourCast.  They have guests on and we discuss future predictions.  First we discuss something that will happen soon, something in about a 100 years and then a bizarro one that could be millions of years away.  You can listen on their site or even watch it on YouTube (it's about 52 minutes long):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkRL8Bc57AE&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

It was a fun way to spend an hour.  When I posted on Twitter that I would be doing this, one of my nieces was excited and knew of the podcast, so I was honored to do something she thought was cool.

Ecuador Birding Job Includes A Horse!

Want to go to Ecuador?  How badly?  If you answered the way most people do for a Klondike Bar, then this might be for you: TEMPORARY RESERVE MANAGERS

Life Net is searching for a mature, very fit, and responsible couple or two friends with strong interests and/or educational backgrounds in reserve management, nature conservation, tropical ecology, birding, sustainable agriculture, ecotourism, environmental education (all or some) to steward a small (50 ha) but very bio-diverse nature reserve in Western Ecuador.

Due to the remote setting and challenges with visas we offer the position at the Las Tangaras Reserve for only 3 months to non-Ecuadorian citizens. We provide $300/month cost of living stipend, housing, and use of a rather unpredictable horse named Guapo.

The reserve is an incredible place to live, and research and photographic opportunities abound. Life Net monitors and researches bird communities, and current stewards, Steve and Amanda, are describing plants and insects, respectively.

Duties include, reserve improvements and stewardship, upkeep of trails, marking of trails, water system upkeep, septic system upkeep, maintenance of cabin, tools, equipment, research materials, small library. Options exist to develop visitation and earn additional donations from visitors to the area for birding trips and hikes, etc.

Desirable qualifications include ability to communicate well in Spanish, experience with care of horses and interest in them, college degree in a topic related to the position, related experiences with wilderness biology field work in the tropics, interests in research and nature interpretation, experience with guiding nature or birding tours, simple bio-regional living experiences, wilderness, leave no trace camping ethics, carpentry and building skills, financial management experience, business sense, etc.

Current managers finish their term 18 Dec 2010. An Ecuadorian will steward the reserve until new managers begin. We desire a pair to start early Jan, 2011 (by 10 Jan), to be on site and working through 10 Mar 2011. Send resume and cover letter to DR. DUSTI BECKER and DR. TONY POVILITIS. We want to decide on new stewards by Jan 1 and we had 300 applicants last round, so apply ASAP if you are qualified and serious about the adventure and responsibility.

How could you turn down the bonus of an unpredictable horse named Guapo?

Random Snowy Egret

Love Affair With A Green-winged Teal

My non birding New Orleans fun is finished and I'm back in Texas to enjoy some time with friends at the Rio Grande Valley Bird Festival.

I had a brief love affair with a green-winged teal.  I don't normally get the above view of a teal.  Generally, they are fleeing from our plane when we count them.  So to see a green-winged teal chilling in the evening sun was quite the treat.

At first glance, they may appear brown, but their heads rival any mallards with the rich rusty read accented by a swath of iridescent green behind the eye--like eye shadow gone wild.  This is the smallest dabbling duck in North America, so besides the color, they are quite cute.  They will forage for aquatic insects on the water's surface or dip below for vegetation.

This bird went into full on bathing mode while I was digiscoping it.  I think I will let the photos speak for themselves.

After a good bathe, a nice preen is in order.  I love this shot, you can see the green patch from where the teal gets its name.

And then a nap.

I Hired A New Orleans Street Poet To Write A Titmouse Poem

I took a slight detour from my Texas birding vacation to meet up with Non Birding Bill for some non birding shenanigans in New Orleans.  It's fun, it's like we're on some strange, romantic hook up in a weird little city.  Walking around the French Quarter turns you into a dial of the great big live radio.  People looking for money, don't stand by passively with a cardboard sign, they sing or play music...or write poetry.

We walked over to a place called the Spotted Cat where we ran into a friend who was with a voodoo priestess.  The VP was telling me about a healing she's doing this weekend for the Gulf Spill (should be good for birds?) and then she pointed out a gent with a desk across the street who was a Poet for Hire.

So, I asked how much, he said he's like between $10 - $20, but whatever is good.  We negotiated style (he does haiku) and I told him to write in his favorite style.  He asked for a subject and I said that I wanted tufted titmouse, he asked a couple of questions then requested 15 - 20 minutes to work...leaving us plenty of time to be serenaded by a man singing like Sam Cooke on a bike.

He handed me a brown piece of paper with his typed up poem, we handed him $15 and thoroughly enjoyed the results.  I typed up the poem below:

Tufted Titmouse by Matt, New Orleans Street Poet for Hire.

No mere reedling, the tufted titmouse; it's crest announces its nobility among oscine kin

And well it should be respected, regal feathers over tiny eyes

and the observer debates which is keener... the attentive point of the crest, soft as a pillow, or the snappy beak, tougher than a nut of gourmet seed

You can band these birds but they won't be banned as they drop titmouse turds and nip at the crimping hand

Random Blue-winged Teal

Quick Photo From Texas

This great blue heron braved a telephone pole to see if it could steal from fish morsels from an osprey.  It was not successful.

Oh, More Ducks

Here I am, on the first day of vacation in south Texas and what did I spend digiscoping?

Ducks.  Thousands of redhead ducks.  Never mind that I count them for work this time of year.  I still watched, photographed and counted them on my first day off.

I am a sick woman.

Trumpeter Swans vs Tundra Swans

I have my first post up over at 10,000 Birds.

When I was at Lake Vadnais last week looking for the long-tailed-duck, I took advantage of the close up trumpeter swans to get some swan shots.  Note the swan in the back.  I was watching that one and noticed it was a wee bit smaller than the two in front.  After the preening, the swans started dipping for vegetation.

The swan in back came closer to the other two and side by side, it was noticeably smaller (the smaller swan is the one on the right).  Was this a female?  In swans, females are smaller than males.  Or...was this a tundra swan mixed in with the trumpeter swans?

They both popped up at the same time and look at that--the smaller bird has a touch of yellow on its beak--it was a tundra swan!  Tundra swans nest in the tundra, not in Minnesota.  They are in the midst of their migration and this time of year, hundreds can be seen flying over on their way to the coasts for the winter.  Trumpeter swans nest in Minnesota and many will end up staying here for the winter, wherever they can find open water, many in Monticello.

It was fun to have an opportunity to really get a close look at the difference between the two swan beaks.  Above is the trumpeter swan (with a little white feather stuck on the beak)--all black, no yellow.  It's also a little bit of a bigger beak compared (up close) to a tundra swan.  It's hard to tell them apart at a distance.  If you can hear the call it's a no brainer.  Here is a trumpeter swan call (like a kid playing a toy trumpet).  But if your driving and it's during migration and you see a flock of swans fly over--how can you tell.  I've heard some say that if you see a huge flock of 50 or more birds high up, chances are good it's a flock of tundra swans.  If it's a small family group of 3 - 5 flying low, it's probably trumpeter swans.

Here's an up close of the tundra swan beak--with the little bit of yellow right in front of the eye.  This is a tundra swan call.  This bird would do a periodic bark, but I'm used to hearing a whole huge flock with they migrate, so it sounded strange.

Since I saw my first tundra swan in the Twin Cities last week, I figured I'd get to see them on my surveys on Monday and sure enough, there are tundra swans gathering on the Mississippi River.  We found some on Pools 4 - 7.  I'm sure there are a few trumpeters mixed in, but not really an easy way to separate them from the mostly tundras.  If you have never seen the tundra swan migration in this area, you should really check it out.  You can get info from Alma, Wisconsin but a great spot to view them for the next two weeks will be at the viewing platform in Brownsville, MN.  You should get some other species too.  This week we had lots of canvasbacks, buffleheads and ring-necked ducks--just to name a few.

Duck Shenanigans?

Is it me or does this hen mallard look like she's about to engage in some tomfoolery and goose that trumpeter swan?