Focus On Diversity Conference, Be There!

If you are within a day trip of the Twin Cities, you should put this on your calendar. If you remotely work to promote the outdoors with the public, you should attend this event!

The Focus on Diversity Conference is coming to the Twin Cities October 13, 2012 at the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge in Bloomington, MN (right next to the airport).

The objective of this event is to promote effective outreach to more diverse audiences with birding, outdoor recreation and conservation messages.

We all know how homogeneous birders can look on the trail, we need to change this and we have some great thinkers coming together to try and tackle this issue. Enjoying the outdoors shouldn't be just a "thing white people do."

The forum and discussion will include Dudley Edmondson, Flisa Stevenson, Dr. Drew Lanham, Kenn Kaufman and even Duck Washington (if you've been to a Birds and Beers, you've met Duck). Put this on your calendar now, be a voice, learn, engage in this discussion.

There will also be a special Birds and Beers Friday night before the conference at The Corner Bar inside the Embassy Suites in Bloomington near the Refuge.  Birds and Beers starts at 6:30 pm.

Blogging From The Field

This post is more of a test to see if I can use the voice to text feature with Wordpress and blog while I'm doing a survey in the field.

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Above is my current office view. I really love being able to work outside especially during spring and fall migration!

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Large flocks of song birds are around me every day right now. The diversity of bird species in the cornstalks around me is amusing. Above is a Nashville warbler. It's so weird to see warblers and corn.

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Here is a swamp sparrow that I was able to pish up out of the corn.

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And wherever you have migrating songbirds you're sure to have migrating raptors to follow. This female merlin got my attention when I saw her sitting on top of one the telephone poles in my survey area. She was just finishing up eating a small bird.

Okay I've told my phone everything I wanted to say let's see if this actually posts.

Also all of these photos were taken by using my iPhone and with the bird photos it was my iPhone along with my Swarovski spotting scope.

Honey Bee Nursery

I know I don't do as many bee reports on the blog as I used to but in a lot of respects our bees do the same thing over and over. Not that I don't delight in watching the hive, but how often can I report the same thing? Things that are fun to check are larvae. I especially like frames with black foundation, makes things ten times easier to see and it really pops the color of the bees.

Above are mostly worker bee eggs (the things that look like mini rice) and some larvae off to the right. If you don't find your queen when you're digging around in your hive, you can be relatively confident that a she is alive somewhere in there because eggs stay in that shape for about three days as they are fed royal jelly from the worker bees.

Once the larvae is three days old, it's switched to a mixture of pollen, honey and water (some bee sites call this bee bread). You can see at least one worker up there feeding someboyd as her head is wedged into a cell. The larvae grows and eats for six days.

After six days, the workers cap over the brood and they pupate for 12 days as they go from a squishy blob into a segmented, leggy, winged bee complete with stinger.

Like this girl! On a side note, while looking up something else entirely I wandered into an article on eating bee larvae. I suppose eating all that honey would make them tasty.

For those curious, I think our hives are doing splendidly this year. Many are as tall or even taller than I am because they are stacked with so many honey supers for us to harvest soon. Though, Lynne was quick to point out that since I'm only 5 feet tall, that's not saying much.  Thanks, Lynne. ;)

 

 

Birdchick Podcast #118 Scott's Fined Millions For Tainted Bird Food

Scott's Wild Bird Food aka Miracle Grow fined $12.5 million in criminal and civil penalties that regulators say are the heftiest ever issued under federal pesticide law. Weirdest survey about birders and birding...ever. Warning, it takes awhile.

Are you a member of the American Birding Association? Be sure to cast your vote on whether or not to expand the listing area!

Cloaxia combines your vagina, urethra and anus into one hole. SUBSCRIBE: http://www.youtube.com/ucbcomedy Watch more videos by The Punch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VozVSHq3hwc&feature=share&list=PL28885456FBB38DD2 Director Andy Bond Writer Adam Sacks Featuring Laura Michelle Cleary, Lisa Kleinman, Risa Sang-Urai, Keisha Zollar, Amey Goerlich, Avery Monsen, and Brian Glidewell Director of Photography Adam Sacks Editor Adam Sacks Animator Adam Sacks Producer Luke Kelly-Clyne Sound James Leggero, Silvija Ozols, and Casey Cline Production Assistants Andrea Shapiro and Jesse VandenBergh Special Thanks Matt Klinman Brought to you by UCB Comedy.

Birdchick Podcast #118



Random Barred Antshrike

Going through some photos for upcoming presentations at Hawk Ridge and Berkeley Springs, I came across this bird, a barred antshrike from my trip a couple of years ago from Canopy Tower in Panama.  I suddenly feel a huge ache to be back in Central America, specifically to this lodge. I always try to plan a mid winter trip...think Panama must be it in 2013.

Digiscoped with a Swarovski scope and Nikon D40 (with a DCA adapator).

BirdCast Predictions For 9/11 Memorial

As migration is in full swing and most everyone I know in the US has thoughts of what happened on September 11, 2001 on their minds today, I can't help but think about the 2010 memorial. For people who may not be familiar with this story, in 2010, after a week of lousy weather for migration, the winds were favorable on September 11 and as the lights for the memorial were lit, literally thousands of birds that migrate at night and use the stars for navigation were caught in the beams. Here's a sample of the video: [youtube]http://youtu.be/EZAQSw0qCAI[/youtube]

The video and images found around the Internet are hypnotic. I always wondered what the skies would look like if we could see the thousands of warblers, vireos, thrushes and other species passing overhead on night migration and this gives us a glimpse of that.

What's hopeful about this situation is that Audubon's New York City Chapter was able to step in with organizers and they managed to turn off the memorial lights for a 15 minutes, encouraging the flocks of birds to move on. Otherwise, the birds would have circled the lights all night and lose valuable fat stores needed to continue the marathon south.

Apparently, the weather today could pose could migratory conditions for birds and a similar situation could happen. Hopefully, Audubon will be on hand again and if we get a crazy glimpse of night migration caught in the lights this year, the lights can be turned off for a few minutes, giving birds a chance to move on.