You're Making That Up

 

Some of you may be aware that Non Birding Bill has been developing a radio game show of sorts with Mr. Neil and hosting preview performances. The previews are to iron out the script kinks and if all goes well, it will eventually be on air. Even though I am married to one of the co-creators of this cool project, I frequently do not know when the preview performances are until the very last minute and they sell out quickly.  Above is from the first preview performance and had Bill Corbett, John Hodgman, John Moe, Neil Gaiman (yes, Mr. Neil) and Kevin Murphy.  I can't help but look at that photo with quite a bit of pride and think, "Yeah, I know one of the guys who put that together and cowrote the script."

That's my boy surrounded by the cast--note the relieved look on his face immediately after the first performance that was met with a very warm audience reception!

Part of the reason for the last minute nature of the preview is that everyone has crazy schedules and well, if you are the producer in the Twin Cities, you know how challenging it can be to find a theater space ahead of time, much less on short notice. Which is one of the reasons I haven't brought it up on the blog.

Long story short, there's a preview performance next week, February 7, 2013 at 8pm at the Brave New Workshop.  This one will have Neil Gaiman, John Moe, Joseph Scrimshaw (yeah, the dude who had me on his podcast Obsessed and argued about my lack of obsession with birds and his having me on again with an etymologist to talk about my supposed obsession with swearing), Mike Fotis...and me (sometimes having a last minute show means you might be suddenly short a guest and it's handy to have a wife who can bs well).

What is this show about? Have you ever watched QI? It's kind of like that.  John Moe asks questions and we have to make up an answer.  It's funny and weird. So, if you see this in time and you are in the Twin Cities area and you have $12, order tickets at the Brave New Workshop Student Union ASAP. And note that it's the Student Union, don't want to end up at the wrong venue on game night!

Don't Be Afraid Of Your Delete Key

First. I have to say: Wow! THANK YOU! It is amazeballs that what people have pledged so far! Holy crap! I had no idea what to expect donation wise for my Big Half Year, but I thought $1000 should be doable over 6 months, but I wasn't sure. Well, here it's the end of January and I'm almost halfway to my goal! Thank you guys, so, so much! This is fantastic for the Friends of Sax Zim Bog, they are at 20% of their overall goal and with so many participants, I know we are going to be able to make it and get a welcome center built!

I thought I would set a personal goal of having 31 bird photos posted to my Big Half Year photo album by January 31 and I do! There are still more coming from Florida, but it's pretty amazing that the photos are coming along so well.

Check it out, it's Non Birding Bill actually using a spotting scope! What is he looking at?

A crap ton of herons, ibises and a couple of roseate spoonbills at Merritt Island NWR. Even he had to concede that a roseate spoonbill was cool.  He actually really enjoyed birding in Florida.  Two things helped: one, I didn't force him to do my typical pace and two, the birds were big, obvious and easy to see. Had I started with that instead as a birding introduction instead of brown birds around the college dorm in Terre Haute, Indiana, it may have made a better impression.

As we moved around places like Viera Wetlands, he heard me say more than once, "It's like shooting fish in a barrel!" The birds are so easy in Florida, they are mellow like the above white ibis, used to people and pose in great light. After I would digiscope a few shots with my Nikon, I'd quick switch over to my iPhone to grab a few shots:

It's crazy to me that I live in a day and age that I can just hold my phone up to a spotting scope and take a photo like the one above and then immediately share with hundreds and in some cases thousands of people. We live in a day and age technological miracles and I think that gets lost sometime in the craziness of news and life. Just think about the type of photos you can get that even a decade ago would have been a triumph of the human spirit if you got a grainy image.

With my new Swarovski scope and digiscoping set up, I'm going to have to completely change my photo delete policy. I've always had a pretty liberal delete policy with photos. I know that I have to take hundreds of shots to get some usable ones. I know as a bird blogger, I don't have to have "perfect" shots to post.  It's not like a print quality publication where the photos have to be tack sharp to even be considered.  I've posted some blurry shots if the story behind them was interesting. But with this new set up, I'm getting too many photos in focus. Above is one of hundreds of northern pintail shots that I took to make sure I got a good shot for my Big Half Year album.

But also got some cute ones of pintail pairs dabbling together--a little pair bonding date.

And then there was the pintail male splashing like crazy on his bath. Most of these I would delete, saving a few for a blog post. I kept track of what I took in Florida.  Between my iPhone and my Nikon V1, I digiscoped 6461 photos! So far I have only deleted 2487...that's too many keep.

Part of it is that I digscoped birds I would normally avoid because I'm trying to accumulate species for my fundraising list. But on the other hand, this set up makes getting great shots super easy--look at that boat-tailed grackle shot--it's pretty! But I'm going to fill up my drive too quickly if I am keeping over half the photos that I take on any given trip.

If you are a new digiscoper, that is something to consider.  I've been trying to post how many shots I take at a time to help give new digiscopers an idea of how many photos you can take, just to try and get one or two photos.  It's ok, you can delete them. Pop in a movie on Netflix and then delete away.  Unless you're in Mongolia, most birds you will find again and try to digiscope again.

Birdchick Podcast #131: Cats, Space Coast Festival, Dinosaurs

Hey!  Did you know that I'm having a contest to give away my Swarovski ATM spotting scope? Yes, you could win, just send me your worst bird photo (but please read all the contest rules first). This week in crazy bird jobs:

Volunteer Field Assistant for the Blue-throated Macaw

Couples encouraged to apply for land bird surveys!

TOMKAT Ranch field assistant

Reader responds to the new bird job segment about cougars in California and you should check out biobabbler blog post on a cougar in her yard...and her creative defense.

A new comprehensive study about cats effect on wildlife has staggering results.

Another fossil is supposed to make us look at birds differently...don't all fossils, I mean, c'mon? Oh and here's a story about scientists figuring out that a fossil was a female bird that was ovulating...maybe that makes me look at scientists differently...

Swamp sparrows are way more aggressive than you may realize. Here's a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zo12PP3PZpo#!

It reminds me a lot of the book Birds Fighting.

Birdchick Podcast #131

Fish Crow...man, there is a lot we don't know about this bird

As I'm going through my Florida photos choosing what to add to my official album for my Big Half Year fundraiser, I posted one of my fish crow photos. Some of you who read this blog and are not that into birds are probably wondering, "Hey, Shaz, how can you tell that's a fish crow as opposed the American crow we see all over the US." Honestly? I can't tell them apart by sight myself, but I can by call.  So I took the extra step of getting some video of the above bird so you can hear the call which is a dead give away from the American crow:

http://youtu.be/YpcTqQOjIT4

The call is pretty different.  I don't know all that much about fish crows apart from knowing I'll find them when I'm along the coast in the easter US.  I checked over at Birds of North America Online and my favorite section to check on bird profiles is "Priorities for Future Research." Boy howdy, though this bird is very common along the eastern coastal areas...there's a lot we don't know! And corvids are down right interesting to study.

I was especially surprised about how little we know about the fish crow repertoire. American crows have a crazy vocal repertoire beyond just the "caw" that most of us know and try to tune out.  But they have various types of "caws" and they make weird maraca rattles and can mimic other species (including humans). We don't know that much about the fish crow--exactly how different are they from the American crow?

Graduate students, here's a bird to study...and you could do it some place like Florida!

Big Half Year Florida Note

Currently winding up my Florida adventure and editing photos. I am still in Florida. Sunday ended up being a more adventurous travel day than I anticipated. It started with a leisurely beach walk then wandering into a naturist beach and was topped off with a flight attendant offering us an insane travel voucher with first class tickets if we'd give up our seats. Having noted a nasty ice storm in the works that we'd have to drive home through after we landed late, I opted to stay in Florida for another day and edit photos in seventy degree temps. I think I more than doubled my Big Half Year Total!

Finally! Rock Pigeons! Whew, so glad I was able to get that right before the end of January! That bird was a real nail biter!

But seriously, I cleaned up on wetlands species--like this green heron giving the business to a turtle.  Digiscoping in Viera Wetlands is like shooting fish in a barrel.  I learned that Viera has been closed to vehicle traffic (though, if I lived here, I think I would be all over biking that place). But keep that in mind if you decided to visit.  Cars haven't been allowed in most of it since September.

I'll be adding more photos to the album over the next few days. This new digiscoping set up gets so many amazing photos, my challenge is figuring out which amazing photo of the tri-c0lored heron I want to be in the final album.

I did have my first heartbreaking photo miss.  The above black skimmer.  It's just not in focus enough for me to count it. Non Birding Bill thought it should be counted because even he could tell it was a skimmer...and should I be worried.  He goes to the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival and he can suddenly ID skimmers?  Anyway, I don't know if I will be anywhere else where skimmers are possible this year, so this is my first big dip on a bird.  Ah well.

Here's the official Big Half Year Flickr Album.

Here's information on the Big Half Year fundraiser for Friends of  Sax Zim Bog that I'm raising money for.

Win My Spotting Scope!!

This is the story of a girl and her spotting scope...

Oh, the adventures I have had with my Swarovski ATM spotting scope. It has literally traveled the world with me. We ascended Volcán Atitlánin Guatemala to see horned guans. We survived rigorous airport security in Kazakhstan to view breeding sociable lapwings on the Kazak Steppes. We got our lifer Syrian woodpecker outside a mine field on the Syria/Israel border. We even delighted in digiscoping tufted titmice at Neil Gaiman’s bird feeders. We’ve showered together when covered in sand and dust. In short: we have had a blast.

But, some partnerships must end and some things are so awesome, they should be shared. Swarovski hires me from time to time to teach workshops, test equipment and help out at booths. That means I need to have the latest equipment to take to events. When equipment changes, I have the option of purchasing the older equipment or I can send it back to Swarovski. With the debut of the new Swarovski ATX scope, it was time to change out my equipment.

This time I asked, “Hey, could I have a contest so one of my blog readers could get my scope and all the great birding mojo that has built up with it over the years?”

And Swarovski said, “Yes!”

So, anyone who reads my blog has a chance to win a FANTASTIC spotting scope. You will receive my ATM scope with 20 – 60 zoom eyepiece and my carbon fiber tripod (and I’ll even throw in my DCA digiscoping adapter). This is a scope and tripod that has been loved hard and used on a daily basis. I will send it in to Swarovski headquarters to get cleaned up before you get it (maybe Gail can finally get that heron poop stain off) and whoever wins it will also get the Swarovski Optik limited lifetime warranty with the scope. I love this thing, it has been such a wonderful birding companion and helped me id so many birds and I hope whoever wins it, gets the birds of a lifetime that I have gotten with it.

I really wanted to come up with a contest that would level the playing field. The logical thing would be a photo contest, but if you can get really great photos, you don’t need my scope. I want any birder of any age to have a shot at winning this magnificent, light-weight beast. I thought about a guest blogging contest but I know not everyone is comfortable writing, so Non Birding Bill and I kicked around ideas to figure out what would be something universal that anyone could do…and we landed on a contest that would truly level the playing field:

 Birdchick’s WORST bird photo contest!

That’s right, kids, send me your worst bird photo: blurry, over exposed, under exposed, funny, weird, get creative. That’s right, I want to see the worst bird photo you can possibly take. There are any number of ways to do it, so you can go bonkers with this.

We will post our favorite images and then those that are selected as our favorites will be entered into a drawing and we will pick the winning name from that bank of entries!

Rules:

1. Photo must be one that you have taken. You can’t just harvest a bad photo off of Wikipedia or Google Image Search. I have strong Google Fu and will find it if you do.
2. Photo must be accompanied by a brief description or what you think the bird was that you were trying to photograph.
3. Photos must be emailed to sharon at birdchick dot com.
4. Photo submissions must include your first and last name in the email and your shipping address (so if you win, I know where to send my scope off to).
5. Photos must be submitted no later than February 8, 2013. The winner will be drawn and announced on February 11, 2013.

   

Don't be afraid to get creative! Good luck!!

Will I See You At The Space Coast Birding & Wildlife Festival?

As I hunker in for a day of sub zero weather with windchill set to surpass -30 tonight, I'm so looking forward to going to Titusville, Florida for the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival this week with Non Birding Bill. What are we doing there? Well, Non Birding Bill is now freelancing as a video editor and we are going to make some digiscoping videos. If you see us out and about and have a digital camera or smartphone, let's see if we can get you to digiscope some images and maybe they'll end up in the final edit! If we aren't in the field, we will be hanging out at the Swarovski booth in the vendor area.  Please come up and say hi.  This is one of those rare opportunities to meet the infamous NBB.

I'm especially looking forward to all the digiscoping opportunities to be had at Viera Wetlands and that's probably where we will spend a majority of our time. It's like Disney Land for nature photographers.

I'll see if I can NBB excited about a limpkin!  OK, OK, so that may be a little too brown for him, but I'm hoping I can show him a spoonbill or wood stork, he's gotta dig on those! At least there will be lots of birds that are big and obvious and easy to see.

I'm also totally geeked because I got word via social media that Mark Beaman will be there and he coauthored The Handbook of Bird Identification for Europe and the Western Palearctic.  I actually met him at The Biggest Week in 2012 but didn't make the connection that it was the same fellow.  This book is probably going to bite me in the butt in baggage fees (as it has when I have taken it with me to Kazakhstan and the Middle East, but it will be worth it. 

Picking My Battles With Bird Photos

 

As I do my competition for the Big Half Year, I know this issue is going to come up again and again.  Which photos to count? Above is a very mediocre or what I would call a documentation photo that I got at Pig's Eye Outflow in St Paul this week. There's identifiable common goldeneye in that shot...but would I get a better photo later. Who can say with my crazy schedule and migration. You really never know with birds and this may be as good as it gets goldeneye wise with me.  I know my buddy Craig Nash is insisting that all my photos be in focus to be countable (unlike The World Series of Birding rules). But would the above photo count.

And then I went to Lake Rebecca in Hastings, MN and found a lovely albeit backlit goldeneye. I bided my time and worked my way around the lake to see if I could position myself to have the sun behind me instead of the goldeneye. When I do something like this, I try to walk in a way that the bird doesn't notice. I'll look in the opposite direction of the bird and even make sure that my scope's objective lens isn't facing the bird as I carry it. If I stared at the bird the whole time, the bird might become suspicious as to why I'm staring at it, I'd look like a predator.

I eventually found a better position on the lake...but then the camera flaked out and under exposed the crap out of it. But a few adjustments in the settings and viola:

A reasonable common goldeneye photo and bird number 15 for my Big Half Year fundraiser for a Sax Zim Bog visitor center!

He even found a female goldeneye to hang out with on the lake.

This lake has a large population of mallards and Canada geese (and even a young trumpeter swan) hanging out. It's a popular town activity to bring your kids and a bag of corn or bread and feed everybody. I wonder if the goldeneye notice the mass exodus of waterfowl when a car pulls in and wonder what the fuss is about. These ducks are fish eaters so the corn and bread is wasted on them. But the goldeneye's presence is a good sign for ice fishermen who tempt fate on the frozen-ish side of the lake.

Here's a link to the Flickr  and I cannot say this enough: thank you to everyone who has donated so far. I had absolutely no clue what I'd raise with this thing and seeing it past the $250 mark is an honor. With all the participants, the fund is already at 15%!  That's fantastic--we have until June 30, 2013 to make the goal so to be at this point before the end of January--is fantastic!

Birdchick Podcast #130: Weird jobs Sharon wants to take

Crazy Bird Jobs: Polish Bird Job

Klamath Intern

Kittlitz's Murrelet "job"

Top 10 Birding Taboos...

Speaking of which, the American Birding Association has a whole new listing website called Listing Central!

Man claims to have photographed a red-tailed hawk that ate too much.

Sax Zim Bog in the news!

Some people are weirder about birds than I am.

Image from the National Audubon Society Gala...

Birdchick Podcast #130

Big Half Year Birds

 

I got a trumpeter swan while going for some waterfowl in Hastings, MN for my Big Half Year challenge.  This immature bird was by itself and not with a family group. I didn't see any other trumpeters around.

It did some a bit closer when some people arrived to feed the mallards and I noticed that it appears to have an injury to its upper beak. It was still able to forage underwater with it but I'm curious what happened if that was the reason why it wasn't with other swans.

When I arrived at the parking lot, there was a large flock of mallards sleeping. When I put my car in park, they all got up and came towards me like a zombie hoard. I got a quick video with my phone:

http://youtu.be/Xf2OJkWUGHU

Sorry mallards, I don't feed bread to ducks.  Don't worry, at least 8 other groups arrived in the hour and a half I was there with corn and bread to feed them.  They've got plenty of food...though perhaps similar to fast food in nutrition.

Man, when this Nikon V1 is on, it's really, really on.  So here's another bird for my Big Half Year challenge.

I couldn't resist getting some shots of this bathing mallard. I know I shouldn't anthropomorphize but boy that's a sassy looking bird and he does look like he's having a great time.

So, birds 13 and 14 for the list!

To see my complete list thus far, visit my Flickr set for the Big Half Year.