Wait, That's A Bird Name & Not A Disease?

One of my favorite parts of travel is when I find myself in a completely different habitat from where I live. It's amazing to think how much there is to see and how different area terrain can be in the United States. I can travel from one end of the country to another, wake up to 60 degrees Fahrenheit at my home and then a mere few hours later be sweltering in 104 degrees Fahrenheit at Agua Caliente Park in Arizona. We mercifully didn't bird the whole afternoon in the heat but went up Mount Lemmon to look for birds where the higher elevation was much kinder temperature-wise.

Along with being in completely different habitat, it's fun to find things like a gila woodpecker excavating a saguaro cactus as opposed to a red-bellied woodpecker working on an old as tree like I would at home. Other birds we found on our way up included a blue-throated hummingbird female feeding young, Scott's oriole and canyon towhee.

Though it is fun to run into familiar faces even if I am 1600 miles away, like the above Cooper's hawk. I'm used to seeing these birds dodge dumpsters and hipsters in my flat urban neighborhood. This bird took full advantage of the canyon walls when it finally took off and used a little bit of a different flying technique, but it had more open space than the hawks in my neighborhood.

I was hoping for a few life birds on this trip, I didn't expect tons, I'm running out of places in the US where I can really rack up the life birds. I was surprised to knock out 10 new birds on this trip (it is quite possible that my disinterest in listing contributed to that as my listing records are haphazard at best and I"m sure I have forgotten what birds I've seen). One bird I know for sure that I was missing was the phainopepla (pronounced fay-no-PEP-la). This has been a target bird for a long time, they look some crazy black cardinal with a tiny beak and red eyes. I love saying the name over and over. My buddy Clay got me one at Molino Canyon Vista on Mount Lemmon. And though I was grateful...it wasn't an adult male--I know for some that is birding elitism, but the first time one sees a crazy bird like a phainopepla, you want to see the best plumage possible.

Now that's what I'm talking about, that's a phaino-freaking-pepla! You may be wondering what the deal is with the crazy name, does it sound like it says, "phainopepla" when it sings? No. It's Greek for "shining robe." Yeah, I don't get it either, but where would North American birding be without weirdo bird names that make little sense? Non Birding Bill seems to think it sounds like some sort of venereal disease when I announce, "I got phainopepla in Arizona!"

These birds belong in the silky-flycatcher family and if wikipedia is to be believed...kind of related to waxwings? Which I suppose one can kind of see a waxwing like beak on this bird. Silky-flycatchers aren't quite like the tyrant or empidonax flycatchers that can be their own source of identification grief. There are only four species in this family and they all look noticeably different different.

I posted a picture of this bird on Twitter and someone noted the maniacal red eye.  This is not the craziest looking bird you can see.

How evil looking is this guy? Up in the higher elevations we got yellow-eyed juncoes bebopping around in the parking lots. A bit more of a maniacal looking bird than what I'm used to. As we went along the road, Clay would see a bird fly across, make us stop and before we knew it we'd be surrounded by painted redstarts, black-throated gray warblers and Hammond's flycatchers.

Even if we weren't getting great birds, the view on top of Mount Lemmon would have more than made up for it. While we were perched here, we could hear distant peregrine falcons echoing off the walls and a band-tailed pigeon. The pigeon is in the above photo, a mere speck on one of the dead conifers.

This was taken through the new Swarovski ATX on full 60 power zoom by holding my iPhone up to it. It's not bad for a documentation photo! As we were watching this bird, it suddenly took off and we looked up to see a zone-tailed hawk in a full on dive from high above. Zone-tails are awesome, they are shaped and fly like turkey vultures...giving protential prey a false sense of security. I wasn't able to digiscope a shot of the hawk, but it was fabulous to see.

 

 Mount Lemmon is not a bad way to spend an afternoon if you find yourself in Tucson.

Bird Blogger Meet Up In Arizona

One of the perks of being a birding blogger is that from time to time, companies will invite you out and brainstorm ideas with you. These are not only beneficial to the company, but most certainly are to the bloggers as far as having a chance to meet in person and generate ideas.

Here we are, ladies and gentlemen: the bird blogging giants! We have Robert Mortensen from Birding is Fun, Mike Bergin from 10,000 Birds, Rue Mapp from Outdoor Afro, me, Tom Wood from Southeast Arizona Bird Observatory and there off to the right chimping away is Laura Kammermeier. Swarovski invited a gang of us out to Arizona this past weekend and it was a blast. I know some of your might be reading this and thinking, "Really, a Minnesota girl went to Arizona in August? She's nuts!"

That may be, but there are some spectacular birds to be had in Arizona and despite the reported high of 105 degrees Fahrenheit in Tucson, AZ we managed to find some cooler times and areas for birding. Though brief, we had time to hit some great birding spots. One was Huachuca Canyon at Fort Huachuca.

On top of connecting with online friends, a big portion of of the fun was getting to see a few birds I missed when I when to my very first American Birding Association convention in Tucson way back in 2005 (man, that was quite a few hair colors ago). One of the birds I missed back then was an elegant trogon and though I've seen quite a few trogons in Central America, what fun to get a trogon in the US! These birds were incredibly cooperative, I got to hear them calling as well catch glimpses of adults feeding young trogons hidden in the leaves.Other birds we loaded up on here included red-faced warbler, painted redstart, gray hawk, and sulphur-bellied flycatcher.

Though most of the birds we found I had seen before either in Arizona or other areas, I always love the opportunity to see birds that I don't get to enjoy often like this acorn woodpecker. There aren't many places left in the US that I can really rack up new life birds and I only expected to get maybe three, I ended up getting 10 new birds which was a bonus.

One of the bloggers to come along was Nate Swick, a name you may recognize from the American Birding Association blog and The Drinking Bird. On top of being a great birder...he likes to pick stuff up from herps to bugs. This was after he had picked up a stink beetle...his finger was rather ripe (and I was the lucky girl driving the car Nate and his stink finger were riding in).

And since my mother is currently without a computer, I blog this next part without too much hassle. Let me tell you about what Nate was smart enough to not pick up:

It's a black-tailed rattlesnake--my lifer rattlesnake. And on the off chance my mother is reading this on one of my sister's computers, do not freak out.  I was not laying on the ground with my iPhone up to it's face, I digiscoped this with my phone and the new Swarovski ATX scope.

See, here's the objective lens of the scope and the arrow is pointing to the rattlesnake. Digiscoping not only helps you get shots of distant birds, but also allows you to safely enjoy your first look at your lifer rattlesnake.

The snake was roughly 3 feet long, which I thought was rather impressive for my first time seeing one. I certainly wasn't expecting such a yellow snake. It went about its business and we all gave it plenty of space. Nate even noticed some dog walkers and warned them away.

It was an action packed weekend, but it's totally worth the sore calves and the mild lethargy I feel at my desk today.

Scope Eyepieces For Digiscoping

I haven't thought about scope eyepieces all that much. Swarovski Optik has three different eyepieces you can choose for your scope a 20-60 zoom, a 25-50 zoom and a 30 fixed. For newer people to the blog, those numbers give you an idea of the scope's magnification or of how close the image is brought to you.  A 20-60 eyepiece can bring the bird 20 to 60 times closer (as opposed to your 8x42 binocular which will only bring the image 8 times closer). I've always been a fan of the zooms, because they can make a real difference in ID when that bird is far away (I got a great look at my lifer saker falcon thanks to my scope's ability to go to 60 power when I was in Israel.  I don't digiscope when I zoom in to 60 unless I really, really need to document something because the photo will be crap.  You lose clarity and brightness when you zoom in and the photos aren't worth it unless you are documenting your state's first record of a hooded crane.  When digiscoping, I always keep it on the lowest magnification.

I almost always use my 20-60 eyepiece.  I like having the option of such a wide range of magnification.  The 20 power magnification gives me a fairly wide field of view but it also helps me a bit with the problem of having the bird too close.  My buddy Clay Taylor kept nudging me to play with the 25-50 zoom eyepiece and the other day, I decided to head out to the feeders at Minnesota Valley NWR.  Their feeding station is always active and I figured I could get some good comparison shots.  When I got there, the feeders were bare.  And I saw the reason why before I could complete the sentence, "That's odd."

A sharp-shinned hawk was perched outside and was so darned cooperative, I got all the footage I needed to compare both eyepieces in less than 15 minutes.

So, here we go and I have to say, I was surprised at my results.  All the video and photos were taken using my iPhone 4s.  Here's a video tutorial followed by photo samples:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z5yprCMYrA

I was very happy about the lack of vignetting with the 25-50  zoom when taking video!  Here are some photo comparisons of the sharp-shinned hawk without zooming in with the phone.  This is what it looks like as soon as  you train the iPhone to your scope's eyepiece without zooming in with the phone using the 20-60 zoom eyepiece:

There it is at 20 power and you get a full vignette (the black circle framing the image).  That could be edited out in iPhoto or Photoshop or whatever photo app you use to crop images.

Now, here is the same sharpie on the same perch with the 25-50 zoom eyepiece:

There it is at 25 power and with that eyepiece there's less vignetting.  Again vignetting can be cropped out later, but you get a bigger and better image if you zoom in on the iPhone when you take the photo.  And you do that the same way you enlarge images on your phone with your index finger and thumb.

Now, here are images of the same sharpie with the two different eyepieces and zooming in with the phone:

A pretty good image of a sharp-shinned hawk (especially with it being an overcast day).

Not a lot of difference when you zoom in with the iPhone.  If you want to take video, I highly recommend the 25-50 zoom, it will save you a lot of headaches post production of cropping out the vignetting.  But if you only want to do photos, both eyepieces work really well.

And this was all done by hand holding the iPhone up to the scope--no adapter.

When I think back to what bird photography used to be I marvel at the quality of photos I can get with a phone.

The Grand Prize at the Big Year midnight screening this Friday

Okay, gang, this just got real. Because we have in our hot little hands the grand prize for Friday's midnight screening of The Big Year. A pair of 10x30 Swarovski CL Companion binoculars. Retail value? One Grand. And we're giving it away to one lucky winner. So what do you need to do to win?

Just come to the midnight screening of The Big Year at the Showplace ICON theater in St. Louis Park, MN on Friday (that's the Friday, midnight screening, so stay up late on Thursday). You can buy your ticket online here using Fandango. Since we're in the VIP, you'll be able to enjoy food and cocktails while you watch Steve Martin, Owen Wilson, and Jack Black compete to see the most birds in one year. Sharon will be there around 10:30pm on Thursday to socalize in the bar and give away some other prizes.

Big Year Screening & Swarovski Optik

Okay folks, it's almost time for the Big Year and Birds and Beers!  Call the showplace icon and get tickets ahead of time to ensure a seat.  The number is 1-800-326-3264 and you want the Midnight VIP screening of The Big Year.

Showplace Icon is going to offer a special midnight screen Friday morning at MIDNIGHT (so you’ll need to plan to stay up late Thursday, October 13!).  There are even going to be prizes—Swarovski Optik is coming and everyone who comes to VIP event is entered into a drawing to win their prize.  Rumor has it that it's the new CL 10x30s.

I'll have some other prizes too and I’ll be there at about 10:30pm to have a drink and socialize–there’s a bar in the Icon below the theater and then carry on the fun above.

Don't tell me this is too late of an evening for you to do--really nice binoculars are on the line.  Also, I'm doing bird surveys all week (we're talking 10 - 11 hour days) and I have to go to a meeting on Friday.  This is why we have things like shade-grown coffee and Red Bull.

Digiduel 2 Results

Clay and I both posted albums of our five favorite photos from Digiduel 2 on the Swarovski Optik Facebook page.  You can vote on your favorite Clay photos here or my photos here.

This photo of rock pigeons balancing on thin branches of a hackberry to eat the fruit was one of the photos that didn't make it in to the deadline.  It's weird to for me to see pigeons in a tree--I'm so used to them on buildings and sidewalks.

My eventual goal with this Digiduel Project is that we can open it up for other people to play all over the world-you have a digiscoping set up and Twitter account--you can take a turn at a Digiduel.  Clay and I wanted to do a few against each other to work out some kinks...and boy were there kinks to work out this time around:  We usually use Twitpic to upload photos onto Twitter but it was down for a good portion of the day.  I switched to Plixi as a back up but eventually Twitter refused photos from any photo site.  I had about ten images (like the above rock pigeons) that never made it up to Twitter in time and Clay had a few come in after the deadline of 4pm Central time, even though he sent them in well before the deadline.

We also decided to add a new component to the competition.  There are now two ways to win.  You can try to take as many species photos as possible in the time allotted or you can go for "quality images" or really try to get the bird in a pretty pose with some nice fall color behind it.  By adding the photos to the Facebook site, people can vote on their favorites.  And the above European starling did not get uploaded to Twitter before the deadline and I didn't include it in the album on Facebook.  It's just as well, I don't see a lot of people voting for a starling, no matter how cool they look in their winter plumage.

If you are interested in participating in a digiduel, let me know.  Clay and I will try to work you in to the competition.  The keys are to find a spot where you can get photos of birds and have internet access.  It appears to work best if you can do it from or from a park with reliable internet access.  I tried doing it from a park and popping over to a coffee shop periodically.  Doable, but annoying and a waste of gas.

Hooded mergansers flying away.

The Birds That Got Away

One of the things I was counting on to give me an edge over Clay in our Digiscoping Duel was this mountain ash tree (or rowan as Mr. Neil calls it).  It's ripe and the berries time perfectly with fall migration.

This tree can be loaded with all sorts of birds like the above female rose-breasted grosbeak and I did get shots of cedar waxwings right away, but as soon as the contest was over, all sorts of species flew in for a feast.  The light hit the tree perfectly, so I stuck around after the contest was finished to get some shots.

Of course there were more waxwings.  My first photo wasn't bad but they practically seemed to be posing now that the contest was over.  Above is an adult cedar waxwing.

The younger waxwings that were hatched this summer will be stripey.  If you have waxwings in your neighborhood, take a moment to watch them in your fruit trees--they attack the fruits and berries with such verve.  They don't come to bird feeders--they don't seem to have any interest in sunflowers and millet.  They will come in to birdbaths and you generally don't get one at a time, you get thirty (at least).

I love watching them gulp berries.  These small, slender birds are easy to miss in tree branches.  Even their calls blend in well if you are tuned into them.  Here's a link to waxwing calls so you can know what they sound like.

Among the waxwings was this Tennessee warbler (dude, where were you during the digiscoping challenge--arg).  Especially after the dreadfully blurry and ghostly image of that black and white.  Ah well, win some, lose some.

Too small to grab a whole ash berry and gulp it, this bird used its dainty bill to pierce the skins to get at the juice on the inside.

The next bird that popped up was a male scarlet tanager already in his winter plumage--really, tanager, you're killing me here.  I will say this, even though I tried to use a fence and bush to break up my silhouette from the sun behind me, it felt very cagey with my scope aimed on it.  It ate three berries and flew off.

Even though I already had a photo of an eastern bluebird, I was sorry I couldn't use this shot of a juvenile molting into its adult plumage.

Here was another heart-breaking shot--far better than the image I got during the actual contest of a red-eyed vireo.  Alas.  I still had a tough time getting a shot of this bird.  Vireos are known for their ability to flit about the top of a tree canopy and sing nonstop.  The bird kept moving around so much in the tree that it had trouble stopping long enough to eat some berry.  I always thought accipiters like Cooper's hawks and goshawks were ADD birds, but I suspect the vireo is even worst.  Constant movement is a good strategy--good way to sneak up on insects and confust potential predators.  Just makes going for stationary berries a challenge.

This tree is a good example of providing food for birds and other wildlife in your yard besides just bird feeders and water sources and it's part of what makes Mr. Neil's yard so fun for me to watch birds in and take their pictures.

To see more photos of the Digiscoping Duel, check the Flickr Album.

Digiscoping Duel Results

The results are in from the first ever Twitter Digiscoping Duel:

My buddy, Clay Taylor of Swarovski Optik digiscoped from his yard in Texas and he posted photos of 31 species.

I set myself up at Mr. Neil's yard with the above digiscoping setup--lots of birds and easy Internet access.  Alas, my final total was 28 birds.  Cornell was kind enough to say, "But should there be a correction for higher diversity in TX," but I think that weather and internet connection can help even out the competition--there were 3 very common birds that I expected to get and did not: blue jay, pileated woodpecker and turkey vulture.  I won't post all 28 photos, but I'll post some highlights below:

My first shot of the day was a red-tailed hawk flying away.  I found another red-tail perfectly perched in great light later in the day, but I really liked the way you can see the rusty red tail on this guy.  Besides, Clay and I weren't going for art, we were going for identifiable photos and well, it doesn't get more identifiable than that with a red-tailed hawk.

Early in the morning, things were going swimmingly.  The showy mountain ash tree around the feeders was ripe and attracted loads of waxwings.  I expected warblers and vireos would soon follow (the tree eventually did follow this pattern...after the contest was over).

As I loaded up photos here and there on Twitter, I even got a little cocky and added some captions.  The above caption with the tree swallow was for Non Birding Bill and a nod to Jack Lemon from the movie The Great Race.  I really enjoyed being able to interact with people throughout the contest.  It was like being sequestered during a bird-a-thon or at the World Series of Birding.  I could see what Clay was up to and see comments on photos...and even answer a couple of bird questions.

I did find the flocks of white-throated sparrows a bit sobering.  A week ago today it was 92 degrees F.  When I started today, it was blustery and in the 40s.  And these sparrows are a sure sign of fall.  Sigh.

I did see some crazy stuff going on, like the above immature goldfinches stripping off bark from a dead tree and eating it.  I checked Cornell's Birds of North America Online and bark stripping is one of the many things goldfinches will eat.

When it came to the common feeder birds, I tried to get interesting shots--like the above black-capped chickadee.  It's as if it's stalking me...and perhaps plotting my demise.

Not all of my photos were worth writing home about.  I'm pretty sure that this is the worst shot of a black and white warbler in recorded history.  I posted it as a joke and Clay let it go through, he said he could kind of see a black and white warbler...he was too kind.

Here's a candidate for Awkward Family Photos.  What is that nuthatch doing--sneezing?  Flipping seeds? Swearing?  Either way, the rose-breasted grosbeak appears uninterested.

All in all it was a great time and I hope we can do something like this again.

Some of my favorite shots that Clay got are his zone-tailed hawk, yellow-breasted chat, purple martin, royal tern and his winning final bird Mississippi kite. He's got mad skills with birds in flight and digiscoping not to mention a crazy bird yard in Texas.

To see more photos from the day of the Digiscoping Duel visit the Flickr Album.

Digiscoping Workshop & Tern Rescue

One of the reasons I was at the Great Salt Lake Bird Festival in Utah was to conduct a digiscoping workshop for Swarovski Optik.  I really enjoy doing these types of workshops, we start with a basic how to and then we go out someplace birdy and take photos.  They are not trips about getting a ton of birds on the list, but more going someplace with a lot of slow moving birds and practice taking photos--you really get to spend some time watching a bird.  Sometimes I do this with perched out education birds or at a nature center with bird feeders.  In Utah, we went to Kaysville Ponds a small park with lots of cool birds like the above pelicans.  It's an urban and well used park.  There were several families making use of the ponds' ample fishing resources and walking trails, it was great to see so many kids enjoying the outdoors on a Saturday morning.

A really cool bird for me was the western grebe.  We have them in western Minnesota but that's a trek, so it was a treat to see them in this urban pond so close and spend time taking photos of the birds.  Although, I generally end up loaning out my scope during these trips.  I think many people get a digiscoping set up, take 12 photos that are crap and then are hesitant to use the equipment.  When I give someone my scope, I sometimes tell them, "I don't want it back until you take at least 250 photos of that bird."  The grebes were so close and so mellow, they were great to practice on.  And if you end up with 248 blurry photos, they are easy enough to delete.

There were also a ton of yellow-headed blackbirds perched in the open to photograph.  People got to practice with close up birds and birds further away (and learn the heartbreak of what heat shimmer will do on your seemingly in focus photos).

I did use this as an opportunity to practice some Blackberry scoping--holding my Blackberry phone to my scope and taking photos of birds.  The photos are not high quality, but they do have use.  You could document a rare bird and text the photo to your local state records committee, text the photo of a bird that your friend has not seen, sent it to Twitter or use your camera phone as a back up to document a rare bird if you camera batteries die or you left your camera back in the car.  It's not easy because you have to hand hold the phone to the scope's eyepiece but practicing on every day birds will help you be ready should a rare bird show up.

Here's a Blackberry shot of our class, it was a fun group and again, I love being out in Utah where you are surrounded by snow capped mountains on a sunny day.  The temps were mild and the wind was low--a perfect day for digiscoping.  I brought some different camera adaptors for scopes for folks to try and few people brought their own adaptors andwe had a good compare and contrast of what works easily and what does not.

As we were taking photos, I noticed a Forster's tern frantically calling.  I looked over as did friend and fellow field trip participant Suzy and noticed a Forster's tern in the water while another flew and called loudly overhead.  Suzy noted that the flighted bird had a fish and attempted to offer it to the bird in the water.  Looking through the scope, the bird int he water had its tail at an odd angle and could not pull its wing.  The tern tried to flap out of the water but could not flap well at all.  "Great," I thought, "a wounded bird at our workshop."  Suzy hoped that it was an adult feeding a young, but both were in adult plumage.  I wondered if there was any way to reach the wounded tern but it was far out in the water.  I continued with the workshop with half an eye on the tern, when I noticed the flighted tern dive bombing a man on shore.  I limped over to investigate (I'm still a little unsteady on my knee, but it is healing up a little every day).

I found a man with a fishing pole reeling in the tern from the water while the other tern angrily dove at him while screaming loudly.  He took the tern out of the water and had some clippers.  He was trying to clip the line around the bird but the tern was snapping its beak at him and he was afraid to touch it.  I hobbled over and asked, "Can I give you a hand?"

"Yes, please!"

I picked the water logged tern up out of the water--how strange to put a tern in the bander's grip, they seem more like a piece of origami than bird.  He swiftly snipped off the fishing line and fortunately the hook was not in her.  I did a quick feel for broken bones but couldn't feel anything amiss.  The formerly tangled tern's feathers looked too waterlogged to fly.  I made a split second decision to let it go back in the water rather than spend the day looking for a rehab center with might cause more stress, especially if the tern wasn't injured, only wet and tired.  I opened my hands for her to fly but the tern couldn't get airborne and went right back in the water.  I figured that it would be far better for the tern to swim to a quiet spot, dry off and preen its feathers.  The bird was mostly likely exhausted from the struggle to get away from the tangled line.

The man with the pole kept apologizing.  He was there with his son to go fishing and when he cast his line, the tern flew into it and got tangled, it was a one in a million shot.  He watched the tern swim away slowly, "Oh no, I'm so sorry."

I looked at him and his little boy and said, "You did your best to help the bird, I'm sure it just needs to dry off, it's featers were soaked and it wouldn't be able to fly."

"She's probably exhausted too," he said.  I agreed.

"I watched before I cast," he said mornfully, "I always watch for birds.  And when I swung, there she was!"

As the bird swam away, some gulls flew over low to investigate (assessing if they could eat it, I'm sure) and then a pelican swam right for it and opened it's mouth.  "No," I shouted, "not today pelican!"

And that was enough to distract it and the tern paddled further away.  I'm all for watching cool and gross natural history moments, but this man and his son seemed traumatized enough as it was and didn't need to see the pelican eat the tern (that's not a pretty way to go, I think I'd rather be eating by a great horned owl).  And if you don't know what I'm talking about--those big birds are opportunists and there are videos of pelicans eating pigeons in parks.  A Forster's tern is about pigeon sized.

The tern attempted to fly off the water a few more times and each time it got closer to being airborne.  Eventually, it disappeared into some reeds on an island where I'm sure it preened and dried out.  The man gave up his fishing for the morning, he genuinely felt bad about what happened even though it was just one of those things.  I'm glad he took the time to help the bird and I hope he doesn't give up fishing for good.

When the pelicans weren't trying to eat terns, they made excellent digiscoping subjects!  It was interesting to note the various sizes of horns on the upper bill.  The above bird has a small one.

Check out this bad boy--his horn is HUGE and looks quite impressive in his full on display!  No one knows for sure why males get this epidermal plate on the top mandible, but presumably it has something to do with a mating display to female pelicans.  It falls off during the summer after the breeding season.  I have a couple from my pelican banding days.  They look like nasty toenails.

Since pelicans don't sing to attract a female, the put on these quiet, yet showy displays on the water.  It almost looks a little passive aggressive, the male silently lifting his wings, puffing his feathers and crooking his neck while showing his horn and a female or two will quietly swim by and quietly take note of this display...and then keep going.  It's very Minnesotan.

We had a few warblers and even an oriole (the above Bullock's oriole) to round out the rest of our field trip.  Participants seemed to have a good time and learn a few tricks--like try out video on your little point and shoot cameras.  One man even got video of a coot feeding it's baby.  All in all it was a beautiful morning and it's always fun when your group can do a good deed while on birding trip--like helping out a tangled tern.

Watching Hummers With Penn Jillette

There are more people interested in casual birding than we realize and you never know who that is. So, last fall I went to Las Vegas with Non Birding Bill, Clay Taylor and WildBird on the Fly to film some digiscoping videos, I think I had my biggest geek out ever--bigger than the time I met Scott Weidensaul. I was a tad inebriated at a bar during an ABA convention and Scott suddenly walked in and all I remember is thinking to myself, "Act sober. Act sober. Act sober."

I must not have been too bad because Scott still welcomes me with a hug when he sees me, rather than darting away in the opposite direction.

But due to some lucky scheduling and total generosity of Penn Jillette, we got to see the Penn and Teller Las Vegas show , hang out backstage (that's Amy and me with Teller), and watch birds at Penn's house--I got a lifer in his yard, a black-throated sparrow.

It was the most surreal moment of my life back stage. For one thing, it was the first time NBB has met some of my closest birding buddies. For another, how weird was it to be back stage with a bunch of magicians, the editor of WildBird Magazine and Swarvoski Optik--and we ended up talking about bees! Penn and Teller told us about a segment where they made thousands of bees appear on stage, you can watch it here (see if you can tell when they get stung).

I said, "Holy crap! How did you do that," meaning how did they work with bees, but they told me how they did it, how the entomologist they consulted backed out because he got freaked out and how many stings they ended up with and how Penn had a rather unusual injury on a rather sensitive area of his anatomy--I'll let you google that one, it's easy enough to find or better yet, if you meet Penn, he will gladly tell you the story much better than I ever could.

Again, Penn had a lot going on that weekend, he was flown to another state to shoots a scene for a movie, had his own Vegas show and still managed to give us some time to talk hummingbirds (I got to make hummingbird nectar in his kitchen). Since we were dealing with brief time and when working with video things like cicadas and air traffic can get in the way it's not perfect, but it's still someone I think is cool showing an interest in birds.

I've also hesitated posting this because I was geeking hardcore on the inside during this segment and tried very hard to keep my geek in check. I think from now on, I'm going to have to just let my geek flag fly because trying to play it cool makes me look like a dork.

So here it is and thank you to Swarovski for making this possible and to Birdorable for making the perfect shirt to wear in Vegas and especially to Penn Jillette and his people for being so nice, so gracious with their time and allowing us a few moments to chat about birds.

You can do some awesome birding in Las Vegas. We still have one more video to go, but here's a link to some of our adventures. Between this, testing Swarovski awesome new digiscoping adaptor in Kazakhstan, and climbing a volcano in Guatemala to see a giant tree chicken I can safely say that 2009 was hands down the craziest (in a good way) year of my life.