Obligatory Snowy Owl Post

Hey! Have you checked out Project Snowstorm or contributed to it? You should donate because your money allows researchers to study an owl irruption in a way we've never been able to before--in real time rather than spending the next two years trying to figure out what happened, why it happened and if the owls survived. I gave $25, can you do the same? How about $10 or more? But if you can't donate, check out what they are learning...like maybe these owls aren't all starving to death and that some are even hunting ducks over open water at night! Amazeballs!

If you live in the eastern half of North America...it's kind of your duty to post about snowy owls this winter. So many people are finding them and so many non and casual birders are seeing them, it's reminding me of the great gray owl irruption of 2004/2005...which means my blog will be 10 years old in September of this year. Wow. How did ten years happen that fast? So many adventures and changes. And I wonder who is the next "Birdchick" that is out there with a fire in her belly with a ton of bird stuff to share. She (or he for that matter) doesn't have to be "Birdchick" but I do wonder who is like I was 10 years ago seeing how people share birding information and thinking, "I could do this in a completely different way (and maybe even a better way)," and will soon get their message out there for the delight or chagrin of the world? For every movement there is an anti movement or as we like to say at Chez Stiteler, "For every Mame is an Auntie Mame." And I'm totally cool with being the Mame in this situation and gladly await the Auntie Mame.

But back to snowy owls! They are all over the frickin' place. They are within a 30 minute drive of my apartment to the northwest and to the southeast. All one really needs to do is either use eBird or the BirdsEye app on their phone to see where people are seeing them.

Based on eBird and Facebook (and the many photos people are posting on that social media site) there is currently a fairly reliable snowy owl on 180th street and Hogan in Dakota County, Minnesota. I headed down after doing some work on Winter Trails Day to test out a new digiscoping adapter on my iPhone 5s (can't talk about the particulars yet). It was far easier finding the owls than I thought, I just drove around to the known spots and pulled over where ever I saw cars on the sides of the farm roads. The above bird has been perching here regularly no matter how close people get to it.  I alas, cannot get close to a snowy because my scope and camera set up have too much zoom! From that particular setting here is what I got with the Nikon V1 and my Swarovski scope:

I could barely get the whole bird in the frame! With the Nikon V1, you get great photos but it really zooms in. I've noticed before that it's field of view is quite narrow.  When a bird is close like this, I find my iPhone 5s works much better for digiscoping.  Here's the same bird in the same spot but with my iPhone:

Better field of view.

Here's another comparison with a different snowy owl that was further out in a corn field:

This was taken through my scope with the iPhone 5s with a bird that was about 100 yards out from the road. I do like getting habitat shots of these snowy owls. It's fun to try and figure out where they are hiding. I'm to the point now that I look for a dirty wedge of snow and that helps me find the females.

Same bird taken at the same distance with the Nikon v1 through my spotting scope.

Oh and if you are interested in attempting to sex the snowy owls in your area, Cornell has a good page explaining it. Based on what they show, the bird on the post with the thinner barring and larger white chin patch is a male and the above bird with the thick barring is female.

Here is a short video I made showing the difference between my iPhone and my Nikon V1 of digiscoping the male snowy owl.  You can see that with either set up, you really don't need to be close to the owl and all up in its business.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-XUhNQlSRg[/youtube]

Birdchick Podcast #162: Project Snow Storm & Listing

Holy crap, birding has gone mainstream: it's in the Boston Globe (on Neil Hayward breaking the North American big year record), Wall Street Journal (birders using taped calls) and USA Today (how birding is attracting "young fans" lol in their 30s and 40s).  Is 2014 the year of the BIRDER?

Project Snow Storm: the study of a snowy owl irruption in real time. Contribute either sighting or money (I did).  Also here is an interesting of a snowy owl getting caught in a truck's grill (the owl is ok).

The controversy surrounding the "rediscovery" of the night parrot in Australia. Also a list of bird discovered in 2013.

Turkey chasing delivery guy--why I love living in Minnesota.

What it's like to tell people you area a birder at a party.

Birding By Bike In Austria

Think I'll spend a day with cabin fever in frigid cold temperatures remembering adventures I never got around to blogging about in 2013. Generally, work takes me to fun places and in the last year or so, my meetings have involved some unexpected locations.

I had to go to a meeting last summer at  Seewinkel – Lake Neusiedl National Park on the Austrian/Hungary border. This area is known as the burgenland and is made up of mostly vineyards. We stayed at the delightful Hotel Post Illmitz right next to the park. The inn owner Otto was quick to offer food, wine and conversation upon our arrival.  My favorite part of the whole experience were the bikes in the hotel garage that we could take in our off hours and explore the town and park.

Illmitz is a small town, easily bike able (and walkable for that matter) down the quiet streets. The traffic is used to bike riders on the road and there is plenty of space to get through.  It was not a bad place to have a couple of all day meetings.

You can quickly find yourself on the paved trails around the park (the signs are easy to follow even if you cannot read Austrian). The trails take you through bucolic vineyards, wetlands and shallow lakes. Blinds give you high up views to watch for harriers, shorebirds and waterfowl.

Here's a greylag goose digiscoped with my iPhone from the lookout tower. What a treat to see one of these wild and not the barnyard version I'm used to seeing in the US.  Turns out these things really can fly.

We were there in late summer and the shallow lakes were chock full of shorebirds, here's a wood sandpiper. Some of the lakes were dryer than usual, so a scope was handy as the birds were sometimes far out. I brought along my backpack and some bungee cord and still managed to find a way to attach my trusty scope to the bike--though some of my fellow meeting attendees were very kind to take my scope on their bikes from time to time. I didn't take any book field guides with me but downloaded a couple of apps. I ended up relying on the kindness of Europeans on the trip to help me id birds--especially shorebirds. I recently got a copy of the Crossley ID Guide to Britain and Ireland and wished that had arrived before I left. It's an easy to carry guide for an American in Europe for the super common birds.

Stilts never disappoint no matter what continent they are on.  This is a black-winged stilt taken from the tower.

But this park is more an International Park rather than National Park.  If falls right along the Hungary/Austria border. We spent one morning before a meeting looking for Hungarian birds--we used cars for that. I sometimes tell Non Birding Bill that if I ever end up in some sort of vegetative state or if I'm sick in a hospital, plug in slide shows of places I've been and I'll be ok. I think this is one of my favorite offices I've ever had. Our morning was filled with purple herons, eagles and turtle-doves.

While we were taking it all in, flocks of bee-eaters came into the trees. Many of the birds that we saw on the Hungary side we could see on the Austrian side, but hey, how often does one have the chance to do some birding in Hungary?

Here's an up close bee-eater.

Half the fun of the trip was the food. This is one of the reasons why I bike so much in warm weather and run 5ks in the winter--the 20 something metabolism just ain't what it used to be and in order to keep eating in the manner in which I have become accustomed, I need to exercise (boo). I am an adventurous eater and when I was trying to decide dinner one night, one of the items translated for me on the menu was something called "pike perch." A British companion insisted I try it, that is was a very tasty fish.  It was...but also familiar.  A quick Google search revealed that pike perch is also in the Percidae family making it a walleye--which is Minnesota's state fish. And a tasty fish it is indeed!

Many of the places we ate served local wines (from their own vineyards), homemade schnapps, their own cured meats and homemade cheeses. We even got to eat some of the "National Park Cow." I'm not sure if you can see the condiment tray in the back of the photo, but there was one item on there that was life changing.

This. I spread it on some bread and felt the soft gooey very unvegetarian flavor take over my mouth. "What is this," I asked our Austrian server.

"Um...this is...how you say...fat. Pig fat. Um, yes...lard spread?"

Imagine the consistency of butter but with all the best flavors of pork--that was this.  I enjoyed it so much that our host ordered three more dishes of it--perhaps fearful no one else would have a chance to taste it after I fell in love with it. No worries, this was so rich that a little truly goes a long way. I immediately sent a photo to Non Birding Bill informing him that I was never returning from Austria again.

I fit one more bike ride in the following morning before I had to catch my flight in Vienna. I had to work off some of that "lard spread." The burganland was truly beautiful but because all of the surrounding vineyards had ripening fruit...it had the full attention of the native European starlings who were hell bent on eating the ripening grapes and the growers were trying any method to get rid of them which included speakers blasting wildly barking dogs, injured starling calls and screeching goshawks. There were also periodic air cannons and single engine planes diving at flocks (and coming down well below tree level) and shooting fire crackers. It was vaguely like being in a war zone...not totally relaxing.  I'm not sure how well it worked to keep the starlings away but the pilots of the planes sure looked like they were having fun.

The birds sure seemed used to it. This is one of the many red-backed shrikes I encountered while biking around.

A blue tit lurking in the shrubs on my bike ride.

A great tit was mixed in with the blue tits.

And this was a distant photo I took of spoonbills for my digiscoping big year only to download them later to notice that one of the preening birds was a stork!

One of the more colorful warblers in Europe--a reed warbler.

And a super cute little ringed plover.

Illmitz is definitely worth putting on your travel itinerary if you find yourself heading towards the eastern end of Austria. Maybe avoid late August and early September if you want to avoid the ambient noise of bird scaring techniques.

We stayed at the Hotel Post Illmitz and they have a variety of bikes for a variety of body heights.

A Cleansing 2014 Post & Thank You.

Someone suggested that I needed to do a cleansing bird post...

Breathe in the turkey vulture, breath out. Breathe it in once more, savor it aaaaaaand exhale.  And I remember all the reasons I love birds.

In all the craziness of the last week of 2013 I forgot that it was quite the year and mostly I have you to thank for it. My third book came out and went into a second printing--which is awesome because there's a photo mistake in it (BLERG) and we got to fix it. So all those first editions are now collector's items--W00t!  Thank you to everyone who bought a copy of the book!

OK, not everyone wants to breathe in a turkey vulture so let's have a cleansing yellow-headed blackbird. Feel free to breathe this dude in.

One of my favorite parts of the year was being able to give away my old spotting scope and you guys cracked me up with your terrible photo entries for my Bad Photo Scope Give Away Contest. That was the best, I can't thank all of you enough for having the courage to share those craptastic pictures. My Inbox has never been so much fun before. Speaking of which, there will be another contest later this year...it's going to take a few months to build this one and I still need to hammer out a couple of the details, but it should drop in spring, it will be fun and I think have a level playing field.

The boreal owl is no longer my nemesis bird thanks to bird guide Erik Bruhnke. And thanks to all of you who either helped promote or contributed to my Digiscoping Big Half Year, Sax Zim Bog now has a visitor center! Thank you to everyone who gave what they could either on my behalf or one of the other birders in the contest.

And speaking of my Big Half Year that turned into my Digiscoping Big Year...I have discovered that I'm a TERRIBLE lister, I don't enjoy it. I think the album currently has 226 birds in it but looking at my last few downloads, I think I got past 250 but I should have gotten more. I mean, I had a long-tailed duck in walking distance from my apartment and I didn't chase it. Part of the reason was work and then when the opportunity came up to go for the duck, I had a well spent afternoon with a non birding friend instead. I think I will continue to keep Flickr Albums of birds I digiscope in a year just out of curiosity to see what all I can take but getting the longest list is not the way that I enjoy birds.  NOT that there's anything wrong with listing.

Birds and Beers is still going strong and I love hearing from all the people who have them going on their states--I love that the spirit of the idea of birders getting together and being social happens all over. I hope to hear about more in others states...and countries! Thank you to everyone out there brave enough to be the host of one of these gatherings.

Non Birding Bill's previews of his game show You're Making That Up went well.  He's still hashing it out, but thank you to everyone who came to them as he and Neil figure out what's next. This has also been a tremendous year that so many  friends had great things happen: comedians getting writing gigs, authors getting awards, musicians getting contracts, listers breaking records--seeing my friends be successful after they've worked so hard makes me feel great.

And well, even though Disapproving Rabbits is closing down doesn't mean we can't still have a cleansing bunny over here from time to time. I'm incredibly grateful for this dude. It's not every rabbit that will snooze on your laptop keyboard and I'm grateful to spend time with him.

Thank you all very, very much.

Calling Out Sexism

I've had a few people tell me that calling out sexism when it happens isn't that easy and that I don't know what I'm talking about. Let me show an example. At first I didn't want to bring this up because I think the man who wrote this on his blog thought, "Wow, Brooke and Sharon are getting a lot of attention and traffic, I bet if I write about it, I will get traffic to my website too!"

I decided I would just take a screenshot to avoid sending people to his site.  Please don't go over and tell him he's doing it wrong, he just wants the traffic. But I do feel I need to put my money where my mouth is:

A guy (writing an article about how I don't get how hard women have it when comes to getting a respectable job in birding no less) being purposely misleading about what I do for a living and being dismissive of my years of hard work and experience doing it...THAT is sexist.

Birdchick Podcast #161: Owls and Resolutions

Here is the horrific bird house NBB and I were talking about:

*shiver* and Ew!

Zombie bird feeder.

Here are the links we talked about:

Snowy owl nest.

Compilation of the best snowy owl pics so far this winter.

Some crazy guy in Iowa (who thinks owls have paws) started a blog on feeding them.

Goldeneye x hooded merganser hybrid.

Birdchick Podcast #160 Snowy Owls and Backpedaling

We talked about scare crows, snowy owls, what you should really be concerned about with wind turbines going up on Lake Erie and oh cool this contest from Celebrate Urban birds...you have until January 15, 2014 to enter.

Owls: Birding's Troublesome Ambassador

  Here's a little video I made about watching owls.  This is a compilation of some of the owls I've digiscoped over the years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e5g99gYjlg

It's one of those sorts of winters again: a northern owl species is heading into parts of the US in big numbers.

This time it's snowy owls mostly along the east coast. Look at the above map from eBird. There have been some crazy reports, including 138 individual snowy owls found on Newfoundland and note the dot in the middle of the Atlantic there? That's because at least 2 snowy owls have made it to Bermuda...that's bananas!!

If you are not on social media you have missed anyone you know on the east coast reporting a siting or photo. Or you may have missed the outrage of birders all over the place angry about people getting to close to the owls. Or you have missed the many lamentations of birders to everyone to back off from owls, give them their space and if you ever find an owl in the wild, just don't post it. Above is a picture of a snowy owl taken at a Wisconsin airport last winter. That lump on the left hand side of the roof is the owl.

Here it is through the scope (someone had banded and placed a patagial tag on this). Owls are a tricky issue in birding. They're cool, we all want to see one, even non birders--they make a great intro into the fun and wonderful (tho sometimes vexing) world of birding. I love the number of times I've taken non birding friends to an airport and showed them a quick snowy--it's a great way to show people that cool birds can be anywhere.  It's a charismatic looking bird, it has so much potential in a teachable moment. But owls need their space and we don't often give it to them. I almost wonder if owls have some sort of hypnotic power so that even when someone has the best photo they can get, they have to know just how close they can get to this strange and mysterious creature and that compels them to get closer.

I think most of the time it's just people who are new to birding, have access to birding locations and equipment like never before and simply do not know or realize that they are getting too close or are away of birding ethics.

What do you do with the owl conundrum when you see someone getting too close? Do you confront them? Do you secretly video them for public shaming on YouTube?

I think it's best to confront them at the time but do it in a way that assumes they know absolutely nothing about birds and in a calm way.

Instead of shouting, "HEY, JACKASS, GET THE F*** AWAY FROM THAT OWL BEFORE YOU KILL IT!"

Perhaps, start with, "Isn't this owl amazing, you may not realize it, but getting this close to it is a problem for the bird and for others who want to see it."

I know some people are immediately not going to respond well.  No one likes to be told by stranger that they are doing something wrong. But If you can find a way to explain how they are one of hundreds of people a day seeing that owl, interfering with its ability to hunt and ability to survive, they might take that to heart.

Trying the approach of, "If we back off a little bit, we might get to see some really cool natural behaviors and interactions with other animals.  We might get to see it hunt or we might get to see and film something like this:

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/80860484[/vimeo]

I don't think it's going to be solved any time soon, but we need to get info out to people that they don't have to get that close to owls to enjoy them.

Birdchick Podcast #159: Talking Starlings and Crossbills as Pets?

  This is a hard story about the pet bird trade in Beijing but we need to read it. And before you think, oh these are birds, I'll never see...check out the bohemian waxwing and red crossbill. On a side note, the US is offering a $1 million reward for information to help dismantle one of Asia’s largest wildlife-trafficking syndicates.

Pete Dunne suffered a stroke last spring but he's still doing what he loves at Cape May. Read more about his future plans here.

Wind company fined $1 million for killing eagles (as they should be fined). But be careful where some of the information protesting wind farms on birds' behalf is coming from.  Quite a bit of it comes from oil companies.

Are hummingbirds really eating suet?

Some New York City residents are not happy about the influx of wild turkeys. Maybe they should try the weird looking coyote decoys.

Hand reared spoon-billed sandpiper found with wild flock.

Talking starling story.

You, North American Peeps, consider signing up for a Christmas Bird Count near you.

Liam Neesons.

Digiscoping with an iPhone 5s

Hey Minnesota and Wisconsin friends, my buddy Clay Taylor from Swarovski and I will be at the National Eagle Center on December 7, 2013 for the Optics Expo and if you have any questions about digiscoping or would like to learn more about using your smartphone with a spotting scope, this would be a great day to come down.  I'll have some adapters you can play with to. Speaking of smartphones, my Verizon plan was up for renewal which meant I could finally get a iPhone 5s. I am enjoying using this so much for digiscoping, I'm tempted to hang up my Nikon V1 for good.  I got the new phone right before I left for the Rio Grande Valley Bird Festival in early November. If you saw the birding trailer I made for it, that was filmed and edited entirely with the new phone.

When the iPhone 5s was announced, my techie niece was wondering why anyone would care or want to have burst mode or slow motion video on a phone camera. I thought, "Man, birders are going to love this!" I already love the iPhone for its ability to capture images well in low light conditions, but slow motion video could be quite something to aid in identification.

Clay and I were down to teach a digiscoping workshop at South Padre Island during the festival and we arranged it so we'd not only be able to practice getting photos of birds in the afternoon light, but also play around with getting arty shots at sunset (one of Clay's favorite pastimes). I was eager to see what this phone could do with my scope.

This was the sort of lighting conditions were were dealing with.  You can see a concentration of gulls and terns just off the shore.

Kite surfers were working the winds and the birds roosting along shore didn't seem to mind them. Above is a black skimmer, laughing gull, marbled godwits, willets and royal terns with kite surfers behind them.  Made for some interesting shots. But it gets fun with the SloMo video feature on the phone. The videos are taken at 120 frames per second. On your iPhone, it will replay back easier, but if you have an older Mac operating system and you upload them to iPhoto, they may show at normal speed. This is easily fixed by opening the movies in iMovie and watching them at 25% speed.

Here's a sample of what you can do with digiscoping through a spotting scope (it looks best if you select watching it in 720p HD or 1080p HD):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1muz5glNxk

This is fun lightweight option to take in the field and with iMovie you have some fun editing options. Heck, one could almost film their own wildlife show with a phone and a good quality scope.