HOT

This is a broad-tailed hummingbird that is hanging out outside the hotel.

By the way, when people tell you that it will be hot but it's a dry heat so it won't be so bad, they are full of crap. It's hot, just plain hot. I have sweated in places that I shouldn't sweat. I was worried that I was leaving a trail.

I have found my crowd, birders who drink and like a surly joke every now and then. I'm sitting currently with a rowdy group and would you believe that Amy Hooper the editor of WildBird Magazine and Bill Thompson of Bird Watchers Digest and they are as wild as all get out. Rumor has it they are going to pants a binocular rep. Tighten the belts lads.

I met Debra Shearwater today. If you haven't been on one of her pelagic trips you may have read about her in various birding magazines or her part in the book Big Year. Anyway, she ws showing Amy and me photos of gray whales and then she points to a large pink oblong thing. She asks if we can identify the object, we both quickly realized it was a whale tallywacker. Debra proudly announced that it was over six feet long (that's longer than me--my body that is). That's my kind of woman.

Oh the irony

So the week or two Minnesota gets two new state birds to add to the list (brown pelican and white-winged dove) I travel to two states where both birds are quite common. This morning I opened the curtains to see my first Arizona bird and what do I see? A starling (harumph), the second is a female cardinal (getting better), the third a mockingbird (nice, but I saw lots of those in Virginia last week), then popped up a thrasher it was either a Bendire's or a curve-billed (either would be a lifer. Alas, they are almost impossible to tell apart. And then to sooth my birding frustration were two very accomodating white-winged doves. At least one lifer before breakfast. Not bad.

I'm kind of geeking out right now. I'm in the Double Tree lobby taking advantage of their free wireless and Paul Lehman is a few seats away and is on his cell phone editing some publication. He is completely unaware that I am stalking. He's talking sooty terns and now something about a glossy ibis he found some place unusual. I see so many names of birders in print or via email in a way it's like I'm birding them. Fun.

ABA here I com

Well, I'm as about as packed as I can get for the ABA. I still have several loose ends to tie up before I head out this afternoon. Mostly bird store stuff, but I think I can get it done.

Yesterday one of the NovaBird People stopped by and we talked about a fun new hand held pishing device they are working on. It has sounds on it to call in birds--including pishing. They recorded my pishing sounds for possible use on the machine. I hope I make the final cut. Wouldn't it be dreamy to see someone with this device at a birding convention, use my pishing sounds and get a great rare bird? As everyone is congratulating themselves on a bird well observed, I would casually say, "You know that pish you used? That's my pish." I'd be so cool.

There are a few other birders they are recording such as my good buddy Carrol Henderson (who wrote theMN DNR's Wild About Birds book among others). Perhaps he and I will have a friendly competition on whose pish gets the most birds. My pish fu is the best. I just realized that if there are any beginning birders or non birders reading this blog, they will be utterly confused about what pishing is and quite possibly assume I have an incontinence problem.

I'm just getting into my non birding summer obsession of raising monarch caterpillars. I have one caterpillar and two eggs...actaully as I type this one of the eggs is hatching. Alas, it is too small for me to get a photo with my camera but in a few days it should be big enough. Monarchs become the store soap opera from July through September as we find eggs and caterpillars outside the store and bring them inside to raise them into a monarch. We then release them so they can begin their migration south. Val Cunningham told me that just about everything eats monarch caterpillars (despite the awful taste they have from eating milkweed) so if you can raise the caterpillars indoors it does help the monarch population. Plus it's fun.