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.

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...

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.

Stealth Horned Lark

No, Mr. Horned Lark, I can't see you at all.  Really.

Secret Bobolink Conversations #birding

"OMG! My nails are so long! I'm like a cross between Howard Hughes and a red-tailed hawk!"

"I know, right?"

Dust Bathing Horned Lark

Man oh man, these last few weeks have been nuts, but fun.  I'm so looking forward to Birds and Beers tonight in Stillwater.  Hope you can make it.  Remember, if you come with nesting info to enter into MN Audubon's Breeding Bird Atlas, you are entered in a chance for a free growler of beer. Meanwhile, I leave you with a photo of a dust bathing horned lark who was my morning companion yesterday.  I'm off to check out some woodpeckers (not ivory-billed).

Bobolinks!

I have to do some work around cows this week.

I'm not going to lie, cows make me nervous.  Ungulates who stare at you and keep coming towards you are terrifying to me.  The only way they could be even scarier would be if they were bison.  That is just a lot of animal being controlled by an uncertain brain.  These are three of about three dozen cows that were surrounding me.  They just kept coming closer and closer with an expectant look.  Did they think I had food.  If I stepped wards them, they would back away, but some cows in the back of the her would run forward.  I tried mooing and that seemed to confuse them even further.

This one was really pushing its luck, "Oy, Bovine, back away from the carbon fiber tripod!"  The cows eventually went their way and left me alone, but I think being a five foot tall woman makes me feel uneasy about large cloven hoofed animals getting too close and too curious.  Has anyone made a horror movie about cows?  If not, they should.

Apart from the stress inducing cows, the big upside to my work this week is that I get to spend time in some of my favorite habitat--open grassland.  I'm surrounded by bobolinks, dickcissel, meadowlards and savannah sparrows.  Above is a female bobolink who scolded me as I walked to my work area.

Her brazen attitude on the fence made me realize that she must have had a nest nearby.  I made sure to watch where I placed my feet, the last thing I wanted to do was smush little baby bobolinks with my shoes.  Female bobolinks are crazy looking birds, they do not look like the males, they look more like sparrows.  Technically, bobolinks are considered blackbirds (for the moment, who knows will happen with future taxonomy changes).  If you get past the brownish colorization, you can kind of see a blackbird type of shape to these birds (think red-winged blackbird).

The male wasn't too far behind and flew in to chirp at me, also warning me that I was too close for comfort to his nest.  Out of habit, I pished at them and that set the male off in a frenzy of song above me.  I paused to listen to that crazy mechanical song.  I love that song, it's the general ringtone on my phone.  If this make wanted me to move a long, singing his song a few feet above my head was not the way to do it.

I love everything about these guys.  I love their song, their odd plumage (black on the bottom, blond wig on the back of the head, patches of white on the back).  This bird is too weird for color tv.  And check out those toe nails--they're so long!  I love these birds so much, they are worth putting up with a few dozen cows.

Random Coot

I just thought this was a really cool digiscoped picture of a coots face.  Normally when you see them out on a lake, you see a black duck with a white beak (yesssssssss, I know they aren't really a duck but most people describe them that way).  Often, most don't see their eyes.  Love this bright red eye.

Birds and Beers Excitement! #birding

Holy cow!  Amidst all of my travel in May and June, a Birds and Beers opportunity has come together and I'm really excited about it! The next Birds and Beers is June 29, 2011 (next Wednesday).  This time we’ve been invited to Lift Bridge Beer Company in Stillwater–we can sample some local beers!  Take the afternoon off, do some birding along the St. Croix or just come for the birding company after work.  Make connections, see old friends and welcome new ones!  But wait, there's more!

This brewery is really excited about the Minnesota Breeding Bird Atlas Project.  If you come and enter in data to the database, you can enter your name for a free growler of beer to take home.  This is notes on any bird you know of breeding in Minnesota.  Know of a coot nest (like the bird above)?  How about a cardinal nesting in your back yard?  Or an owl nest in a nearby park.  Anything, this is important info that MN Audubon needs for the project.  You can help birds and maybe win some beer.  Everybody wins!

Thanks to Lift Bridge Beer Company in Stillwater for coordinating this event for birders and birds!

To get the latest updates on Birds and Beers, "Like" it on Facebook.  Here's the official Facebook Event.  I can't be in every state drinking every day and if you would like to host your own Birds and Beers in your community, that is okay by me.  Here's how.

Birds and Beers is an informal gathering of birders of all abilities–if you’re interested in birds, you’re invited. You can meet other birders–maybe find a carpool buddy, ask about where to find target birds, share cool research projects you might be working on, ask a bird feeding question, share life lists, share some digiscoping tips, promote your blog–the sky is the limit. It’s low key and it’s fun.

Sharon on the Heron Rookery for MPR

Hello all, NBB here. This is a quick note to let you know that Sharon has an article up about the response to the destruction of the Heron Rookery on the MPR website. Check it out.