If anyone is looking for some cheap and beautiful feeders for the Holidays, I have a couple of feeders for sale on ebay. They only have five hours left...I'm having rejection issues, no one is bidding on my feeders. I don't want to make money I just want to get them out of my storage. One's a real steal, it's a hand made feeder that was started out at $249.
Great Book for Kids!
Me and my nephews Mike and Sam visiting with the education barn owl at the University of Minnesota's Raptor Center. These brave little soldiers sat through a bird banding class that Amber and I taught on Sunday...and I think they may have even enjoyed it.
Yesterday at the MOU Paper Session book sale I found several copies of a book I was given when I was about 8 years old. I was already mildly interested in birds and this book helped seal the deal. It was produced by National Geographic and is called "The Wonder of Birds". It is full of wonderful up close photos of North American birds. This book is also where the infamous Mad Bluebird Photo debuted.
There are sections on migration, bird banding, conservation, bill shapes, nesting and just a little bit of everything. One of the essays is by my personal favorite ornithologist, Paul Johnsgard. My original copy of this book is well worn and beyond repair so I bought a new copy and enjoyed looking at photos of birds that I dreamed of being able to see as a kid and marveled at how many of the things in the book I have been fortunate enough to witness like visiting a peregrine nest box on a skyscraper, seeing a pelican colony, watching prairie chickens dance and fight, and seeing adult bald eagles feed on a snow goose carcass--all these great photos are in here. I can't recommend this book enough for kids.
Anyway, if you are looking for a great (and inexpensive) gift to give to a kid you would like to try and hook into birding, this is a great book. I looked at the photos in this book until I was 12 and that's when I actually read it. Even though it's 20 years old, much of the information is still relevant.
It's out of print and incredibly cheap on the internet.
Endangered Species Act is Under Attack
Well here's something disturbing. There's a group that's trying to change the endangered species act. Read more at Seattle Times.
MOU Paper Session
Yesterday was the annual Minnesota Ornithologists' Union Paper Session. An annual event where birders from around the state come to party. How do we celebrate? By sitting around and listening to people talk about bird research, I tell you, we birders know how to kick it off right.
Interestingly, Ruth Hopkins did not sneak out of the group home to visit the paper session this year. Most of my staff was at the paper session (the other two were cursing our names for having to work the bird store alone on a busy Saturday) so I was not able to introduce them face to face to Ruth. I did have a couple people ask if I was hiring but I am now putting further limits on new hires. Not only do you have to be able to lift 50 pounds and be familiar with computers, but you also have to have no interesting in going to birding festivals and mou functions.
The two big highlights for me were Carrol Henderson's Birding 100 Years ago and the Lost Study of Oology and Andy von Duyke, Joan Galli and Steve Kittleson's report on the mystery of why the great blue herons have abandon their nest colony for the last few years.
Carrol Henderson did a power point presentation on an egg collection that was discovered boarded up in the house from the early 1900s. Many of the eggs had been collected in the late 1800s and some interesting things were learned. There was a clutch of white-winged scoter eggs that had been collected in North Dakota. Apparently there had been a small population in the United States, but is no longer there. 100 years ago, there were no binoculars, field guides or bird clubs so the way to study and enjoy birds was to take their eggs. It's fascinating stuff and I can't wait to learn more--Plus Carrol is a great and engaging speaker.
The big event everyone was waiting for was the lake Peltier heron colony report. It had been published in the newspapers that the colony was disappearing and herons abandoning nests. Several fingers were pointed and quite a few at the obvious conclusion of human disturbance. However security cameras on the nest revealed that the culprit appears to be raccoons. This was some of the most gruesome footage I've watched and probably not going to show up on too many animal shows. Some raccoons (the number isn't known for sure but it's definitely more than one raccoon doing it) are swimming out to the island, climbing 85 feet into the trees and killing and eating the young herons--and these are not small downy chicks. These young birds are about 5 weeks old and almost as tall as the adults. Most are taller than the raccoons and so it takes awhile for the raccoon to take down the heron. When I first heard about this I imagined the raccoons were the large 40 pound males, not these are smaller females and even some young of the year doing it. What was also interesting was that the footage we were watching was during daylight hours, generally raccoons are nocturnal, but two to of the attacks that were shown occurred during daylight hours. One was 10:30am and the other was 8:30pm.
There is no possible way to remove the raccoons and anyone who has tried the trapping and removal method of raccoons from their yard knows what a futile practice it is as more raccoons quickly move into the yard. So, they are going to test out putting metal flashing around some of the trees--like the way people do to protect wood duck boxes and bird feeders. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.