I Love My Friends

The Internet is fantastic if for no other reason the ability to communicate with friends from all over the planet. I love the people that I know from all over. Today was a great example. At about 4:30pm, I got call from my friend Clay Taylor because his flight back home to Rhode Island got rerouted to the Twin Cities because of the snow storm. He wanted to know if I was up for some company. I had dinner with him (which included a FANTASTIC turnip and apple soup at the Mall of America), made it in just enough time to see Non Birding Bill in Cyrano and top off the evening with a little late night sushi.

Oddly enough, I'm coming to Connecticut this weekend and will see Clay. After I dropped him off at his hotel I got to say, "I'll see you in a couple of days." I rarely get to say that to my friends on the road.

I came home tonight and found an odd little announcement in the Bird Jobs email. Normally it's a great resource for fun volunteer trips, or jobs to monitor birds or nests, do some banding--very much field biology. Today a bird feeding job of sorts showed up:

STAFF SCIENTIST – WILD BIRD FOOD & NUTRITION – PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT & INNOVATION.

Our client is a $6+ billion international company located near Columbus, OH. They’ve created a new position with the goal of raising the bar in wild bird food R&D by using scientific methodology for product development and innovation. This position will require a scientist with flexible skills and abilities, sound knowledge of bird nutrition and husbandry and wildlife conservation. This scientist will be involved with the development of research programs to significantly improve current bird food and bird feeding products and will work with University and external experts such as the Ornithological Societies of North America. He/she will work with a dynamic multi-functional team to translate technical outcomes into successful product development.

REQUIREMENTS: BS or MS in biology, environmental science, wildlife conservation/management or related field; sound understanding of and experience in the scientific method and research design; several years of experience working with birds as a scientist, ornithologist, zookeeper or enthusiast.

TO APPLY, e-mail cover letter and CV to CRYSTAL M. TINUCCI, Kelly Scientific/SMI (EM: tinuccm AT kellyservices.com, PH: 312-346-7404). Please respond ASAP for immediate consideration.

I'm curious about this. Feeding birds in a zoo or aviary situation is very different than feeding wild birds. I'm curious as to what this is all about.

Raptor Force--Must See TV!!

Yo, Non Birding Bill, I'll need you to record something for me this Sunday, February 18th on PBS when I'm out of town! The show Nature on PBS is presenting Raptor Force, showcasing bird of prey flight ability. Looks pretty darned sweet. Raptor Resource Project (go Neil!) was heavily involved in the making the program. I found a preview and some scenes up on YouTube to tempt your appetite. I can't watch these without doing the Homer Simpson donut sound. Haaaaaaaaaah.

Here is the preview (it's about 30 seconds long):

Here is a scene with a peregrine falcon going after some prey with a camera attached to it. It's really sweet. I wish I could hunt like that, zipping through the air over 200 mph and killing larger birds with my toes. This scene is about two minutes long:

I believe this is must see tv this Sunday.

The N'Kisi Project

At first glance this looks like a story for the Weekly World News, but it's on the BBC website, so it's got to have some validity. Meet N'Kisi, an African gray parrot with a vocabulary of over 950 words. The BBC reports:

One N'kisi-ism was "flied" for "flew", and another "pretty smell medicine" to describe the aromatherapy oils used by his owner, an artist based in New York.

When he first met Dr Jane Goodall, the renowned chimpanzee expert, after seeing her in a picture with apes, N'kisi said: "Got a chimp?"

He appears to fancy himself as a humourist. When another parrot hung upside down from its perch, he commented: "You got to put this bird on the camera."

Dr Goodall says N'kisi's verbal fireworks are an "outstanding example of interspecies communication".

In an experiment, the bird and his owner were put in separate rooms and filmed as the artist opened random envelopes containing picture cards.

Analysis showed the parrot had used appropriate keywords three times more often than would be likely by chance.

You can learn more about N'Kisi and the research surrounding his communicative abilities here. There's an audio of N'Kisi in conversation with his owner Aimee. It's somewhat confusing because the male parrot has the same voice as his female handler.

Adopt A Disapproving Rabbit Month

Ever wanted a Disapproving Rabbit of your very own? Here are some candidates looking for homes.

"I don't approve of you not scratching my nose. It's gray and wiggly for cryin' out loud, get to work loving my nose!"

According to the House Rabbit Society February is Adopt A Rabbit Month. Yesterday the Golden Valley Humane Society and the Minnesota House Rabbit Society were holding an adoption event and a bunny agility demonstration. I would have blogged it sooner but didn't find out about it until last minute. I did take advantage of a free afternoon to get some more photos for the Disapproving Rabbits book.

The rabbit at the top of the entry is Truffle and is the current "star" of the GVHS. She was hands down my favorite rabbit and if Cinnamon weren't such a butthead about other rabbits I would have adopted her.

When I stepped inside her play area to take her photo, she was in full loaf mode, completely relaxed. I sat down, aimed the camera at her at which point she got up, nudged the camera out of the way and forcibly shoved her head beneath my hand--she wanted me to stroke her head. The photo above is Truffle in mid-nudge of the camera. I stroked her face and ears for quite some time. This is such a well mannered bunny, it is a matter of time before she will get a home. You don't often find cuddly bunnies like this.

Distrusting bunnies. This was a bonded pair of angora rabbits. I can't find their profiles on either the GVHS or the MCRS pages, I wonder if they are new? The little gray guy was recently shaved and is very curious and gregarious, the white puffball was more shy but did welcome some head scratching. The suspicious look these two gave me reminded me of introducing myself to the person running the adoption event. I had on a Disapproving Rabbit shirt but if you haven't seen the site, it's really hard to explain. I asked if I could take photos for the website and she looked cautious and asked, "And what do you do with the photos?"

"I take photos and then put up captions on what the rabbits don't approve of you doing, like I don't approve of what you do outside." I answered.

The woman still looked unsure but luckily for me many of the volunteers at the event have seen the site and stood up for me. One guy even said the website was tasteful, so I was free to take photos at that point.

Here we have two dwarf rabbits named Lucy and Ricky who are naturals when it comes to disapproval. Dwarf rabbits are great--permanently tiny and cute bunnies. But don't let the tiny size fool you, Lucy lifted the corner of the litter box more than once.

This willful little thing is named Oreo--very playful and full of energy. Oreo is bonded with Carmel and I tried to get some tag team disapproval but they seemed more interested in mischief. I finally decided to take a photo of them individually. As I would be concentrating on Carmel, Oreo would sneak behind me and yank one of the belt loops on my pants. Very much like Cinnamon buttheadery.

Here is a very young male named Alfred. He's only eleven weeks old but already he can disapprove of what I'm doing while simultaneously cleaning his toes. Can't you just hear him say in a French accent, "I don't approve of how you smell. My toes smell better than you, you peasant."

Interesting to note that the bunnies I photographed earlier this month, Serena and Buster have already found permanent homes. Whoot! Hope these other bunnies find the same soon too. The MCRS did a great job of running the event. The bunnies were getting lots of attention and lots of exercise. One dedicated volunteer was taking the time to keep all the angoras in good coat condition, and all the socializing they do really shows with these rabbits.

Generally Awesome Bird Trip

Saturday morning Non Birding Bill and I were two ships passing in the night. Friday night, he went to his show opening. He mentioned that there would probably be some sort of cast party. I told him that since I needed to be up at 5am and I would decline the invitation. I went to bed at a sensible time and fell asleep. I woke when I heard Bill come in to the bedroom from his party. I rolled over to check the time and saw it was 4:30am--I was getting up in a half hour.

Here is a photo of the oh-so-slippery Hedbom Road in Aitkin County, Minnesota. I say slippery because on the field trip yesterday I was stepping out of the van and fell ass over tea kettle right on the road, bouncing my rib cage off of the door. In my effort to recover what little of my dignity I had left, I scurried to the back of the van to grab the scope and banged it right into my face--giving em a lovely gash on my gums and chin. Fortunately, the birds more than made up for my clumsiness and really nothing says "great bird trip" like some bruises.

Right before we made it to Hedbom Road, we were admiring some black-billed magpies when the group ran into Kim Risen, publisher and editor of Nature Scape News. When I went to his site to link up to him for this entry, I found that I had an article up there on bird feeding, whoot! I forgot about that one. Kim told us that he'd had just seen some great gray owls and great woodpeckers at Hedbom and we should get over there.

Hedbom has been great for northern woodpeckers like this female black-backed woodpecker above. These birds just don't care about people. The group stopped when we saw here at eye level about 10 feet in front of us. After several photos she flew over the group and landed on a tree right behind us busily pecking away for food.

The highlight for me was seeing a male three-toed woodpecker, I've never seen one before and this guy put on quite a show. I digiscoped this image using a Nikon Coolpix 4500 and a Swarovski ATS 80 HD scope.

Stan Tekiela led the trip with me. Here he is showing the group what the woodpeckers found so tasty in the trees on Hedbom.

You can see where the bark has been peeled away by the woodpeckers to reveal the tunnelings of beetle larvae.

Look at that teeny tiny larvae in Stan's palm--that's what the peckers are after. All that work for that tiny, squirming bit of protein.

We also went to see a northern hawk owl that's been seen this winter outside of the Coffee Cabin in Duluth. One of the best parts of the trip was getting to spend the day with HellZiggy and Hasty Brook (who spotted a grouse high up in the tree during the trip). HellZiggy got some great shots of the birds and you can view the gallery here and her shots of the hawk owl are better than mine. The batteries in my camera were not interested in functioning in the zero degrees.

Everyone had packed a lunch and I had a big bag of candy for some snacking. Many of us were ready for something salty after all those sweets. The last half hour of the trip home had great conversation:

-Various recipes that include bacon
-What foods will you absolutely not eat
-If you're on a deserted island with no food, I'm apparently the one to kill and eat first
-Headcheese

Needless to say some of us were in dire need of a good salty dinner and headed to Outback when we got home. It was fun to hang out with so many bloggers.

Man, I am exhausted. Yesterday was some hard core birding and today I took a bunch bunny photos at an adoption event at the Golden Valley Humane Society. I don't know if I'm awake enough to post those photo tonight. I'm having enough trouble trying to find a way to end this entry.

Curiouser and Curiouser...

BirderBlog reports that the comments for the Walda Cameron essay on why she illegally shot a cardinal have disappeared. Is this because there were so many it over loaded the comments page? If you look at the other My Turn essays the comments are very low from 2 comments to 5 comments to 15 to one particular essay that was up several days earlier and had worked its way up to 70 comments. Last I checked the cardinal killing essay was well past 120 comments in only two days.

Maybe it was because there were so many comments taking Newsweek to task for printing the essay? Could it have been all the comments proclaiming subscription cancellations? Maybe there is actually an investigation going on by US Fish and Wildlife? Maybe some of the fighting has gotten dirty and personal? Goodness knows I've had to delete a few comments in the last two days.

Hmmmmmmmmmm.

Relaxation

"Hey, you two on the couch, stop that! I don't approve of what you're doing."

Oh, bunny disapproval! Today was a GREAT day, Non Birding Bill took the day off from his job and we had a work day together--he's been instrumental in helping compile all the photos for the Disapproving Rabbits book. We ran errands and just took it easy. I wish I could see his show opening tonight, but I'm meeting Stan at 6:30am for our trip up north tomorrow. He said our trip is sold out, which is very exciting. Hopefully Saturday night or Sunday morning I'll have some photos of rosy-finches, great gray owls, black-backed woodpeckers and other boreal specialties. Whoot! Today I loaded up on some chocolate and some bunny grams to snack on for the trip. Double Whoot.

Birders Get Hosed!

Unfortunate typo in the headline here.

A Little More Cleansing

My side of the bed has the window at the head of it--I like it that way. But every night this week, my pillow gets frozen stuck to it.

Non Birding Bill is in tech rehearsals for Cyrano de Bergerac. I love that he acts, I love that I get to watch him on stage--tech rehearsal week--I don't love so much. NBB pretty much goes from work to rehearsal and then I don't see him until close to midnight. I suppose this is similar to when I'm away at a bird festival or tour. At least I see him in the morning when I make him a big breakfast to start his day.

I think between NBB's absence, that stupid cardinal story, and the notice that a friend has passed that my glass is feeling half empty. Whenever I get to this point, it never ceases to amaze me that life will offer a refill.

First, it came in the mail. I got the current issue of the Living Bird from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. On the cover is a juvenile northern goshawk--my favorite raptor. Nothing cheers me up like a gos!

When I finally finished drinking in the cover, I came across an article of a friend with a photo of her as a young girl. Any guesses on who this is?

After that, a packaged arrived full of Swarovski samples. It's a great day when you have so many Swarovski bins in the home at once, I threw a party. It was a high brow affair, martinis all around.

I think NBB's show opens Friday night, but I won't be able to see it because I'm leading a trip early the next morning. I will probably go see it on Valentine's Day. Cyrano is a great date play--not to mention a good lesson learned as to why you should write your own love letters.

Must See Owl TV

Thanks to Veronica B. for showing me this link to some cool great horned owl video stream. For fun, watch the fast motion video of the female creating the nesting scrape and incubating.

This is a nice view since the Valmont Owl Cam is just teasing us right now.