Birdchick Blog
Well, no lampshades on the head yet at Wild Birds Unlimited Vendormart so instead, I offer strange photos of me from the ABA Convention that fellow bloggers are posting:
Me eating lobster or eating donuts or eatingwhile driving at Wild Bird on the Fly blog.
Me getting close to a lobster with Wild Bird on the Fly at Bill of the Birds blog.
What is it with me and food?
Here is Cindy with our completed Eagle Optics booth! We just learned this morning that our new Ranger SRTs were voted a “Hot Product Pick”. Whoot!
Oh how handy! Adventure Publications (who are debuting an awesome new loon book--amazing photos and loon cd--just loon sounds and nature to relax to), the people who publish my calendars has a booth right across from the Eagle Optics booth at Wild Birds Unlimited Vendormart! So, being the shameless self-promoter I am, I have been sure to note name tags and store locations. Any store I see in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois or Indiana gets the pitch.
“Oh, I see your store is in Indiana. Did you see that calendar across the way? It’s got Indiana bird information and trivia and it’s written by one of our staff so it has to be good!”
Shameless, I know. I’m not just out for me. Houghton Mifflin is kitty corner so I of course have popped over and promoted Letters from Eden too. That is a great book, I had the pleasure of reading half of it at the Bangor Airport when Northwest Airlines’ computer system quit working for an hour. Right now, my mother is reading it while I’m working, I’ll probably have to finish it on my flight home on Thursday.
Speaking of things Thompson, the Bird Watcher’s Digest booth is just to our left. I stopped by to say hello to Elsa, Andy and Nat. No BT3 at this one, he’s home sensibly resting. I did however get to see a new side to Thompson family talent. I was aware of the writing, artistry and music, but I was not prepared for this feat. Here is young Nat rockin’ this odd ear trick of shoving his outer ear into his inner ear:
Before:
Yeeeah! It's incredibly disturbing, yet I can't look away. And with a quick blink of his eyes, here comes the after (you have to watch him do it, because he can do it so fast. If you blink you miss the ear popping out):
Hm. Who knew? There appears to be a hint of carny in this family. If anyone attending Vendormart is reading this blog, stop by the Bird Watcher's Digest booth and have some chocolate and ask to see this. It's...well it just has to be experienced.
Some my have heard me poking fun of Tilley hats. I think they had an ad campaign saying they were durable and stylish (I had issues with the stylish aspect). They have some new models, you be the judge:
Hm, I wonder if this hat will inspire Non Birding Bill to sing the Tom Jones version of "You Can Leave Your Hat On?"
This one reminds me of Duran Duran circa "Her Name is Rio and she Dances on the Sand."
More product photos coming in the next day or so...Woodlink is working to be more colorful and arty with their feeders. The ones they debuted in January at Birdwatch America were...odd (orange with yellow and green polka dots just reminded me of the morning after of a frat party). But here it looks like they've gone back to the drawing board and come up with some very creative feeders. Here's a hint:
This, I like. It's modern, stylish finch feeder. Go, Woodlink, for pushing those creative boundaries!
I'm apologizing for typos up front, I'm stealing wireless at a hotel near Mom's house and must be quick. I have the go ahead for the vendormart updates and those will start on Monday. I did find a company that makes these intriguing bird whistles, including a whistle for a great tit. They got nervous when I wanted to take a photo and didn't like the idea of me putting in the blog but I'll work on them some more tomorrow. I think I may have come off a little strong when critiquing the authenticity of some of their North American bird calls. Curse me and my overwhelming need to correct bird inaccuracy. It can prevent me from making friends.
I am having a great time meeting bird owners from around the country. I'm keeping tabs on names and states. There are a few owners that I've talked to that I can see just have the spark and knack for running great stores and want to check them out when my travels bring them my way.
That's our Vortex crew at the ABA Convention. We have from left Bruce Mercer, Don Stokes, Lillian Stokes, me and some excited customers trying out the Stokes line of binoculars.
I am often asked what are the best bird festivals to go to. The answer depends on many factors and I have a top five that I recommend, one being an ABA Convention. I admire the folks that run the ABA. A festival in the same town year after year is tough enough to pull off. But doing a festival in a different city and state every year is a monumental challenge. Do things go wrong on an ABA convention? Yes, sometimes they do, but the staff is very responsive and dedicated to giving participants all the bang for the buck that they can. If you are looking for great birds and top guides this is the place to go. You get some of the best local and international guides on these trips and they work and bend over backwards to get you the birds. It’s also the best place to network and meet well known authors and artists. If anyone is remotely planning on trying to get a job in the birding industry (birding not bird feeding, there is a difference) this is the place to make your presence known.
There were twenty-five bird authors at the ABA all set up at a big table for autographs! That's a lotta writers crammed into one room. Here we have Steve Howell who helped illustrate the Pyle book I was so excited about (and also gave me a shearwater head) and on the right is that big hunk of burnin' author of bird song, Don Kroodsma.
Here was another fun quote overheard at the convention: "Hey Lillian, you get him from the front and I'll get him from the back!" That was me shouting as I was grabbing a photo of the two of them. I have to say, I had a fun dinner with the Stokes during the convention. Of course, it's not hard to have a good time when lobster and a few beers are involved, but I discovered that we have something in common--we all like scotch--particularly 18 year old Glenfiddich! They already had cool points in my book, but that certainly advanced them several notches.
Here's Jan Pierson on the left laughing it up with Doug "he's really not a" Pratt. Jan went out with the karaoke posse, he didn't sing but lended lots of moral support. Poor Jan! The first time I met him, I think I came off a little crazed. It was during the part of the convention when I didn't have my chord for my Powerbook. That night he was supposed to give a Powerpoint presentation and I saw he had a Powerbook. I made a beeline for his dinner table and completely interrupted his conversation to beg to use his chord. He of course needed it for his presentation and I tried in vain to negotiate using it just during mealtime. I'm sure I came off as deranged as Elaine from Seinfeld when she was asking a lady in a fellow bathroom stahl if she could "spare a square".
Now, here's something interesting. All the authors were at one giant U shaped table setup, except for Pete Dunne (above). He had his own table. Does this mean Pete can't play nice? Or does it mean that he smells bad? No, this prolific guy has two new books out, one is his Essential Field Guide and the other is The Art of Pishing (a note to non birders, that book is not about wee, but about making a pish sound with your mouth to attract birds). Because Pete had two new books his table was extra busy and that was why he was separated, I've met him and I can say with authority he can be quite nice and smells pretty good.
That's a couple of female common eiders. If you look in back you can see a floating ball of puff--that an eider duckling!
I was just a zombie yesterday on my flight from Bangor to Indianapolis. All those late nights and 3:30am wake up calls at the ABA Convention had finally caught up to me. It also didn't help that I had one nasty canker sore on my tongue--in one of the worst spots too. It's right on the side in the back and no matter what I do, it rubs against my molars. It hurt to talk and especially eat. I used to get them constantly but thanks to my dentist I have eliminated the toothpaste and foods that trigger them, so I rarely have one. This one was the result of Jolly Rancher candies. I think some of them are flavored with pineapple which is a guaranteed canker sore for me and I remember absent mindedly eating a couple at the ABA.
By the time I arrived at my Mom's yesterday I was tired, hangry (hungry and angry) and just plain sore. Mom worked her magic: I got some good mouth numbing products on the sore, she made some of my favorite food (fried green tomatoes) and she did my laundry! Go Mom! Thanks! After finally getting a full eight hours sleep I am feeling human. From now on Mom goes on all my long trips.
This morning was such a treat. Instead of waking up to a double alarm of a hotel wake call and annoying clock radio, I woke up naturally to the sound of tufted titmice, Carolina wrens and cardinals.
I'll be getting more entries up soon. Mom doesn't have any internet whatsoever and I have to upload on the fly. I hope to have more up tonight.
I'm currently working a convention for Wild Birds Unlimited Stores. It's not open to the public so I don't know how much I can mention of what happens here, but I still have some fun stories from the ABA coming.
Yesterday on our field trip we were followed by a film crew from WGME. That's one of our field trip leaders, Steve Howell using a field guide to show Amy Sinclair and the camera man some of the birds we were seeing on the trip. Amy was wearing some, shall we say "antique" binoculars. I couldn't stand it and loaned her my 8x42 DLSs. I even put my harness on her so she could see how comfortable binoculars can be. She was really impressed with how well she could see through them. Perhaps we have converted her to birding? You can watch the segment here, just look for and click on "watch streaming video".
She came with us on a great day, people were getting their 500th or 600th bird. I loved finally being able to see the adorable piping plover (above) and we saw two unusual terns, an elegant tern and a gull-billed tern. Thanks, Amy for putting birds and birders in the news!
I owe Steve a huge debt of thanks. We found a dead sooty shearwater on the beach (above). Steve was having trouble getting his macro function to work on his camera and since I love taking photos of dead stuff, I was happy to oblige. This is a tough enough bird to see out on a boat in the middle of the ocean. You just don't get a chance to appreciate a shearwater in the hand very often. You can really see that tube nose and fabulous hooked bill.
The wings of the shearwater are very long and thin, perfect for it to fly right above the waves on the ocean. I have to mention that while I was taking all these photos and posing the bird, a little boy was hovering nearby. His mother saw it and said, "Don't touch, you shouldn't touch dead things." Of course, here I am with Steve doing everything but kissing the bird. You could see the little boy was barely able to keep himself from touching it and asking his mom why we were touching it. The mom couldn't come up with a good answer and probably suspected Steve and I were nuts and shooed the boy back to their spot on the beach.
Being an expert on seabirds, Steve opened the shearwater's mouth and showed us the jagged edges on the tongue and on the upper part of its mouth that are used to push slippery fish down into its crop. I was lamenting that I wanted the head for my collection of bird parts. Since I was kind enough to take photos for Steve, he was kind enough to release the head from its body and now I have a shearwater drying out in my room. Should be interesting getting that past airport security this weekend.
Today's pace was just nuts but I had to share this quote overheard at the convention:
"We're leaving today. We had to make a decision as to which meant more to us: a Bicknell's thrush or our grandson's high school graduation."
Also, I noticed that the National Geographic Handheld Guide to Birds now has an interactive website where you can test and play with the software. Another new feature is that it will now sync up with ebird.
I will have lot's of photos coming soon. Hopefully, I will get to upload and update them on Saturday.
Patrick Belardo of The Hawk Owls' Nest served up a World Cup-themed I and the Bird #26.
For those new to this blog, I and the Bird is a collection of great blog entries of bird themed blogs. Are you new to blogging? Are you in the mood to find some fun and new bird themed blogs, here's your chance to sample some of the finest!
Here is a special note from Mike Bergin of 10,000 Birds who founded I and the Bird:
As I mentioned in my previous missive, the next edition of I and the Bird marks the first anniversary of our happy carnival, a year of collective bird blogging greatness. To mark this milestone, I'm hosting the first themed edition of IATB. To participate, send me a link to a post you've written addressing at least one of these three burning questions: Why do you blog? Why do you bird? Why do you blog about birds?
This special edition is intended as a celebration of the amazing aggregate talent encapsulated in our last 26 installments and is therefore only open to previous participants. Also, only posts on why you blog, bird, or blog about birds will be included in this edition. I and the Bird #27 will appear on these pages on July 6, so get those links to me by Tuesday, July 4.
Since this is a bird blog, we need a bird photo. This is a chestnut-sided warbler digiscoped at Acadia. Sweet bird!
The really nice thing about American Birding Association Conventions is that you have field trips one day and workshops the next. It's nice, you don't have to worry if you're field trip bus is coming back late and you might miss a workshop. You can also run yourself totally ragged watching birds on the field trip day and then be laid back on the non field trip days. On workshop days I stay in the booth to help customers and today WildBird on the Fly at the Vortex booth joined me.
We got to meet the ABA Youth Birder of the Year, and for the life of me I can't remember his name, but he's a great young enthusiastic guy. That's Scott Cronenweth a Maine birding guide with him on the right.
I've been keeping tabs on interesting quotes we've have heard from people walking by the booth today. Here are the top five:
1. "I literally stepped into the shower with all the binoculars around my neck and then stood under the water. They were fine."
2. "Ugh. It's all coming back...this is why I said never again to a pelagic trip...(barf)"
3. "I was peeing when they found the boreal chickadee."
4. "Oh yeah, that's my future wife walkin' around over there."
5. "This is a birder's chance to mate. This convention is basically one big lek, now dance, prairie chicken, dance."
I have spent way too much money this week. I scored some great books, one being a field guide to birds of China that I have found in used bookstores. I've seen this book going for as much as $80 and I got this one for only $35. Score! The other book I was excited about was the Peter Pyle book, Identification Book of North American Birds. It's all about how to identify birds in the hand when you band them. It even teaches you how to age and sex chickadees, something you can only do in the hand. Here' s a quote from the book about eastern phoebes:
Skull--Pneumaticization completes in HY/SY from 15 Sept. Some SYs (and ASYs?) can retain windows at the rear of the skull through spring or summer.
Oh yeah, that's my kind of book! Seriously, that sentence is describing the development of air cells in bones at certain ages of the eastern phoebe. It mostly happens in the first and second year of the bird, usually by September 15.
Our booth is very popular, we have lens pens that we are selling through the ABA gift shop which can be a life saver when you are on the beach or pelagic trip and keep your glass nice and clear.
Round about three o'clock, I was needing a second wind. I was lamenting to WildBird on the Fly how much I could really use a cup of coffee. Then before I knew it, Rusty Harold (pictured above on the right) one of the convention participants walked by with a box of Dunkin' Donuts Coffee--it's really good coffee. He was kind enough to share it with me. Not only is this guy a software genius, but he's helpful to those in need of a caffeine fix. I was so grateful to him; it helped me get through the rest of the day. That coffee at 3pm is the second most important cup of the day!
At the end of the day, Amy and I went out with the Leica folks for some local lobsters. We had a great time sharing stories and spraying each other with hot lobster juice. I don't care how much finishing school you go through, there just isn't a graceful way to eat a lobster.
I got to spend some time with Bill Schmoker (pictured above). I was so glad to meet him, since I periodically link to some of his awesome photos in this blog. He looks much younger than I imagined him and I was surprised to learn that he is a middle school science teacher. I was so shocked, when I was in middle school the science teachers weren't cool at all, so Bill is a surprise.
While eating our lobster, Jeff Gordon (pictured above)--ever the naturalist and gourmand gave us a natural history lesson on how to sex our lobsters. I was pleased to discover with Jeff's coaching that I was eating both a male and a female lobster. Bill Schmoker was REALLY lucky, his female lobster was full of roe.
Tonight a group of us decided to catch up on some work at the lounge in our hotel. There were quite a few locals hangin' out. When we arrived the bartender excitedly asked us to show them the video clip of Richard Attenborough's Lyrebird from the Life of Birds series (if Birding is Not a Crime has already shown this, I apologize). Amy got this photo of me showing them the clip. The whole bar was silenced and entranced as they watched this incredible bird mimic not only other birds, but camera shutters, car alarms and chainsaws. If you have never seen the clip, watch the whole thing. It will blow your socks off. The bartender had seen all fo us birders watching it the night before and thought it was totally cool. She also looked at some digiscoped photos and was impressed by those. It wouldn't surprise me if we covert her to birding by the end of the week.
At the moment we are all awaiting the arrival of Bill of the Birds. He was supposed to be in around 9:30pm, but we've been tracking his flight delays. The last we checked, he was on a flight that was to leave at 9:44pm but according to the airline's website was still waiting on the tarmac. Poor guy. We're rooting for you Bill, hang in there.
Now, it's off to bed, tomorrow brings another field trip. It is a fun part of the job but its still work. I'm not just there to have a good time, I bring along some of our optics for people to use and test out. Even if you are not an official field trip leader you do end up helping id birds on these trips. I wasn't much help with the pelagic trip since I'm such a Midwesterner but tomorrow, the birds are more my speed.
Today was a triumph of the human spirit on many levels. First, I had to meet my field trip group at 3:30 am. That's not a typo folks, that is 3:30 in the am. I don't know how, but I managed to get my stuff together to meet the field trip.
When I met up with the group, I was reminded of a flock of blackbirds coming to roost. The hotel situation in Bangor, ME is a little wonky; we're spread out over three different hotels, and for some reason I'm at the hotel with all the field trip leaders and not participants/exhibitors, so I have to take a shuttle bus to meet the buses that take us on the field trips. When the shuttle bus arrived with all of us, there were about 250 birders waiting in that hotel parking lot. Our crowd joined them and we began milling about trying to figure how who was going on what bus.
Then, just like someone tossed out a peanut butter suet cake to a flock a starlings, someone opened up the breakfast boxes too early. The original plan was that we were to get our boxed breakfasts as we boarded our respective buses, but there appeared to be some sort of bus snafu going on. I'm not sure if someone in charge just left the breakfast boxes unattended and people started going for them or if someone in charge was worried the crowd was getting ugly and decided to throw food at us as a last means of defense.
Once we finally got on the road, things seemed to have calmed down. However, the adventure was just beginning. The sea was angry that day, my friends! I learned later on that our boat was the only one allowed on the water, the swells were six to eight feet and our tour group felt it. I would say that at least half the participants ended up barfing at some point from motion sickness. I don't know how I escaped it, I used a combination of Dramamine, ginger ale, oyster crackers, wristbands and focused on a fixed point on the horizon when I wasn't watching birds. I felt that I won the battle of the bilge. It wasn't easy, especially when they started chumming.
For those who don't know, chumming is tossing in smelly fish stuff to attract sea birds that have a terrific sense of smell. Our chum consisted of fish oil mixed with popcorn (the popcorn helps keep the oil at the surface of the water) and chunks of fish. Shearwaters and storm-petrels came right in.
The second floor of the boat was loaded with everyone who was feeling a tad queasy. I did find these two towards the end of the trip. They looked exhausted, happy about the birds they had seen and a tad in love...awwwwww.
I had a day I haven't had in ages! I got 13 life birds on one trip, I've never been on an eastern pelagic so it was easy to rack 'em up. So many birds were being seen in different directions, I didn't know which one to look at first. Behind me was a gannet, to the right of me was a shearwater and to the left was a razorbill. AAAAARGH! Sensory overload.
Needless to say that in high swells, getting photos of the birds is challenging to say the least. Okay, this isn't anything to write home about, but the above photos is a souvenier to remember puffins and razorbills.
Here are a couple of razorbills flying by. I really enjoyed those birds more than I thought I would. I was ready to go away from this trip with puffins being my favorite birds, but I couldn't take my binos off of the razors.
It was a great day of birding, well worth the early morning rising. One thing about ABA trips, you get your money's worth with birds. The trip leaders are generally top notch and often there are so many leaders on one trip, you can pick the personality you're most comfortable with and hang with them for the day. I chose Jim Danzenbaker, not only because he's a great birder, but because he had a whole Richard Dreyfuss look (from the Jaws movie era) going on. After returning from the trip at 3:30 pm (12 hours after we started) I headed to the vendor area that was opening up at 4pm to work the binocular booth until the banquet at 6pm. Am I bushed? You betcha. Was it a great day? Totally. Did it make up for the Legionnaire incident? So, so very much!
Thanks to Non Birding Bill and his mad shipping skills, I have a power chord for my Mac. Insert huge sigh of relief. Of course, now that I have it, many birders with Macs are arriving to the ABA Convention. Ah, life.
Now a bunch of us birders are kickin' it in the hotel lounge swapping bird stories. There are at least three bloggers here: Me, Wild Bird on the Fly, and JeffGyr. Word on the street is that Bill of the Birds is arriving tomorrow so the convention should be well covered on the bird blogs.