Birdchick Podcast #74: Bird Grammar, Duck Stamp Winner

Texas couple ignore warnings to evacuate their home during wildfires and feed hundreds of hummingbirds. Birding the Net, the Audubon-sponsored campaign that has thousands of people scouring the Internet for birds, is benefitting from the largesse of more than 100 websites — including AOL, Slate, and Discovery Channel — that have donated a combined $700,000 in prime ad space for the imaginative and engaging project.

500 birds died at West Virgina wind farm.  Jim McCormac says they were mostly blackpoll warblers.

Fascinating story from Audubon about a wood thrush banded in Nicaragua that was found dead in Pennsylvania.

There's a new book coming Pale Male and the Infertile Girl...

Do birds have grammatical structure?

Oh, Pine Tree Farms, what were you thinking when coming up with product names? Nutsie? Log Jammers?  Oy.

Prizes to be given away in this podcast:

Backyard Birding

And the Hummer Swing.


Best Green Heron Video Ever

I almost peed my pants watching this video this morning.  It is HIGHlarious!  Stick with it, things get interesting at the 20 second mark and end up amazing at the end.  Herons are awesome and kudos to my buddy Clay Taylor for an excellent capture of this behavior. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoPGGTitNbU[/youtube]

And that's a young heron finessing its technique!  You can still see downy feathers!

Birds are awesome, that is all.

Birdchick Podcast #73: Where Can A Birder Go

Two VERY interesting articles on my list this week.  One from the American Birding Association's publication called Winging It.  Go to the Winging It page and click on Vol 23, no. 5 and look for Birding With A Conscience. Also, check out this article on Birding While Black--Does It Really Matter? He was part of the Focus on Diversity birding conference.  You can watch some of the speakers here.

oiled duck
oiled duck

Fidelity Exploration & Production Co., of Denver agreed to plead guilty and pay a $1,500 fine for killing a solitary sandpiper that was found in a waste pit during drilling operations in western North Dakota.

When I was in North Dakota this past June with fellow bird bloggers we saw the above oiled duck (I think it's an oiled pintail).  I'm now wondering if was oiled in similar circumstances and wish we'd documented it better.  It was far away on private property and mobile enough to get away from us.  There was no safe way to retrieve it, but wish I documented it better.

Human encroachment on the Tundra (like oil refineries) are creating an imbalance in the predator/prey balance.

From Nature Canada, Birds at Risk: The Importance of Canada’s Boreal Wetlands and Waterways:  "The North American boreal forest supports more than 50 percent of the global populations of 96 bird species, including landbirds, shorebirds, and waterbirds.10 The boreal is critical to the majority of iconic species such as the Common Loon, Whooping Crane, Canada Warbler, and White-throated Sparrow."

And if you don't understand why the tar sands are a bad idea, take a look at this before and after photo of what happens to the area when they go in for the oil.  This is terrible land stewardship, short-sighted and a terrible option.

And now a really cleansing link:

Really awesome homemade kestrel Halloween costume.

Birds and Beers Reminder

I came across this photo from my trip to North Dakota with some birding friends last June and it reminded me--Thursday at 6pm is the next Birds and Beers at Merlin's Rest!

I can neither confirm nor deny that this photo has anything to do with the previous blog entry about my broken camera...

Birds and Beers is a friendly gathering of birders of all abilities to gather, have a beverage and talk some birds.  Looking for volunteers for a birding project? Wanna promote your birding blog or field trip business?  Just want to meet some other birders and maybe find a friend to go birding with?  Have questions about how to attract birds in your yard?  Have you ever noticed a bird at all?  This is the group for you!

Rare Extinct Imperial Woodpecker Footage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0OCd6b1aXU According to a press release a biologist from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology tracked down a 16-mm film shot in 1956 by a dentist (who was riding a mule at the time) from Pennsylvania.

The footage, which captures the last confirmed sighting of an Imperial Woodpecker in the wild, has now been restored and used to describe the species' behavior and its habitat—determined by tracking down the exact filming location during a 2010 expedition. The research appears in the October 2011 issue of The Auk, the scientific journal of the American Ornithologists' Union, and the cover features a painting of the woodpecker adapted from the film.

It's really hard for me to watch these sorts of things.  So close, so far away.  And as much as I like to focus on how well we have done conserving some species, we continue to think things like this Tar Sands Pipeline is a good idea.

Bluebird Not Thrilled With Woolly Bear Caterpillar

There have been a ton of eastern bluebird flocks milling about when I've been doing my fall surveys.  Their calls follow me everywhere on my surveys...and they always sound like they are apologizing for something.

One of the birds caught my attention because he was just wacking the crap out of something on the fence post.  I've seen birds do this with large mealworms or other bugs.  I was curious about the prize the bluebird had.

It was a woolly bear caterpillar. I figured the bluebird wanted to subdue the large caterpillar before swallowing it but seeing that it was a woolly bear and that the stripe in the center of a woolly bear is supposed to predict the how harsh the coming winter will be, I can only assume that this bluebird is still bitter about how long and snowy last winter was and is not thrilled with the prediction for this winter.

Hey, if you're not squeamish about handling live mealworms, here's a video I found of someone who uses them to hand feed bluebirds:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjxJgxQVd3w[/youtube][youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjxJgxQVd3w[/youtube]

 

Emergency Camera Repair

Someone asked to see my MacGyver-like camera battery door repair.  This is what I came up with when the camera door broke in North Dakota:

I used a couple of hair rubber bands and a wad of paper to keep the battery in place.  The hair rubber bands stretch out too quickly so I've switched to regular rubber bands.  I kind of like it, it makes my camera look like it's about to fail and not worth stealing.