Frank Taylor and Falconry

If you are a regular reader of this blog, then you are familiar with my home boy Frank Taylor. I go to Frank's banding station in the fall. Some highlight entries include Hawk Banding 101, Weekend of Red-tails, and Interesting Info From Banding Birds. He's also quite the photographer and has even contributed photos to the blog--remember this blog contest? Frank also was the guy who first trained me in bird handling and giving public programs with birds. I would not be half the presenter I am today without his tutelage. He's taught me more than he will ever know about good programing and being a good human being. If you haven't guessed, I'm totally pro Frank.

There's a great article about him in today's Star Tribune and his love of falconry. Above is a photo of Frank with is red-tailed hawk named Mim that was with the article (I bet my mom is swooning right now--she loves Frank too). He is passionate about the sport and the article does a great job of giving you an overview of what it's all about. There's also some arty shots too.

Upcoming Events

Some fun stuff is coming up. I'm doing a Showcase Minnesota segment Wednesday Morning sometime between 10 am - 11 am for City Birds/Country Birds. We'll talk about the book release event at both Cardinal Corner locations August 23, 2008. Don't forget, Cinnamon will be coming too.

Book Signing Times:

August 23, 2008:
Cardinal Corner in West St. Paul Store (651-455-6556) 10 a.m. - 12 p.m.
Cardinal Corner in Newport (651-459-3880) 1 p.m. - 3 p.m.

I've had a couple of bird bloggers contact me regarding the 2nd Annual Bird Blogging Conference at the Rio Grande Valley Bird Fest. Should be a great time. Even if you are not a blogger, this is a great bird festival with green jays, kiskadees, chachalacas--you gotta come! Some bloggers I know will be there include Born Again Bird Watcher, WildBird on the Fly, Jeff Bouton, and JeffGyr. Plus, check out the spanky list of field trip leaders.

If you can't travel in November of 2008, I got a note from the organizers of the Space Coast Birding and Nature Festival has quite the list of guests: photographer Arthur Morris (if you don't know the name, you should I can guarantee you've seen one of his photos at some point in your life). Pete Dunne (you can see him out of Cape May), Bill of the Birds, and Connie Toops. C'mon, birding in Florida in January. Don't say you don't want to, you know it isn't true...

Swarovski's Bird Blogger Event

So, about a month ago, I got an email from my buddy Clay about inviting some bird bloggers to the Swarovski Optik headquarters in Rhode Island. I wasn't sure what exactly it was going to be about, but I figured Swarovski wanted to find out about this whole blogging thing. That was half true, but in the afternoon they pretty much let us loose to just talk amongst ourselves and the meeting ended up being beneficial to bloggers as we talked about everything from why we blog to tips for increasing traffic and dealing with trolls.

The roster of bird bloggers included myself and:

One third of 10,000 Birds
600 Birds
Adventures of Bird Girl
Bird Freak
Born Again Bird Watcher
Julie Zickefoose

Some I knew from the bird festival circuit and others I met face to face for the first time. So for me it was part friend reunion and a chance to connect with some of my favorite blogging colleagues. We talked about how different our blogs were and how we each had aspects that we envied of each other like having a team of bloggers, or being married to your in house tech guy who runs your site, or those who have a knack for editing, the ability to interact well with their commenters (I'm such a non commenter, I don't mean to be, but I am) etc. I have to give Swarovski props for wanting to learn more about bird bloggers and they are certainly ahead of the curve on this compared to most other birding companies.

This is Albert Wannenmacher the CEO of Swarovski Optik in North America proudly displaying the Digiscoping Plaque that Clay and I won at the World Series of Birding this past spring. Swarovski has been great to me, they have given me tremendous support that allows me to blog as much as I do and they invite me to tag along at bird festivals and events. You read about other types of blogs and how companies send them press releases or invite bloggers to visit and meet and create mutually beneficial relationships. The birding industry has been slow to catch on. Publishers (though not all) like Houghton Mifflin have been great as has birdJam by involving bloggers with press releases, but many bird related companies are still quite befuddled by the Internet. I've had some companies accost me at trade shows, "Hey, Birdchick! Why don't you talk about me?" to which I answer, "Because you don't tell me anything."

I'm not saying that blogs need to be all about advertising, but let's face it, bloggers want to provide great content and to that you need time and in some cases money. The dream is to find a way to work with a company you legitimately like and find ways they can help you provide some good content. And there are lots of companies out there that are very involved with conservation projects and have contests. I would love more of them to toot their own horns and let us know about the projects they are funding, both because the projects are often cool and it's nice to know which companies are out there helping birds and not just selling product.

I actually arrived a day early and spent some time in the optics repair department. Above is Kyle and if you have a pair of Swarovski ELs and have sent them in to be repaired or upgraded, this guy has worked on them. Talk about a perfectionist, he walked me through a whole upgrade on an EL, up to and included replacing the casing on the outside--I saw naked binoculars!

It's not every day you get to see a man skin a pair of binoculars or all the components that make them work.

Oh, and ladies, a piece of advice: if you wear cosmetics while birding, take a make up wipe to your eye cups from time to time--especially if you're sending them in for repairs. All that dirt and old make up can't be good for your pores anyway.

Kyle also gave my 8x32 ELs a once over and we took my focus wheel apart. He showed me how it all worked and it was just fascinating to see the gears and grease and all the places my barrels are sealed to keep them waterproof. He showed me one part of my focus wheel that's called a "Flip Flop"--seriously, that's the actual technical term. I looked at him skeptically and he assured me that something just gets lost in the Austrian translation.

The next day, the other bird bloggers arrived and got a similar tour. I love this shot of Corey from 10,000 Birds. I took this photo through one of the prisms that would go into an EL. That's Ben from 600 Birds off to the left. Julie arrived with some ELs to upgrade and I offered to take care of them for her since I learned how to do it the day before. She got all huffy and said I would just get Cinnamon's fur all over her binoculars. I retorted that I don't see how rabbit hair is much worse than Chet Baker slobber. Albert and Clay had to separate us after that.

But of course, being birders, you can only sequester us indoors for meetings and tours for so long before we get antsy and must go outside. They ended the meeting early and took us out for some light birding. We didn't see too terribly much but I did get a fun head shot of a herring gull head. The real birding was to be had the next morning...(more on that later).

One thing I've noticed with Swarovski is that if they invite you to dinner--GO. They always know the best restaurants. Above, I'm sharing a moment with Ben of 600 Birds as he samples his very first lobster.

Part of the fun of eating a lobster is getting to tear it apart. This place was so fancy that the waiter would don rubber gloves and take apart your lobster for you. Not sure I was classy enough for this place and Non Birding Bill suspects I freaked out Helena of Adventures of Bird Girl with my table manners.

It was an interesting group and if you can believe it, some of us were super chatty and had a lot to say, others of us were quiet and listening, soaking the whole scene in. I think we all know which category I fall into. The bird blogging crowd is an interesting mix.

My Crazy Week

Last week was a little nutty. I'm still not even sure how I did it. Below is a little highlight to give you an idea of what's coming in the blog this week.

It started on Sunday when I did a canoe paddle for the National Park Service. One of the cool things about being a park ranger is that you do fun things like take a canoe on the Mississippi River, a downside can be that when your schedule reads "Sunday Paddle" you may not find out until it's too late that it's a 22 mile canoe paddle on the river, part of the Mississippi River Challenge. I went as an interpretive ranger.

It was a great time and it was incredible to see the sites along the river, but I found out the hard way that 16 miles is my limit--the last six were a killer, not unlike hitting yourself with a hammer in anticipation of how good it will feel when you stop. I was in so much pain at the end of the paddle. I was also incredibly light headed and cranky which was due to severe dehydration. The next morning I woke up to a sore back, sore arms, and sore throat.

I'm so glad that I only had to do part of the paddle. The whole thing was actually two days and 44 miles--I met up halfway. Most of the participants did both days (like the guy above who also went the extra mile and paddled standing up)! It was a great time overall and man oh man, I need to canoe the lakes more often.

The next day I packed for some travel while fighting my sore throat. I was hoping against hope that it was just swollen from dehydration, but it was really some kind of bug. I'm sure my weakened immune system on Sunday let some river bug in. I didn't want to travel and meet up with friends with a cold, but was grateful that it was not much worse, like the flu.

I arrived in Rhode Island on Tuesday and when went to check out my rental car, I had the option of waiting in a long line for a person to check me in or checking myself out at a kiosk with no line. I opted for the kiosk, got through it super quick while everyone else was still in line and when I went out to pick up my car, I stopped and reread my printout three times to make sure it wasn't a mistake.

Somehow, the fates conspired and I got a red Mustang. Not only that, when I got inside I discovered that I was the first one to break this girl in. I was a tad nervous, red cars seem to be magnet for speeding tickets and I tried my best to watch my speed, but I felt that I was confusing people on the highways by going the speed limit.

I went to Rhode Island as part of a bird blogger meeting with Swarovski Optik (more on that later). How many bird bloggers can you id in the above photo?

Of course we got to do a little birding while we were there. We focused on shorebirds and it was good practice for me, since the next day I was heading to the Minnesota/South Dakota border to lead a trip to see some shorebirds with Stan Tekiela. I had some stressful moments. I'd gone out with Swarovski on a boat to Cape Cod. The trip finished later than anticipated leaving me only three hours to catch my flight at the Boston airport. I could have made it had rush hour traffic not kicked in. As I got into Boston I was hitting a quadruple whammy of stress: I was going to miss my flight, I had to pee really bad, I was stuck in traffic, and the rental car was below a quarter of a tank of gas. When I finally made it to the ticket counter after my flight took off, I wondered if I was still going to be able to get back to Minneapolis to meet with the shorebird trip the next day. Remarkably, I did. I got a flight that got me to the Twin Cities at 12:30 am, leaving me time to get five hours sleep and still meet my field trip at 6:45 am.

The best part of the evening came when I was self medicating in an airport bar and got a call from WildBird on the Fly. We were chatting and I told her that my birding gear column (that was due that day) was coming as soon as I found some wireless internet. She asked about the other article...whoopsie, what other article? She was very kind to give me an extension on that one.

It was fun seeing some of the same species I had just seen on the east coast in some mud in South Dakota. I had heard that shorebirds were going to be tough to find since a bad storm just moved through the area a couple of days before and all the great mud flats were now ponds.

We didn't find as many shorebirds, but we found enough and fortunately, the group was into other species as well. We joked that we should have called it the pelican or kingbird tour since we saw so many of those. Round about the time the tour ended, my cold finally disappated. It was an awesome week and I got to see some great friends, but boy am I beat.

Monday Morning Oystercatcher

Busy tweaking late article, but here is some American oystercatcher goodness until I can blog proper:

Got a note from Hawk Owl's Nest this morning. He posted some links about bird related merchandise sold online. He sent a note that Mincing Mockingbird seems right up my ally. He would be right. Right now they do prints and magnets, but I hope they do t-shirts some day (IN GIRL SIZES) of Pining For Degenerate Days Long Gone or My Eggs Are Runny or I'm Worth Two In The Bush--I almost want to make that my blog's tagline.

Piping Plovers Prosh and Cute!

Well, I just finished with a really cool and productive meeting with fellow bird bloggers (so fun to meet some of them face to face) and Swarovski. I learned many things (including the fact that Jeff Foxworthy is a big fan of Swarovski Optik...do you suppose he uses his optics for birding?) and much of what I learned will be part of a glut of blogging when I get home--I have to cover a 22 mile Mississippi River canoe paddle, birding with fellow bird bloggers on the east coast and then barely making it back in time to go on a shorebird watching trip this weekend on the South Dakota/Minnesota border...who knew I would find wireless in South Dakota?

But this entry needs to be short as I should really be using this free time on the shorebird trip to finish an article that's a tad late for one of the bestest, most wonderful, beautiful, most forgiving, talented, even keeled editor I ever had.

Here's a quick sneak peak of birding Cape Cod with bird bloggers:

We found a family group of the threatened/endangered piping plover! This cute little plover is the adult and is about the size of a sparrow. They're so adorable, I think it you got some Cute Overload worthy photos and put those posters up, make some cuddly plush dolls, and a t-shirt line, people would get on board with saving them like they did with bald eagles and peregrine falcons.

Ben of 600 Birds noticed a chick--then three chicks! Julie Zickefoose was also part of the birding group and she noted that the chicks were about four days old. Ben said it best: that the chicks were so tiny and fluffy, it was hard to tell if we actually had them in focus in our cameras. They really appeared to be cotton balls scurrying around on match sticks. Julie noted that this seemed late for piping plover chicks and wondered if these little guys would learn to fly in time for their long migration?

If you looked closely at one of the adults, you could see the plumage was very worn. Was this a second or third time of renesting and the birds were tired and physically worn out or was this typical molt for this time of year? Did they lose an earlier batch of chicks or were they going for the gold and having successfully raised one brood, going for a second? Tough to say, but you could see this adult was tired.

It plopped down on the sand and you could see its eyes start to close (not unlike what I'm feeling right now after such an adventurous week). I sat on the sand with my scope low, taking what photos I could of the soon to be dosing piping plover and marveled at my luck of getting a chance to digiscope such a cute bird, when all of a sudden...

IT YAWNED! Piping plovers are as cute as a button as it is, now make it yawn and it's too prosh for words! And if you thought that was the cutest thing ever, let me leave you with a video of piping plover chicks running on the beach. They are precocial, meaning they can pretty much feed themselves not long after they hatch, relying on their parents to keep them warm and help protect them from predators. Now brace yourself for cotton ball goodness: