Wild Birds Unlimited's Wildlife Blend Recalled In Some States

The North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services' Food and Drug Protection Division issued a statement that Burkmann Feeds is voluntarily recalling a seed blend that they make for Wild Birds Unlimited called Wildlife Blend, due to concerns over deaths of wild birds due to salmonella.

The bags carry the manufacturing date code of 81132200291608124.

You can read more at MSNBC and Wild Birds Unlimited has issued a press release.

“Wild Birds Unlimited is committed to keeping everyone safe and informed about issues that may affect the hobby of bird feeding,” said Jim Carpenter, founder and president of Wild Birds Unlimited. “People’s safety and the health of wildlife are our primary concern.”

The press release went on to say that initial tests have established no correlation between any bird deaths and the recalled food; a different strain of Salmonella was found in deceased birds in North Carolina than what was detected in the recalled food.

Customers who purchased WBU Wildlife Blend or WBU Woodpecker Blend are advised to contact their local Wild Birds Unlimited to determine if their product was manufactured by Burkmann Feeds and is part of this recall. Recalled products should be discarded. Consumers are also advised to avoid touching unsealed product and to wash their hands thoroughly after touching any unsealed product. A full replacement, credit or refund for these recalled Burkmann Feeds products will be made available at the store of purchase.

You can read the full press release here.

This is also a good reminder to keep your bird feeding area clean, especially with the influx of large flocks of pine siskins and common redpolls. Dirty feeders do more damage to birds than not putting any food out at all.

San Diego Digiscoping

Back to more fun at the San Diego Bird Festival! Last time I talked about all the wood duck action at Santee Lakes. I did get quite a few photos of wood ducks, but the main bird species seen at Santee Lakes (and my hotel) was the American coot. While we were at Santee, families came to "feed the ducks." I thought about pointing out that they were actualely "feeding the rails" but abstained. The coots get an odd diet of bread and I even watched a kid toss them some gummy bears. Perhaps gummy bears are kind of like the aquatic insects and animals they are supposed to eat?

Santee Lakes is a beautiful little chain of lakes. The palm trees were a welcome site to this Minnesota girl. The San Diego Bird Festival originally was held in January. Last year they were kicking around the idea of moving to March. Someone asked, "Who wants to come to California in March, when it's practically spring?" I added my two cents worth by saying in my area of the US, it's still very much winter in March--and it is. As I type this, it's five degrees in Minnesota.

A treat for me was being able to watch ring-necked ducks up close and not freezing my tail off! Some readers of this blog may remember a series of photos I put in the blog last year from my buddy Clay Taylor of a ring-necked duck trying to swallow a snail. Clay got that footage here at Santee Lakes.

whaaaaat?

We were so close, we could kind of see the ring around the neck for which the duck was named...again, those wacky ornithologists naming a bird for a hard to see feature and some something obvious like ring-billed duck.

Keeping with the theme of ultra-mellow birds, our group found a rather easy going pied-billed grebe. In many places, you so much as make one furtive sidelong glance and they dive. Not this grebe, it went as far as to go into a ten minute preening session.

Then came the stare down. It was fun and I never really noticed the black chin on a pied-billed grebe before.

There were some ruddy ducks out on the lakes too--but they were much more camera shy, or just tired. Many of the males with the bluest bills were more interested in sleeping and preening. I started to video a male as he was swimming around and towards the end of it, he started doing his mating dance--he raises his tail and two little tufts on his head. He creates some bubbles underneath his body and then slaps his bill against his chest several times while making To attract a female the male swims around her, his tail tilted forward and neck outstretched. He then slaps his chestnut-colored chest with his bright blue bill while making his courtship call. The video didn't capture the call, but you can hear it at Xeno-canto. Here's the video:

The park is used by several members of the public, it's not a quiet park, but there's room for everybody from birders, duck feeders and people who like to go fishing. As we were working the lakes for digiscoping, there was a guy who was fishing--his line even got stuck in the tree and Clay helped him get it out. But we birders must have out stayed our welcome because he started to complain about us. I heard him behind me mutter to his friend, "I think watching birds is stupid, you can just go to the pet store and buy them. Why don't these people go and just buy some birds and leave us alone."

Irritated that he was complaining about us, even after Clay had helped him, I started to defend our group by saying, "You can't buy these birds in a pet store."

And he retorted, "Yes you can, bird watching is stupid."

I turned to look at him and he was not facing me.

But based on what I saw, I chose not to engage any further with a man whose butt was hanging out of his trousers. Perhaps he is not the world's authority on whether or not bird watching is stupid.

I was grateful when a western scrub-jay popped up as a nice cleansing bird.

Upcoming Digiscoping Workshop

Hey, any people from my hometown in Indianapolis free on Sunday, March 29, 2009? I'm doing a digiscoping workshop at Eagle Creek Park right after the Sunday morning bird walk!

The bird walk starts at 9am (there's a fee to enter the park, but the walk and digiscoping workshop are free) and then I'll do a brief powerpoint showing my photos (the good, the bad, the downright weird). The workshop will most likely start at 11:30am (or when the walk is finished). I'll show you how to do digiscoping, help you where I can with your equipment and afterward, we'll put it to practice. Bring your equipment or if you don't have it yet, but you are thinking of getting started, bring your digital camera or your scope and we'll look them over and see what would work best for you.

Digiscoping is a fun way to get souvenier photos of birds at the feeder or on bird walks!

Upcoming Birds & Beers

The next Birds and Beers is scheduled for March 19, 2009 at 6pm at Merlin's Rest.

Birds and Beers is an informal gathering of birders of all abilities--if you're interested in birds, you're invited. You can meet other birders--maybe find a carpool buddy, ask about where to find target birds, share cool research projects you might be working on, ask a bird feeding question, share life lists, share some digiscoping tips, promote your blog--the sky is the limit. It's low key and it's fun.

San Diego Wood Ducks

Well, the San Diego Bird Festival put on by the San Diego Audubon Society has wound down to a a close and it was an action packed festival from workshops, to games to, movie sneak preview to even David Sibley himself. One of the field trips I went on was with my buddy Clay and it was in depth digiscoping. He did a class (above) and the next day he took a group out for field trip that was geared to getting shots of birds in great light. I must admit, it was a refreshing change for me, to just be able to go on a field trip and really take time with birds, not just go out and tick off as many species as possible. We went to Santee Lakes for part of it and I was going over my photos, I noticed I had several shots of wood ducks!

The wood ducks were used to people coming around to feed them. As I was standing on a bridge looking out at the waterfowl, this male wood duck swam up and gave me an expectant look. I didn't even need to use the digiscoping equipment, he was too close. He stared momentarily and when I failed to produce anything remotely resembling food, he moved on looking for accommodating human.

Everyone in our group found a drowsy adult male wood duck on which to practice their digiscoping mojo. Another case of a bird behaving differently in another state. Wood ducks in Minnesota are rather cagey, but have a friendlier attitude in sunny San Diego.

As we were taking his photo, he suddenly perked up. You can't see in the photo, but not too far in front of him, a pair of wood ducks is waddling by. He started doing his wood duck whistle. As the pair continued without paying him too much mind, he started to settle back down on one foot, but still continued to whistle. I took a video. You'll hear Clay talking in the background as well as a great-tailed grackle:

Did you catch the size of that great-tailed grackle walking behind the wood duck?

I think this is my favorite of all of them. I love head-on shots of birds. More San Diego Bird Fest fun (and Guatemala) is on the way.

Ghost Bird Preview

Here are just some initial notes about the sneak preview of the documentary about the Ivory-billed Woodpecker phenom shown at the San Diego Bird Festival:

It's more about the human side of the story, how the rediscovery and promotion of the IBWO mirrors the fate of Brinkley, AR.

Cornell Lab of Ornithology is kind of missing from the movie--the official statement is because Cornell "their people" to not participate in being interviewed.

The movie doesn't focus on whether or not the IBWO sighting was a hoax, but focuses more on the lack of concrete proof and the media attention surrounding it.

I found some of the scenes where Brinkley, AR locals were interviewed for the movie came off like Christoper Guest characters and I felt a pang of guilt when they were laughed at.

Jerome Jackson showed up last minute to be part of the panel discussion.

I had fun picking out people I know shown in the background of the movie. People like Steve Moore and Pete Dunne.

More on this when I'm not suffering from field trip fatigue. Here's a link to the trailer.