The news buzzing around on the interwebs is that a birder in Massachusetts has been arrested while he was birding. The email recounting the birder's plight can be found on the New Jersey birding listserv.
The birder claims he was birding in Rumney Marsh and someone from one of the houses next to the marsh called police because they thought the guy with binoculars was looking at their house. The birder then claims that after he left the marsh, police arrested him despite his claims of birding because the police said that there are no birds around in winter. The birder's binoculars were confiscated as evidence and the birder also has charges of resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer.
I wasn't there, I have no idea if this is an example or police brutality or a lippy birder but it does make me think of all the times birders risk being mistaken for some sort of peeping tom or potential thief. Non Birding Bill and I have had an interesting week of tv watching the old Adam-12 series (pictured above) followed by a few episodes of The Wire. Two radically different police shows. Are the police all Reed and Malloys or are they all Bunk and McNultys? Somewhere in the middle would guess.
I think this story is a good reminder that as a birder, we can't just bound onto property or aim our scopes and binoculars in someone's yard and hope that when you reveal yourself as a bird watcher everyone will roll their eyes, call out, "Nerd Alert," and let you be.
I think this story is a good reminder that if we want to keep enjoying our hobby and passion--especially in any area where there is a house, we have to be diplomats whether we like it or not. We have to understand that there are going to be police who have no clue about Christmas Bird Counts, robins who spend the winter with us, Project Feeder Watch, airport snowy owls and all the other activities that we love.
I'll be heading to Atlanta for the birding trade show called Bird Watch America tomorrow looking for the latest and greatest in new birding products. I'll also dip my toe into the ginormous AmericasMart because I suspect quite a few birding vendors are hiding there. I'll probably do quite a bit of preview photos through Twitter if you would like to follow or check that out between blog posts.
My buddy Kirk who is behind the blog Twin Cities Naturalist and I were talking bird feeders last night. I was out getting photos of some of the feeders in my OpenSky store. We started talking about the Yankee Whipper, a feeder I've had great success with that he said had a design flaw. Surprised, I asked what he meant and he sent me this video he aptly titled: Squirrel Abs of Steel.
I think if that's how I had to eat, my abs would rival Shakira's. Yikes.
I had a meeting yesterday morning and while I was out and about, I stopped at Elm Creek Park for a few minutes just to soak up some birds. I won't have time to do much of any birding in Atlanta--it's all about the bird product. The tree sparrows were the largest numbers I've seen all winter.
And boy were they feisty with each other. The nature center does a good job of putting food out, but with our sub zero temperatures freezing the snow solid, easily available food is rare and birds will fight for the best access to the food source.
Speaking of winter survival, Cornell's Celebrate Urban Birds is hosting a contest. They are asking for people to send in photos, drawings, sculpture, video, story, poem--or anything creative to show how birds survive winter in urban environments.
How about this: it preys on hummingbirds! Below is a video from the FatBirder Channel on YouTube. It's a bird called a Tiny Hawk (Accipiter superciliosus) and it is about 8 inches long. To give you an idea, a robin that you would see in your backyard in North America averages about ten inches. Cardinal average about 8.75 inches. To give you an even bigger idea, the hawk in the video below is eating a hummingbird called a white-necked jacobin!
Don't worry, the video is not that gross and is very cool. Be sure to check out the other videos at FatBirders's YouTube Channel.
1. Strange because the newscaster refers to the birds as seagulls (oh BBC, I expected so much more from you).
2. It's a story about gulls tearing pieces of flesh of the backs of live whales that surface the water.
On the one hand, you have to admire a creature's ability to be adaptable and find an ample food source, especially such a comparatively small aerial animal feeding off of such a large marine mammal. But on the other had, it's a scary testament of how imbalances occur at the expense of other creatures by human habits.
A big thanks to Non Birding Bill for filling for a day. I had a moment of panic. Every year, my agent sends me a nice card with a note of a charity that received a donation in my name for Christmas. This year, I didn't get a card. I kind of panicked. I have an author friend who had a GREAT book agent. She wrote a very successful book that won awards and then began working on her next book. Working on that next book went one year, into two years, well on it's way into a third year. And then one day, her agent dropped her. I had no idea an agent could drop you.
When I didn't get a card, I had a moment of, "Oh crap, I'm gonna get dropped!"
I buckled down and worked a fourth draft of the bee book I've been working on the last year and a half. In the middle of all of this on Christmas Eve, we received a lovely box from my book agent that included lots of lovely cookies. I suspect that I'm not getting dropped, but nothing like a healthy dose of fear to get a writer to finish something. I suspect I have more tweaking to do with this draft, but it's shaping up to be quite the story and incredibly different than anything I've written before.
I finished the draft right before New Year's and decided I needed to do some birding New Year's Day. For the past few years, we have camped out at Mr. Neil's for New Year's and I have a leisurely morning of watching winter birds from the kitchen window on January 1. This year, Mr had incredibly exciting plans for bringing in the New Year in Boston with his special lady friend (as opposed Doctor Whoing in the New Year with NBB and myself) so we chilled with friends in our neighborhood (and I mean chilled literally, I don't think it's been above zero since the New Year began--on the upside, lots of coffee and snuggling for me--whoot).
I thought I would start the New Year with an owl and headed to the screech-owl spot but that bird was tucked someplace warmer. I've tried several times for a snowy owl at the Minneapolis/St Paul Airport and have come up empty every time, it was no different January 1, perhaps no snowy there this year? I then went to Big Willow Park which has been good for northern saw-whet owls in the past and could find no sign of an owl. It was not the most pleasant temperature for hiking so perhaps I wasn't giving it the try I normally would. I finally decided to go for some birds that I know I would see--the crow roost in Loring Park. I texted Non Birding Bill and asked if he wanted to come with me (the crows meet his requirements: big, obvious, easy to see). I grabbed him and we followed the lines of crows heading towards the roost in late the afternoon.
In the winter, as afternoons start to fade, you might notice lines of crows flying towards a central location. The lines will come from all directions towards a central spot. Crows are flying from all over to a central night roost location. Studies suggest that crows will fly as far as 20 miles from their roost spot foraging for food during the day. Then in late afternoon, they fly back to the roosting spot. A roost could have literally thousands of birds gathering to it. I'm not sure of the exact numbers of the Minneapolis roost, but it would not surprise me if it went past 100,000 crows.
The crows are all over Loring Park and along the bike path near the new Twins Stadium. I think the crows chose the southern part of downtown Minneapolis for a roost because there would not be as many natural predators. Also, an irritated farmer couldn't shoot at any of the crows to drive them away. This roost still has at least one predator to worry about--great horned owls. They start their breeding season in Minnesota now. You can bet your bippy that a great horned will take a crow or two on the outside of the roost this time of year. It's one of the reasons they attack owls during the day.
As we watched the amazingly huge sheer number of crows, it struck me that this was incredibly similar to watching the sandhill cranes coming in to roost on the Platte River in Nebraska. I wonder why some birders (including myself) place such a mystical value on cranes but not crows. I'm not anti-crow, but I've noticed this roost before, have always that, "Yeah, I need to check this out," but never do. Yet, I've invested a lot of money in 9 or 10 trips to Nebraska--I've even taken others. I've frozen my tookus off at dawn in a blind and yet, here's this cool gathering of birds practically in my backyard that I can watch from the warmth of my vehicle or from one of the many eateries or bars in downtown Minneapolis. Perhaps I am like the locals in Kearney, NE who smile thinly and say, "Oh, yeah," when you tell them how excited you are about their 40,000 sandhill cranes.
I think I'll schedule the January Birds and Beers someplace in Loring Park so we can watch the roost. The parking might be a bit trickier, but we'll have one heck of a show with all the crows coming in. They should keep coming until their breeding season kicks in in March. I've never paid attention, but I wonder if the roost gradually disperses over a period of weeks or if the break up of the winter roost happen rather quickly as pairs set up territories?
NBB and I tried to get some video of the crows so you could hear them (and the traffic) and get an idea of the size of the roost. This isn't even half of the roost:
Here's another video near Dunwoody of crows staging. It's the sound of all the crows that you can't see that amazes me:
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UPDATE: Commenter Ren has this video of the same crows flying in to the roost. This video was taken from an apartment building looking down on the crows coming in to the Minneapolis Roost. It's a very cool view!
