Does it get any better than this? Together with the whole family, meeting old friends and relatives at beautiful wetlands? Please buy a Duck Stamp to ensure that places like the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge are still here for our children's children's children.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
"Confusing?" Ha!
In my spring plumage, I'm not just gorgeous, I'm easy for people with their pitiful vision and undiscerning ears to identify. In fall, I get to travel incognito except among reasonably good birders. Well, I did. But now Bill Hilton Jr. has posted a bunch of photos and information to make it easy to recognize us "confusing fall warblers" (as people call us). I think it's interesting the way people have to look at every little feature to tell us apart. We just know who we and everyone else are--individually as well as collectively--with barely a glance, no matter what stage our plumage is in.
Even though we warblers hardly need a refresher course, check out his Fall Warbler I.D. post. He's got some excellent photos of some of my friends.
Even though we warblers hardly need a refresher course, check out his Fall Warbler I.D. post. He's got some excellent photos of some of my friends.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
Close encounters of the third, and the bird, kinds
HAHAHAHAHA! I just saw the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Those silly humans! They devote so much technology and time and effort searching for intelligent life on other planets, hoping to communicate with extraterrestrials, when they haven't made the tiniest inroads into finding and communicating with other forms of intelligent life right here on earth! They've barely scratched the surface when it comes to understanding the most elemental contexts in which we birds communicate, much less having a clue about what we're actually saying.
And really, they aren't even that good at communicating with one another. And I'm not even talking about their problems communicating with humans of other cultures--even when they're talking the same language, they don't necessarily communicate anything. To be perfectly honest, guys, I think they're hopeless.
And really, they aren't even that good at communicating with one another. And I'm not even talking about their problems communicating with humans of other cultures--even when they're talking the same language, they don't necessarily communicate anything. To be perfectly honest, guys, I think they're hopeless.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Hooray for Birds & Beans!
Being a warbler, I spend a lot of time in the tropics. It's depressing flying down every fall and discovering yet more lovely little places that have been "developed"--that is, destroyed by humans. One of the worst problems for us is coffee plantations--especially because when coffee is grown in the traditional way, farmers can provide lots of habitat for us birds so everybody wins.
Some people understand the problem, but they don't always know what to do to make sure the coffee they buy is really grown in the best ways for us birds. But finally there's a place that sells ONLY the real thing--Certified Bird Friendly coffee!! Check out Birds & Beans.
There are only two officially certified coffees--the Smithsonian's Bird Friendly certification, and the Rainforest Alliance certification. Unfortunately, coffee sold with the Rainforest Alliance certification doesn't need to be 100 percent certified, so a significant part of their blends isn't necessarily grown to the high standards that the Smithsonian Institution requires for every drop of a package of coffee to bear their certification. And other coffees, even if they have one of my buddies on the package, aren't necessarily grown using the best practices for us birds. It's shocking how many people use images of birds to sell things, without ever getting permission. Laura Erickson never even asked me to sign a release when she shot this photo!
"Shade-grown" can refer to a monoculture of canopy trees with no bromeliads and virtually no diversity--that totally sucks when you're looking for juicy bugs and good hiding and sleeping places!
So if you're a human, PLEASE buy genuine, certified Bird Friendly coffee. If you can't find it in your neck of the woods, you can order it directly from Birds & Beans. It's the right thing to do.
Some people understand the problem, but they don't always know what to do to make sure the coffee they buy is really grown in the best ways for us birds. But finally there's a place that sells ONLY the real thing--Certified Bird Friendly coffee!! Check out Birds & Beans.
There are only two officially certified coffees--the Smithsonian's Bird Friendly certification, and the Rainforest Alliance certification. Unfortunately, coffee sold with the Rainforest Alliance certification doesn't need to be 100 percent certified, so a significant part of their blends isn't necessarily grown to the high standards that the Smithsonian Institution requires for every drop of a package of coffee to bear their certification. And other coffees, even if they have one of my buddies on the package, aren't necessarily grown using the best practices for us birds. It's shocking how many people use images of birds to sell things, without ever getting permission. Laura Erickson never even asked me to sign a release when she shot this photo!
"Shade-grown" can refer to a monoculture of canopy trees with no bromeliads and virtually no diversity--that totally sucks when you're looking for juicy bugs and good hiding and sleeping places!
So if you're a human, PLEASE buy genuine, certified Bird Friendly coffee. If you can't find it in your neck of the woods, you can order it directly from Birds & Beans. It's the right thing to do.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Holy crap! THIS is sobering!
You know how Google puts those context ads on the side of some pages, hoping you'll click? Well, I was helping my Whooping Crane buddy post the previous blog post, and lo and behold there was a link to "Crane Hunting." Oh, man--I thought it was going to be filled with leads on where Whoopers could find blue crabs and where I could hunt for the most succulent tubers. My heart leapt--and I clicked.
Oh, NOOOOOOOOOOO! I felt just like poor Mr. Bill, knocked flat, when I saw what it was linking to. A page with "human" beings (ahem--where DID the word "humane" originate?) each holding not just one, but two or more dead Sandhill Cranes in their grubby paws, killed in what is called a "canned hunt." Every one of those dead birds with some poor widow or widower flying about, utterly bereft, all so people can have what? A photo op showing a bunch of them with way more than they can eat. They looked like the worst sort of rapacious killers--I mean, not even weasels and raccoons kill so many at one time! The advertiser was exulting not in providing a quality experience out of doors with nature and beauty, but a shooting fest where they practically guarantee that hunters will not just get one crane, but get the legal limit, "beverages included."
Human hunters are each allowed by U.S. and Texas law to kill up to three cranes every day, and up to six total. Remind me to stop migrating through Texas!
And you know how they get those cranes? They trick them by using taxidermist "prepared" dead birds to make the living cranes think, "Oh, look--there's George and Martha! Let's go down and say hi!" and BAM! If that isn't desecration of bodies, and for the worst possible reason, I don't know what is.
And don't tell me these people are hunting because they're hungry. They charge $250 per day per person (with a three-person minimum) to do these canned hunts. You could buy an awful lot of free-range, organic chicken for $250! And don't tell me they do it for some splendid outdoor experience. The website says, "While crane hunting our hunters enjoy roomy comfortable A-frame and hay bale blinds."
It's enough to make a grown bird cry. And it's an excellent reminder that when you see those google ads, DON'T click!!!!
Oh, NOOOOOOOOOOO! I felt just like poor Mr. Bill, knocked flat, when I saw what it was linking to. A page with "human" beings (ahem--where DID the word "humane" originate?) each holding not just one, but two or more dead Sandhill Cranes in their grubby paws, killed in what is called a "canned hunt." Every one of those dead birds with some poor widow or widower flying about, utterly bereft, all so people can have what? A photo op showing a bunch of them with way more than they can eat. They looked like the worst sort of rapacious killers--I mean, not even weasels and raccoons kill so many at one time! The advertiser was exulting not in providing a quality experience out of doors with nature and beauty, but a shooting fest where they practically guarantee that hunters will not just get one crane, but get the legal limit, "beverages included."
Human hunters are each allowed by U.S. and Texas law to kill up to three cranes every day, and up to six total. Remind me to stop migrating through Texas!
And you know how they get those cranes? They trick them by using taxidermist "prepared" dead birds to make the living cranes think, "Oh, look--there's George and Martha! Let's go down and say hi!" and BAM! If that isn't desecration of bodies, and for the worst possible reason, I don't know what is.
And don't tell me these people are hunting because they're hungry. They charge $250 per day per person (with a three-person minimum) to do these canned hunts. You could buy an awful lot of free-range, organic chicken for $250! And don't tell me they do it for some splendid outdoor experience. The website says, "While crane hunting our hunters enjoy roomy comfortable A-frame and hay bale blinds."
It's enough to make a grown bird cry. And it's an excellent reminder that when you see those google ads, DON'T click!!!!
Here's an interesting tidbit
Did you know that the 22 Whooping Crane chicks now training in Wisconsin for their first migration outnumber the entire living population of whoopers just 67 years ago? Cool, huh?
I picked up this little tidbit on Journey North's Whooping Crane pages. I love getting my news there. Also, I love checking out the Crane Cam every morning. The birds take off (weather permitting) around 7 a.m. CDT--that's 6 a.m. bird time, of course. (Yes, bird time. We don't have clocks to spring ahead or fall back with.) If I forget, it's still fun to check any time it's light outside--you never know what those adorable young things will be up to. Check it out!
I picked up this little tidbit on Journey North's Whooping Crane pages. I love getting my news there. Also, I love checking out the Crane Cam every morning. The birds take off (weather permitting) around 7 a.m. CDT--that's 6 a.m. bird time, of course. (Yes, bird time. We don't have clocks to spring ahead or fall back with.) If I forget, it's still fun to check any time it's light outside--you never know what those adorable young things will be up to. Check it out!
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Burn out that burdock!
The wonderful wildlife photographer and writer Marie Read took this sad photo of a goldfinch who met with a tragic death at the sharp thorns of a burdock. Joel Baines is the one who alerted Marie to this horrible situation. His book, Native Plants for Native Birds: A Guide to Planting for Birds in and around Ithaca, New York, is really worth reading if you're a human gardener. Tragically, most of us birds are functionally illiterate and often "plant" the seeds of invasive exotics in our droppings, so this is a situation in which we are dependent upon the kindness of strangers. But really, it was humans who brought these weeds here in the first place, so it really IS their responsibility to get rid of them.
If you're a human who happens to have burdock on your property, please, please, PLEASE burn it out. It is an exotic weed that we goldfinches have not had time to evolve defenses against. None of us deserve such a fate.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
More about evolution
Yesterday I heard that Laura Erickson's dog Photon had to have some teeth pulled because they were badly decayed. Dental infections can lead to a lot of heart problems in mammals. Now I don't want to be snarky, but this is yet another way that we birds are light-years more evolved than humans and other mammals. We got rid of teeth ages ago--what's the point of having something that causes so many problems at so many points in life, and isn't aerodynamic to boot? Teeth are just SO reptilian!
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Ahem...
I say we hawks are far more impressive and beautiful than you little green jobs. And you'd better watch it, because SOME hawks eat you guys for lunch.
Duluth's where the action's at right now!
Lots of us Red-eyed Vireos, catbirds, redstarts, and more! Of course, if you're into the rarer species, a dark-morph Swainson's Hawk passed over Hawk Ridge yesterday. But frankly, we vireos are much lovelier.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Why does Bloomberg want to gas us, Mommy?
Oh, dear. Please don't let your children read this story:
NEW YORK (WPIX) - Mayor Bloomberg had quite the scare when a bird struck into a jet carrying him and a few other big wigs who were traveling from the Hamptons to Sen. Ted Kennedy's funeral in Boston Saturday, according to a published report.Hello? They were on Long Island--a major migration route--during the height of fall migration, he doesn't even know what kind of bird his airplane killed, and he's already itching to kill more? And he's in the so-called family values party?
Unlike the geese that forced US Airways Flight 1549 into the Hudson River in January, the bird that collided into Bloomberg's jet did not clog up the engine.
Shortly after an investigation determined that it was in fact a bird strike that caused the airliner to go down, Bloomberg said that the creatures in the sky are a nuisance to airplanes and threw his support behind a plan that would have the birds gassed in an attempt to control the population.
"There is not a lot of cost involved in rounding up a couple thousand geese, and letting them go to sleep with nice dreams," he said.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Hooray for bird feeders!
What do you mean, I'm not welcome?? They got birds, and I'm a bird. Yum yum.
Monday, August 31, 2009
First in farting!
Back in 1965, a human named Alan Richard Weisbrod wrote his master's thesis at Cornell University titled "The Maintenance Activities of the Blue Jay, Cyanocitta cristata." The guy had absolutely no respect for Blue Jay privacy, but overall it's a pretty good thesis. Except WHOA! On page 47-48, he writes what may be the first description of a bird farting ever written!! Check it out:
An interesting phenomena [shhhh! He means "phenomenon." We jays would make excellent editors!] was observed on two cold days during December of 1963. These observations were made shortly after noon while I was looking through the window of the office into the flight in which captive jays are kept. Several birds were perched directly overhead and in front of me, at distances varying from one to one and a quarter meters. One of the birds in front of me defecated. A small puff of whitish gas was expelled along with the feces. The feces dropped from the bird while the gas wafted below and parallel to the slightly raised tail, until it dissipated rapidly into the cold air. The gas could be clearly seen against the dark-colored eave that hangs over the sheltered perches, upon which the birds were fluffed and resting. Several days later a bird perched in the same position was observed to defecate with the accompanying wisp of whitish gas.Mark Twain once wrote, "It ain't no use to tell me that a bluejay hasn't got a sense of humor because I know better." And it's lucky we do, or how could we ever live that down!
It is common knowledge that mammals flatulate and that some food items seem to increase the frequency and volume of gas-expulsion from the lower intestines. Since birds feed on many of the same types of foods as mammals and their digestive metabolism is basically similar, there seems to be no theoretical reason why birds cannot also flatulate, but flatulence has never been reported in birds to my knowledge. In all probability, the observed whitish gas was mostly warm water vapor which was released as the bird defecated in the cold still air. Whether this gas was the product of the digestive processes or was simply condensation of moisture from the feces could not be determined.
On the positive side
There at least is the fantastic Operation Migration program trying to get other Whooping Crane flocks established in the wild. I love watching the crane cam to see how training of those young chicks is going!
Yeah, she's cute.
But keep her off the beach during the entire nesting season, please.
--Piper Plover
--Piper Plover
My personal nutcracker sweet
This roof is ideal for dropping shells on--they eventually break so I can eat the yummy animals inside, and my friends spend more time by the road so aren't as likely to steal MY food here. I wonder if the people inside know just how gull-ible their house is.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
I'm not frowning!
We little fledglings have a wide mouth to help our parents stuff food in. The corners may droop down making us look sad, but actually I'm quite happy right now. Daddy just fed me!
Okay. Pay attention.
"Semipalmated" means "half-webbed." We get the best of both worlds. The webs hold us up when water suddenly flows onto the sand we're standing in, but our toes have enough flexibility to grasp onto slippery stones or dig into the sand when a big wave hits. Of course, usually we just run to avoid the waves. Half-webbed does NOT mean half-witted!!
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Evolution at its best
Today's New York Times has a great and lengthy opinion piece by Robert Wright about evolution. Of course, even though it's a surprisingly open-minded review of the theory and about God, it still places human beings at the pinnacle. It's as if even the wisest people are incapable of noticing just how much more evolved we birds and even some other non-primate mammals are in ever so many ways, including our eyesight, hearing, ability to fly, more efficient respiratory system, and much more complex vocal apparatus. Yes, people like to tout their "superior" brains, but somehow they can't bring themselves to use those brains to see how whale communication, using their voices to hear one another thousands of miles away, sort of precluded the necessity of inventing Twitter or email. People spend whole careers trying to tease out what contexts avian vocalizations are given in, but hello? We speak a different language because our senses and our lives are so different from yours, not because we're simpler or stupider. The world is ever so much richer and more complex for us because our senses allow us to perceive that richness. Small wonder we have no need for television or video games. You guys will NEVER understand what we're talking about until you fly a mile in our shoes--which is impossible because even if you could fly, you'd still have no concept of how our more complex sensory systems even perceive the world.
We birds hardly ever come to blows when disagreeing--it would be a huge jump in human evolution for you guys to finally figure out how to define and defend your property not with barbed wire fences and AK-47s and well-armed police departments and military might, but with song.
The Times editorial says:
Humans are far more narrowly altruistic than us chickadees. Yes--even in the area of altruism, we're more evolved. You won't find a chickadee setting a roadside bomb, lobbing a grenade, flying an airplane into a building, dropping an atomic bomb on an entire city, shooting anyone, or watching starving children on TV and not doing a friggin' thing to help. We chickadees aren't into pretense and all that crap either. Breast implants?! Botox???? Plastic surgery? Give me a break!
This is a tricky world to negotiate as a moral being, but I think our chickadee moral system is far more evolved than that of humans, no matter how you look at it. Maybe if those human brains were less egocentric and more evolved, they'd see it too.
We birds hardly ever come to blows when disagreeing--it would be a huge jump in human evolution for you guys to finally figure out how to define and defend your property not with barbed wire fences and AK-47s and well-armed police departments and military might, but with song.
The Times editorial says:
Is it all that unlikely that, even if humans had been wiped out a few million years ago, eventually a species with reciprocal altruism would reach an intellectual and linguistic level at which reciprocal altruism fostered moral intuitions and moral discourse?Robert Wright clearly has not observed a chickadee flock or he'd realize that the time he's speculating about is NOW. We chickadees already have developed moral intuitions and moral discourse of a higher level than humans have. We have enough intuition to know which species to accept into our foraging flocks and which to avoid, not by mindless prejudices but by the knowledge of which birds are literally trying to kill us. We let everyone know about danger and good food resources, and are perfectly happy sharing a feeder. (Of course, we'll never understand those piggish finches who stand in the food rather than simply taking what they need and moving away so everyone else has a chance.) We join forces to scold and shun shrikes and hawks and owls, but even with nasty predators we have a live and let live philosophy and don't go out of our way to seek them out.
Humans are far more narrowly altruistic than us chickadees. Yes--even in the area of altruism, we're more evolved. You won't find a chickadee setting a roadside bomb, lobbing a grenade, flying an airplane into a building, dropping an atomic bomb on an entire city, shooting anyone, or watching starving children on TV and not doing a friggin' thing to help. We chickadees aren't into pretense and all that crap either. Breast implants?! Botox???? Plastic surgery? Give me a break!
This is a tricky world to negotiate as a moral being, but I think our chickadee moral system is far more evolved than that of humans, no matter how you look at it. Maybe if those human brains were less egocentric and more evolved, they'd see it too.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
My fine spring feathers
No way in hell am I going to let ANYONE photograph me while I'm molting. Have you guys no pride?
Friday, August 21, 2009
My question for Ms. Know-It-All Bird Watching Answer Book Lady
When the hell is this infernal molt going to be OVER?
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