Sketching with Sharon Meyer from WCAX

I’m not much of a photographer, especially birds. But I do enjoy my Olympus Stylus Tough camera. I’m on my second one as a result of a kayaking adventure to see Spiny Soft-shelled Turtles this year. Although the camera is waterproof to 33ft, it really doesn’t matter when you drop it in the lake. I dove three times for it but the soft mud on the shoreline swallowed it up. Tough #2 now has it’s own PFD when I’m on the water.

Anyways, here are just a few photos from my 2009 collection that remind me of all the wonderful adventures I had this year.

Main Image: March in Plainfield, VT

Northern Hawk Owl - January (taken by a friend)

Tree of Life - Patricia de Gogorza artist

Flowering Crabapple - Burlington, VT

Pickerel Weed - Mississquoi River VT

Snow Geese at Dead Creek Wildlife Management Area - Addison VT

The W!LD Center - Tupper Lake, NY

Kilkare State Park during CBC - St. Albans, VT

Happy New Year Everyone!

The 110th Christmas Bird Count starts tomorrow morning. Here’s where I was last year at dawn:

St. Albans Bay, Lake Champlain VT

Where are you birding for the Christmas Bird Count this year?

Click here for list of Vermont Christmas Bird Count circles.

Just under the wire for Wordless Wednesday…enjoy!

photo credit: neistridlar

I had the privilege of hanging out with Anson Tebbetts this week on the radio and video podcast show For the Birds. Good friend Bryan Pfeiffer was out of town looking for shorebirds on the coast so I did my best to fill in for him. Great opportunity to talk about birds and then show off my well know party trick – owl calling.

And for some beyond the blog fun:

A story from NH on the northern New England “rural legend” of hooting bears.

The North American Bear Center’s audio snippets of sounds Black Bears make.

And, there’s a great article from a few years back in Northern Woodlands Magazine on Black Bears. Too bad it’s not archived on their site, it would be a great piece to be able to link up.

What do you think? Hooting bears for real?

It’s about to happen. Or it has all ready started for some. Mind-blowing migration.

Here we are enjoying August. We’re all laid back in our flip-flops and tank-tops sipping on mojitos and around us a frenzy is building. Can you feel it? You know, the zugunruhe? You would if you were feathered. The days get shorter, those feathers get itchy and it’s time to prepare for migration.

I really dig fall migration. Not only is my brain tripping over the juvenile plummages, but also over the fact that some of these youngsters are about to embark on a heavy trip. One they’ve never taken before. Migration has always blown my mind. From the physics of flight to the mystery of finding a place one’s never been to before, I can’t help but look at these creatures and like some hippie at Woodstock think, “Wow, man. Cool.”

So today on Twitter I asked: What intrigues you most about migration? Here are a few replies so far:

From: @eviebeevie: How do they remember?? I guess lg part of brain goes towards that? Otherwise easy to fly off course!

From @nfbgcycler: How do the flocks re-congregate? Do they practice? (I swear they do). Who decides it’s time to go?!

From @LadyWoodpecker: How do the birds know where to go? Are they genetically programmed or is the route learned?

What blows your mind when it comes to bird migration? Drop me a reply below or send me a tweet.

This was the title of an email I received recently. I get asked this a lot and I love it. It becomes a fun game for me, a test for my skills as a birder. And sometimes I figure out the person’s mystery bird. And yeah, it’s just sometimes, ‘cuz sometimes I can’t get all the information I need to make a guess much less an id.

Back to that email, here’s the rest of it:

Hi. I want to know what this bird is that was in my yard the other day. You’ll probably know. It’s brown, with a red patch on the back of it’s neck, a white patch on the top of it’s tale when it flies. It’s a little bigger then a blue jay. It has a short neck. It’s legs aren’t very long either. It’s beak was thin, and sort of longish. It was diving it into the ground in my front yard. I think it might have been getting ants? Not sure. Any clue? Thanks either way. Bye bye

I’m telling you, I almost cried when I read this, well not really, but I was really happy-excited with the description. Lots of clues provided by this person who got a great look at this bird from head to tail. AND, they noted behavior as well – BONUS! Wow, I thought, this is the perfect example of how describe a bird; this was an example for others.

Let’s break it down bird-geek style and see why this is a great description:

• Red Patch, White Patch, Brown are good color observations. Kick that up a notch by noting where they where located on the bird: red on the back of the neck, white on top of the tail. Now we’ve got the colors isolated on parts of the bird which could lead to key id features.
• Bigger than a Blue Jay is brilliant! Whenever noting the size use a comparison bird – chickadee, blue jay, crow are all good ones to use.
• Behaviors are great clues! This person noted that when it flew the white patch on the top of the tail was visible, so pay attention when the bird flies. The description also mentions the bird diving on the ground, possibly eating ants. Watch what it eats and how it eats, another tool to help make the id of the mystery bird.
• Looking at the parts: short neck, not very long legs, and thin-longish bill – super! Beaks can be a huge clue to identification, sometimes it’s not just the shape but the color. Think of legs the same way, length, color and then how the bird uses their legs. Are they perching? wading? hopping? As simple as it is, the description of the neck is a good one too.
• Where you are is also a good clue, especially if you can describe the habitat. Are you near a field? a pond? a forest? pine forest? leafy forest? This person mentions seeing the bird in the yard which did help me, but only because the rest of the description was so solid.

I emailed the person a link to the bird I thought they might have in their yard – and BINGO, got it right! And that’s no credit to me really but to their great description of what they saw. What do you see when you use this person’s description to create a picture of the bird in your head? Don’t click here until you give it a go being a bird-sleuth yourself!

I don’t know if you used that slang when you were a kid but I did.  Yeah, and I know I just tagged myself as 80’s but hey, what’s the big diff?  I’m gonna bring back that 80’s slang and tweak it Bird Diva style. I wanna invite you all to make a big diff as a birder.

The 2009 State of the Birds Report was recently released and I gotta say I was a little overwhelmed by some of the doom & gloom press it generated. I’m on Twitter now and have chosen to follow a number of conservation groups, some who were involved in putting together the report. I kept getting tweets telling me just about every habitat group of birds was experiencing a “serious decline”. Retweet that a couple of hundred times and that can get pretty defeatist, depressing.

My beef with all this is if you are gonna report the data that, granted, is shocking and sometimes dire ALWAYS back it up with success and action. With all the involved organizations announcing the report, the making the big diff part got lost amongst all the decline data. It is there though, on the State of the Birds website under What You Can Do and in the beautiful but unfortunately antiviral video. It is killing me that I can’t share that video through various social networks or embed it on my blog. *Heavy sigh*

I wasn’t the only one who noticed, Bird Chick blogged on it and my friends at Vermont Center for Ecostudies asked in a tweet if this is just another report to get lost in all the others.

Let’s focus on making the big diff though, taking action, finding out what you can do ‘cuz there’s a treasure chest of success stories behind all the doom and gloom hoopla. Here are some of my favorite ways to make a big diff for birds. Please share yours with me too!

1. Landscape your yard and manage your property for wildlife. Backyards, woodlot, hay field, waterways all can be managed with birds and other wildlife in mind. Often there is money available to property owners as incentives. Contact your state’s fish and game or natural resource department.
2. Donate your time to a bird organization. Take your love of watching birds and use your skills (at whatever level) to help gather information about birds. Christmas Bird Count, Great Backyard Bird Count, Bird Survey – but don’t forget to get in touch locally to find out what opportunities exist. Your local Audubon or bird club will be able to direct you.
3. Carry an extra pair of binoculars for those moments when someone asks, “What are you looking at?” Share the moment! Share what you know, admit what you don’t and use it as an opportunity to learn with someone else. Birds touch people of all ages from all walks of life, get them jazzed and they’ll be making a big diff too!