Birdchick Blog
I found some interest road kill just now on my bird surveys. Let's use it as a contest! The first person to correctly id the bird in the comment section of this post based on these photos wins a giant loon coffee travel mug.
And here is what the other side looks like:
Most of the fields in my survey area have been cut and plowed (which has really wrecked my bathroom plans). At one spot a female downy woodpecker has been systematically work the corn stubble.
She must have been getting something out of there, she worked the stubble piece by piece the two days I was there. She wouldn't stay if she wasn't getting a good food benefit from it. She would peck open the cracks to make them larger and stick her tongue inside.
Here's a shot where you can get an idea of how long a woodpecker's tongue is (for more on woodpecker tongues click here). She actually had it wedged in the stalk but only for a few seconds. And then she continued on to the next stalk.
It was interesting to see a bird finding benefit in the stubble. I also wonder if there was some bug that moved in to the stalk after harvest or if there was some bug in there and the farmer had a low yield to his crop.
Man the final stages of fall migration have set in. Today on my eagle survey I had a flock of tundra swans fly over me. It was really cool because the were headed towards the Mississippi River and I realized that chances were good that the would be included on my aerial waterfowl surveys next week.
There are still plenty of eastern bluebirds around and I find it amazing that I can see the above bird in the field and take a photo and send it to the blog all via the iPhone.
This is a real shame. I had hoped that this story was false but it appears that Nico Dauphiné, former researcher at the Smithsonian National Zoo's Migratory Bird Center has been found guilty of misdemeanor attempted cruelty to animals for sprinkling poison atop cat food intended for feral cats living in Washington, D.C. This does nothing to reach some sort of reasonable understanding with the misguided yet well intentioned cat lobbyists. Non native cats living in feral colonies is habitat destruction by humans. Cats living in the environment are the same as birds hitting windows or someone bulldozing nesting and feeding habitat.
There's a reward for creating Bird Friendly Glass!
Paraglider ran into a griffon vulture (ignore how the "news" calls it an eagle, it totally is NOT). Both survive!
Micro batch bird seed. You can even create your own. But the really interesting thing is that they are outing pesticide companies who carry seed for wild birds.
Dude creates a website to track road kill in California and Maine. I so want to do this with my smart phone! Here's a link to Wildlife Crossing.
About 10 eagles crowded around a carcass. Observed during one of my many bird surveys this fall. This was digiscoped close to dawn.
Texas couple ignore warnings to evacuate their home during wildfires and feed hundreds of hummingbirds. Birding the Net, the Audubon-sponsored campaign that has thousands of people scouring the Internet for birds, is benefitting from the largesse of more than 100 websites — including AOL, Slate, and Discovery Channel — that have donated a combined $700,000 in prime ad space for the imaginative and engaging project.
500 birds died at West Virgina wind farm. Jim McCormac says they were mostly blackpoll warblers.
Fascinating story from Audubon about a wood thrush banded in Nicaragua that was found dead in Pennsylvania.
There's a new book coming Pale Male and the Infertile Girl...
Do birds have grammatical structure?
Oh, Pine Tree Farms, what were you thinking when coming up with product names? Nutsie? Log Jammers? Oy.
Prizes to be given away in this podcast:
So the Federal Duck Stamp contest is going on today and well this one is the best and weirdest.
I almost peed my pants watching this video this morning. It is HIGHlarious! Stick with it, things get interesting at the 20 second mark and end up amazing at the end. Herons are awesome and kudos to my buddy Clay Taylor for an excellent capture of this behavior. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoPGGTitNbU[/youtube]
And that's a young heron finessing its technique! You can still see downy feathers!
Birds are awesome, that is all.
Two VERY interesting articles on my list this week. One from the American Birding Association's publication called Winging It. Go to the Winging It page and click on Vol 23, no. 5 and look for Birding With A Conscience. Also, check out this article on Birding While Black--Does It Really Matter? He was part of the Focus on Diversity birding conference. You can watch some of the speakers here.
Fidelity Exploration & Production Co., of Denver agreed to plead guilty and pay a $1,500 fine for killing a solitary sandpiper that was found in a waste pit during drilling operations in western North Dakota.
When I was in North Dakota this past June with fellow bird bloggers we saw the above oiled duck (I think it's an oiled pintail). I'm now wondering if was oiled in similar circumstances and wish we'd documented it better. It was far away on private property and mobile enough to get away from us. There was no safe way to retrieve it, but wish I documented it better.
Human encroachment on the Tundra (like oil refineries) are creating an imbalance in the predator/prey balance.
From Nature Canada, Birds at Risk: The Importance of Canada’s Boreal Wetlands and Waterways: "The North American boreal forest supports more than 50 percent of the global populations of 96 bird species, including landbirds, shorebirds, and waterbirds.10 The boreal is critical to the majority of iconic species such as the Common Loon, Whooping Crane, Canada Warbler, and White-throated Sparrow."
And if you don't understand why the tar sands are a bad idea, take a look at this before and after photo of what happens to the area when they go in for the oil. This is terrible land stewardship, short-sighted and a terrible option.
And now a really cleansing link:
I came across this photo from my trip to North Dakota with some birding friends last June and it reminded me--Thursday at 6pm is the next Birds and Beers at Merlin's Rest!
I can neither confirm nor deny that this photo has anything to do with the previous blog entry about my broken camera...
Birds and Beers is a friendly gathering of birders of all abilities to gather, have a beverage and talk some birds. Looking for volunteers for a birding project? Wanna promote your birding blog or field trip business? Just want to meet some other birders and maybe find a friend to go birding with? Have questions about how to attract birds in your yard? Have you ever noticed a bird at all? This is the group for you!
