Birdchick Podcast #49 Parrots Naming Babies & Bird Colors

David Sibley shares some ideas for dealing with birds flying into your windows over at Birdwatching Magazine.  I particularly like the idea of using monofilament fishing line on the outside of the windows. Study concludes that green-rumped parrotlets name their chicks (insert dramatic chipmunk).

Remember those wildfires in Arizona?  Early estimates indicate that 80% of nesting sites for hummingbirds were lost and important fueling areas for migrating hummers is gone and KAYTEE is putting together emergency kits for hummingbirds!

Whooping cranes with satellite transmitters show that the birds are stopping in dangerous oil lands areas.

Interesting development and information regarding the sustainability of a sandhill crane hunt in Kentucky over at Vicki Henderson's blog.

Bird coloration guide?  Would you purchase a guide to bird color descriptions to help you describe and id birds?

What Non Birding Bill made me for breakfast.

Birdchick Podcast #48: That Bird Will Poke Your Eye Out

Why you should be careful when rescuing wildlife, man looses an eye while rescuing a gannet. Mouth to beak resuscitation.

Woman falls to her death while hanging a bird feeder.

Residents asked stop feeding birds so trees can be cut down...Oh Caltrans...please hire a wildlife biologist.

Cool event: Changing Face of American Birding 

Note: we mistakenly refer to this as podcast #47 while recording. It's not. It's #48.

Completely gratuitous Harry Potter post

Hello all, NBB here. Sharon is in the middle of deadline hell so she's asked me to write a guest post while she gets caught up. The podcast will also be slightly delayed. Since I long ago depleted my limited store of bird knowledge, I thought I'd just indulge in some shameless pandering by writing a Harry Potter post, since I've had to watch the movies prior to the release of Deathly Hallows pt 2. Birds are a big part of the Harry Potter world, not just in the obvious way, but there are lots of little things that lead me to believe that J.K. Rowling is a birder. Of course, the most compelling evidence is the one that everyone notices:

Crookshanks

Hermoine's cat. Right? It's named "Crookshanks." Which is a homophone for Allan D. Cruickshank, who produced a photographic guide to Birds of America. See? See? It's right in front of you, people!

Ugh, you probably want more.

Okay.

Buckbeak

Half-horse, half bird of prey, Buckbeak was probably the most impressive special effect in the movies, if only because the effects artists managed to somehow match the two different creatures so well. Buckbeak had the graceful power of a horse in his body, but his head carried all the curiosity of a raptor. "Is that food? Can I kill that? Can I eat that?" Kudos to the actors for managing to interact with a special effect that wasn't there when they filmed. Buckbeak is sentenced to be put down after he mauls a student, but the student involved was a total jerk, so our heroes decide to save the creature, who now realizes how easy people are to kill. Uhm, five points for Griffindor!

Thestrals

A Thestrals is kind of like a Goth Pegasus. A flying horse without skin and batlike wings, they can only be seen by those who have witnessed death. They're basically the creepiest My Little Pony ever, and are used at Hogwarts to pull carriages. They use invisible flying horses to pull carriages. Okay! The really odd part is that Pegasus exist in the world of Harry Potter anyway: they're used to pull the flying stagecoach of the Beaux Batons school. And that's all they do, except drink single malt whiskey as their only sustenance. Does drunk flying horses sound like a recipe for disaster? You bet! My guess is that Pegasus crashes are a regular occurrence, spiraling into the ground in a fiery wreck, which produces Thestrals, who as I mentioned look like they've had their skin burned off. Ecology!

Hedwig

Question: Why would you get an owl for a pet if its primary job is delivering mail and you have no one to send messages to? Seriously. I know it's supposed to be a familiar, but Harry doesn't use it in magic, his parents are dead (OH SNAP! Spoiler alert!), he hates his aunt and uncle and they certainly don't want to get a message that has owl saliva and bits of mouse on it. Add to the fact the number of people who got owls for their child as a pet (legal in the UK) and then didn't take care of them once they realized that raptors don't like to cuddle, and the whole Hedwig thing just makes me so mad I should probably stop thinking about it.

Birdchick Podcast #47: Copyright and Racism

Odd interaction over at Mike McDowell's blog about a birder claiming ownership of an image...but who does the image belong to? If an animal takes a photo with your camera...who owns the image?

My post on 10,000 Birds about an overt racist birder.  It called into question for me what kind of vibe do I put off when I encounter people of color.

Colombian parrot "Arrested" for aiding drug dealers.  Sigh.

Funny or Die presents: Black Hiker with Blair Underwood (video).

The Danger Of A Stake Out Bird

On Monday, a bird call woke me from my sleep.  Half asleep I thought, "Why is a robin singing with a cardinal type whistle note?" Something didn't add up.  I rolled over and pressed nose to the screen trying to wake up and figure it out.  This is not a sound I hear in my Minneapolis neighborhood...so different...so familiar...what does it sound like?

I went to the bathroom and it sounded as though the bird were right outside the window.  I stepped over the tub to the window and pished...then saw it--a Carolina wren!  Rare for Minnesota and no wonder I couldn't place it in my half awake state.  I stream of profanity let loose from my mouth as I tried to figure out how best to document it.  My bedroom and bathroom are both the worst for digiscoping.  I dashed to my camera.  All my noise woke up Non Birding Bill and he asked drowsily, "Wait, what is it, what's wrong?"

This is not the Carolina wren outside my window, this is one that I took a picture of one in Cape May, NJ.  But you get the idea of how distinctive they look.

"Carolina wren outside our window, not supposed to be here," I said searching for an SD card for my camera.  By the time I got it, I came into the bedroom to find NBB upright in bed and aiming his iPhone to our window where the bird feeders are.  Here's the video he got (you can't see the wren, it's perched just above the feeder, but you can hear it):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQEuDWTiPQ0[/youtube]

Alas, the wren flew off before I could get any kind of photo.  I posted the news to my Twitter and Facebook account and then got a couple of messages from local birders telling me that they have either never seen one or at least not in Minnesota and could I let them know if it comes back...panic set in.

The bedroom is by far the MESSIEST room in my apartment--it is the land of laundry and books and the occasional computer part NBB is playing with. I mean, I look at our apartment as a place to sleep between birding trips, not a display of indoor decorating.  I can live with people seeing that chaos, but the bedroom?  Yikes!  Worse yet, there's a whole host of embarrassing things in there.  I can't have people in my apartment...at least not the bedroom.  The bedroom window is the only window my apartment building allows me to have feeders, the other windows face a paring area and people don't like seed shells and bird poop on their cars, so it's not like I can move the feeders.

Mercifully, the Carolina wren has not returned but I'm still a bit stressed that it could at any moment...

 

 

 

Birdchick Podcast #46 Conjoined Birds

Holy Mackerel!  Birding is Fun sent me a link to a news story about a person caring for conjoined American Robins.  Whaaaaaaaaaaa?  There's even an update...a vet separated the birds and discovered that their skin fusion was not the result of natural causes. Some water birds like pelicans and terns are breeding well despite their surrounding areas getting dumped on by BP last summer (still not buying your gas BP).

The challenges of the Exxon Oil Spill in the Yellowstone River.

Fantastic article over at Mother Jones on the whole--are feral cats really a problem for native wild birds?  A quote from the article: "The American Bird Conservancy's campaign to convince pet owners to keep cats indoors has had some success—bird deaths have declined by a third in areas that passed ordinances against free-ranging cats."

Also, note the statistic chart of what kills how many birds.  Fascinating.

Let's end with fun: baby screech owlies!

Yes, they're real! These orphaned Western Screech Owls are being weighed in WildCare's Wildlife Hospital. They will stay in care until they're old enough to be released back into the wild. Orphaned birds like these are always raised with others of their own species and contact with humans is kept to an absolute minimum.



Birdchick Podcast #45 We "Discuss" Bird Reporting In The News

Breathe. You Won't See Every Bird On Earth. A Nyquil Post.

I am a terrible bird watcher.  I hate getting up early in the morning.  The older I get, the less I care about distinguishing flycatchers (yet, oddly admire those who live for it).  I hate birding in the rain--even if it is a life bird that I may never, ever get the chance to see again.

But when I'm forced to get up early in the morning, I'm generally rewarded with cool birds like the above horned lark skulking out on a gravel road above.  Rewarded so long as it isn't pouring down rain.  I enjoyed having that moment with the horned lark, watching it skulk out of the grasses, keep an eye towards the sky for a an aerial predator and go about its business of being a lark.

As one gets older, I think you take stock of what you can no longer do.  I grew up with the notion from my mother that I could do whatever I set my mind to, I think a lot of US kids get that:  This baby could grow up to be president, a movie star, a sports star, a Playboy Bunny--or all of them!  As you get older, you realize certain things.  For example, I remember thinking at my 27 birthday, "Oh wow, I'm too old to pose for Playboy, huh."

But the one thing that hurts the most as I get older is the realization that I won't see every single bird this planet has to offer--no one has.  I even get a little down when I realize just based on time and money that I'm not going to be able to visit every country or even every US city the world has to offer.  To see all the birds species in the world is a perilous pursuit, just check out the "famous birdwatchers" on the Birdwatching Wikipedia page and it lists all the horrible deaths (and even gang rape) of people who have attempted such a challenge--not to mention some of the bitterness that can come from family as you choose travel over family time. And truth be told, as much as I lament my husband's lack of birding interest, I genuinely enjoy his company and find leaving him behind a big fat bummer.

If time is running out, money is in limited quantity and I can only see so many birds in this lifetime, I do feel much better about not wasting energy on all the flycatchers that look exactly alike and focus on the ones I really find interesting.  And, not being a field guide author, the pressure is off for me to care about flycatchers that look the same.

As much as I hate getting up at 4 am, I do appreciate things that force me up at all hours and give me great moments.   And more and more, I find myself content to spend time with birds that I've seen several times before but still give me great views.  Above is a savannah sparrow that had a nest near where I was stationed.  I think that's why digiscoping appeals to me.  Sometimes I'll glimpse a brown bird in a gorgeous green background and I want to save that, the green only enhances the subtle beauty of the sparrow.

This pair of savannah sparrows scurried past me several times with beakfuls of squishy bugs for hungry nestlings.  I see this species in several states, but I enjoy their familiarity, much the same way I enjoy red-tailed hawks.  They also have a sweet, delicated and I fear under appreciated song.

Like the horned lark.  This is really a common bird, but many new birders find it evasive and don't realize that the brown bird with black tail stripes they flush as they drive down gravel roads is a potential lifer.  But, if you plant yourself on a gravel road, they come out.  When you get a chance to see one, they really are striking with the black horns, mask and bib.  Horned larks surrounded me not only on the ground, but in the air too.  Their territory song serenades me overhead as I note and count certain bird species.

And so I may not get to see every single bird there is out there, but I am content to sleep in as much as I can and smile while a horned lark takes a dust bath in the middle of a gravel road a few feet from where I'm standing.