Drew Lanham on BirdCallsRadio

BiF!'s own Dr. J. Drew Lanham will be on BirdCallsRadio this Sunday with Dave Magpiong, two of the foremost leaders in working to bring birding to minorities and bringing minorities to birding. If you don't live in the right place in the northeast to listen live, you can listen later on the BirdCallsRadio website or as a podcast.

Búho Manchado

Forgive me if that didn't exactly roll off your tongue when you tried to pronounce it out loud just now.  But the bird you are about to see is of the Mexican variety.  If the title didn't already give it away, here are a few more clues.  It's large, nocturnal, has spots, is listed as "threatened" in the U.S. and Mexico, and endangered in Canada.  Its familia in the Pacific Northwest has been the subject of a heated debate over the years.  You guessed it, the Spotted Owl!  Shhhh, not so loud.  You might disturb it.

Seriously though, please always be on your best behavior around all birds, especially owls.  To quote the ABA Code of Ethics, "To avoid stressing birds or exposing them to danger, exercise restraint and caution during observation, photography, sound recording, or filming."

Upper Miller Canyon, Huachuca Mountains, Southeast Arizona (photo courtesy Geniece Baer)

I went ahead of Gaby and Geniece on the trail in search of the owls, one adult and one juvenile.  I came around a bend and spotted the pink ribbon marking where they had last been seen.  I approached very quietly, looked up and off the trail.  There it was!

09/01/12

My jaw dropped, WOW.

I've never been so quiet and turtle-like around a bird.  I snapped this photo and withdrew from its sanctuary to fetch my companions.  Upon our return, we instantly became mesmerized by this magical bird.  Look at those fluffy feathers, and those spots!  I was thankful the ladies followed my explicit directions on owl etiquette.  It's a good thing because it would have been a long walk home.

We stood there quietly observing for a while.  All of a sudden it started moving.  Not slight movements, but stretching and preening!

Our faces must have looked like a kid's on Christmas morning after seeing the gifts under the tree for the first time.  But in this case our gift was in the tree.

At this point Geniece mouthed, "AWESOME!"

"I'm awake now."

As I inched my way up the trail to look at the second owl, Gaby caught my attention and pointed up.  It was a photo-op emergency!  Now behind the first owl, I was in perfect position for its next pose.

Don't try this at home.

"¡Hola!"

How fun is that?  I must have used a whole deck of dumb-luck cards on this bird, but it was well worth it.

"¡Adiós amigos!"

Thank you to the Beatty's for making these amazing birds easy to find and enjoy!

- Jeremy Medina
  www.azbirdbrain.blogspot.com

ABA Bird of the Year Multimedia Art Contest

Have you heard about the ABA Bird of the Year multimedia art contest?

At the ABA, we continue to celebrate the 2012 Bird of the Year, the Evening Grosbeak. As the festivities continue, we now present an all-out, no-holds-barred, multimedia art contest for ABA members. Entries should focus on the Evening Grosbeak and may include original photography, artwork, video, music, poetry...pretty much anything that can be e-mailed and posted online. Let your creativity and imagination run wild, and have a chance to win some really fantastic prizes!

There is no registration fee! However, you must be an ABA member to register. For contest rules and prize information, and to view entries, check it out online. (click here)

Photographing the Red-breasted Nuthatch

Is it just me, or are Red-breasted Nuthatches especially hard to photograph away from the feeder?

I usually get a lot of blurry shots because they move quickly in dense foliage and I'm still such a wimpy photographer that I rely on the auto-focus of my dSLR camera.

Sometimes I'll get a decent focus, but the lighting is all wrong. So often, these cute little nuthatches are buried in the shadows. I did get a little catch-light in the eye on the next photo though.

I liked this next pose too, but the lighting wasn't to my advantage.

But, it quickly turned around on the very same branch can caught some better light.

Red-breasted Nuthatch from the deck of our friends cabin in Round Valley, Idaho. Sept 2012

Interesting Fact: Despite the broad geographic range of the Red-breasted Nuthatch, no subspecies are recognized in North America. (BNA)

10 Reasons Why Birding is Not Always Fun

Wheatear--one of my successful chases, and more than 25 miles from home. September 2009. Tillamook Co., Oregon.

Sometimes it seems that birding is not always as fun as it can be. This can be due to distressing external factors, of course. But more often than not, it is the attitude that I have to simple changes in circumstances. Things don't always (in fact, hardly ever) go as planned.

Take a look at this countdown list and see if these things have aggravated your birding "inner peace" recently.

10. Car break down

9. Car break in

Fortunately, I have never had my car broken into while birding. I can imagine that this would really ruin your birding day,... or month. There are places where car break-ins are frequent, unfortunately. I suppose, even more upsetting would be muggings or robbery while birding. Kidnappings are a risk in some countries. I feel fortunate to live in an area where crimes against birders (that sounds like the punchline for a joke, doesn't it?) aren't usually a problem.

On the other hand, I've had my share of vehicle problems. When I was a teenager a Big Day was ruined when I drove through a snow-melt puddle at high speed and stalled the engine, then destroyed the starter. We lost at least 4 hours getting a tow and repair, but still had a high number of birds.... I had a camping/birding weekend with 3 flat tires.... One vehicle's transmission went out half-way through a long-planned birding trip, but I got a rental car and had a wonderful long weekend of birding.

8. Vacation is canceled.

I've rarely had trouble getting a weekend off from work, and never had a vacation canceled due to work (that I remember). Canceled vacations from lack of money from no work, yes, but not from work itself.

7. Biting bugs

Western Oregon has very few biting or stinging insects--a few yellow jackets may ruin your picnic, but rarely affect birding itself. On the other hand, I have a mental image of my wonderful wife running for the car through the sagebrush of eastern Oregon spraying mosquito repellent over herself the whole way.... I returned from my visit to North Carolina with chigger bites on my ankles. Those were nasty.... My only encounter with western diamondback rattle snake was also in far eastern Oregon. I got out of the car and was scanning the hillside with binoculars. After about 3 minutes I and heard and then saw the snake crawl out from under the small sage between my tennis shoes and head into the ditch! I stood very still.

6. Weather

5. Pelagic trip canceled for weather

Sometimes I've woken up to nasty weather and just decided not to go birding for the day. But I've had some trips to the beach where birding consisted of running out to the headland for 5 minutes to scan for seabirds before retreating to the car.... I remember being in a group of birders at the south jetty of the Columbia River in spring--a really terrific shorebird location at the time--where we didn't even get out of the car! A Long-tailed Jaeger blew over the parking lot!.... An April pelagic trip was canceled a couple of years ago when we woke up to an inch of snow on the beach in Oregon!.... My most-recently canceled pelagic trips was this August when hot weather over northern California created a thermal low with strong north winds creating huge waves and sunny skies. That ruined a very special trip that was a repeat of the trip a year before... that also canceled due to high wind waves.

4. Weather no good for photography

3. BirdLog software bugs

I found out some time ago that those gray, showery spring morning where I stayed home because the weather was no good for photography, were the best days for spring migratory fall outs!... Sometimes the bird tracking software I use in the field acts up.... Now some people may say that I shouldn't be so dependent upon technology, that birding should just be me and the birds. But birding has always been about technology. Early birding could not be done without a decent shotgun. Later, a field guide was a great technological development. It wasn't until after World War II that binoculars were actually good enough to allow people to see birds well. Then scopes, then the Internet, then digital photography with huge lenses, then eBird. What's next?

2. Dipped on a bird

You know, missing a rare target bird doesn't bother me much. I tend to only "chase" birds within my own county. So I can usually get away to see a local rare bird on short notice. But I've said to myself on more than one occasion, "this is where that rare bird was... several weeks ago.".... I have found that I rarely travel to find rare birds more than about 25 miles from home. Though several years ago I did chase a Fork-tailed Flycatcher about 80 miles away. Amazingly, this bird was in SW Washington--a state I don't even keep a birding list in--and midweek. I really wanted to see that bird... and I did.... This afternoon I drove 20 miles to see a Stilt Sandpiper reported this morning in my home county. I didn't see it.

1. Forgot your bins

This hasn't happened to me,... yet. But there are plenty of other times where I've been a victim of my own mistakes. I haven't forgotten my passport on out-of-country trips. And I have two batteries for my camera. Only recently have I placed a pair of binoculars in the car for impromptu birding. I could have used binoculars last week when I was walking the dog and an unknown warbler was working through the bushes. I'm sure it must have been something good, but I couldn't get it to come out close enough for me to see.

Most of the time birding is fun. But not always.

I'm sure your list includes things I haven't even thought of. What has ruined your birding?

Solitary Birding

For many, birding is strictly a solitary sport,
a release from the obligations of societal life,
replenishing the soul in the wilderness...our resort.

The occasional askance look does not annoy.

You carry on, reveling in the beauty of birds 

that so often feels like only you and you alone appreciate. 

The thoughtless world keeps passing it by.
"They don't know what they're missing."
You curmudgeonly reply.

There is certainly a time

and a place

and a need

for this temporary human eschewal.

But, sometimes ya just gotta stick yer neck out...

...in order to leave an infinite legacy

of future generations inspired by your passion.

Once in a while,

Take a friend birding.

---

Images of this Solitary Sandpiper were taken on September 3rd, 2012 at Herrick Reservoir in Round Valley, Idaho while birding with my friend and our families.

Birder Profile: Lorenzo Rohani

Lorenzo Rohani
Edmonds, Washington

How and when did you get into birding?

When I was five, my sister spotted some American Coots in a lake and asked why some birds have lots of colors and others didn't. My dad gave us our first lesson in bio-diversity and later showed us a field guide to North American birds. I found this guide very interesting and from that time forward I was hooked. At the end of the year in kindergarten, I gave my first talk about birds. That was eight years ago. When I was nine I borrowed my dad's camera to take some bird photos and he encouraged me to photograph all the different species that came to our garden. I found 41 species. That was the beginning of my interest in bird and wildlife photography. In 2012, my dad took me to Canada to find Snowy Owls. We found about 21 at Boundary Bay. One of these Snowy Owl photos won the TIME for Kids 2012 Earth Day photo competition.

Lorenzo Rohani

How often do you go birding? And where do you regularly go birding?

I always notice birds and quite often my dad and I go on trips to photograph them, both trips to near-by parks and to further destinations. We have gone pelagic birding, birding in the Cascade Mountains, birding in the Mojave Dessert, birding along the Pacific coasts and many trips to eastern Washington, which is a great place to see migrating Sanhill Cranes (see video clips).

This summer I was able to take a trip to the Rocky Mountains as part of a Summer Camp organized by the American Birding Association, which was a really fantastic experience. And recently, I also was able to do some birding in England while on vacation.

Where is your favorite local place to go birding?

It is hard to say I have a ''favorite'' place to go birding, but we often go to Umtanum Creek Recreation Area. This place has rugged terrain, steep cliffs, and attracts a large variety of interesting birds including Lazuli buntings, Yellow-breasted Chats, and low-flying Northern Harriers.

My most exotic and one of the coolest trips to date was probably my pelagic birding trip from Westport Washington to Gray’s Canyon. On this trip I saw Black-footed Albatross, a variety of Shearwaters, Storm-Petrels, Phalaropes, and even Tufted Puffins. I also got to see whales, sharks, sunfish, dolphins, and sea lions.

What kind of birding equipment do you use?

I rarely use binoculars because I am almost always carrying a camera with a zoom lens when I’m out birding. I started out using a Canon Rebel xti with a 300mm lens, and now use a Canon 7D with a 400mm lens.

How do you keep track of your bird observations? 

Photographs are the only way I have been documenting my birding experiences. It allows me to review what I've seen and make more accurate bird identifications.


What is your favorite bird sighting and what is the story behind it?

It is always interesting to spot a new species, especially if we have been searching for it for a long time. My dad and I went up to Mount Rainier hoping to find Mountain Bluebirds, which up till then we had been unable to find. Along the Fremont Trail we asked some volunteer rangers if they had ever seen any up there. "No, not at this elevation," we were told, then about 100 meters down the trail we spotted a flock. That was really nice coming as it did after giving up hope that day. Although I didn't get very good photos of the Mountain Bluebirds that day. But later I got another chance in Colorado.



What is your favorite yard bird?

Possibly the most interesting year-around yard bird is the Red-breasted Nuthatch, simply because it is so seemingly indifferent to gravity when it perches—upside down, sideways, doesn’t seem to care. But the rare visits of Pileated Woodpeckers or Cooper’s hawks are of course, really nice. And this year, Northern Flickers created a nest cavity in one of our trees and produced five fledglings. We were able to capture different stages from the time the Flickers started creating the nest cavity to the time the chicks fledged.

Which birding publications and websites do you read and recommend? 

For local range information, I use BirdWeb.org (Seattle Audubon's Guide to the Birds of Washington State). For news about sightings I use the Tweeter's List and eBird.org. For science I use the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I also use Flickr.com to post and share bird photos with other bird photographers around the world.

Which is your favorite field guide?

For reference and identification, I usually use the Sibley guides.

Are you involved with any local or national birding organizations? 

I'm a member of the Audubon Society and the American Birding Association.

Your mission in life as a birder?

If I have a mission as a birder, it would be to use my bird photography to encourage people to make their yards more wildlife friendly and to do more to protect wildlife.

Other birding endeavors you are involved with?

In 2012, my dad helped me put together A Kid’s Guide to Birding. This is a book that explains birding for kids, what makes a good birder, how to recognize and identify birds, how to attract birds to your yard, and places to visit to find different kinds of birds. The book features over 300 of my photos (see samples below) and more than 175 bird species from a wide range of habitats. It has some of my best photos, including some of my Snowy Owls photos.

---

Birder Profile is a blog segment at BirdingIsFun.com spotlighting a fellow birder. If you would be interested in sharing a little about yourself and your birding experiences, please send me an email. Is there a birder you'd like to see featured? Please nominate that person by sending me an e-mail too. Enthusiasm for birding is the only prerequisite!

Birds & Music To My Ears

As we know from my post 2 months ago about birds and the night sky, I do like to look at how birds enter our popular culture, so I thought that this month I’d take a look at birds and music. Some of the stuff I'll mention may be very familiar to you, but others could be a little on the obscure side (some of the music I listen to is not exactly “mainstream”). I’ll mostly concentrate on popular music, with maybe one or two diversions as we go along.

Bald Eagle - Homer, AK

One of the more popular songs which mentions birds, from my generation anyway, is by the Steve Miller Band, Fly Like An Eagle. Like most “bird songs” it’s not really about birds – this song is really more about social issues – just uses them to help paint a lyrical picture.

Singing male Red-winged Blackbird - Merritt Island NWR

Another very popular song, from The Beatles, is Blackbird, a song that is really about the civil rights movement in the 1960s. A least a couple of others from the Fab Four mention birds – Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) and And Your Bird Can Sing – but only use “bird” in the context of British slang that means a young woman.

Northern Mockingbird - Florida

Mockingbird is another well-known song originally recorded in the 60s by Inez & Charlie Foxx, then again in the 70s by Carly Simon and James Taylor. It’s also been done by a lot of other performers, too, though the aforementioned artists had the most chart success.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet - St. Mark's NWR 

Jackson Browne’s The Birds of St. Mark’s is a haunting song about the troubles a young performer is going through in her life, and birds are only mentioned in the chorus. Not sure what “St. Mark’s” is being referred to – the song was written in New York – but I always think of the wildlife refuge in Florida when I see the title or hear the song.

Laughing Gull - Fort DeSoto Park, Florida

Heading into the land of “not so well-known performers” for a pair of examples, Sister Seagull is a song by late 70s British band Be Bop Deluxe (still one of the best band names ever, in my opinion). My interpretation of this one is the song’s subject is just a metaphor for a girl friend or lover; the use of birds metaphorically certainly seems to be a trend anytime they’re mentioned in popular music and there are very few actually about real birds.

Snow Goose - Bosque del Apache NWR

Another less well-known (at least in North America) British band that started in the 70s (and would record and tour for about 30 years) is progressive rockers Camel. Their third release, in 1975, is an instrumental "concept album" titled Music Inspired by The Snow Goose. Written by Paul Gallico, The Snow Goose is a very popular short book set in World War II Britain, and the goose is a central part of that story of friendship. The album is the band's interpretation of the book.

Gambel's Quail - Arizona

In classical music, I often think of the woodwinds imitating bird calls (a nightingale, a quail, and a cuckoo) near the end of the 2^nd movement, By the Brook, in Beethoven’s 6^th, the Pastoral Symphony.

Lincoln's Sparrow - Texas

Returning a bit to more familiar performers, Dan Fogelberg had at least a couple of songs early in his career with Corvid references: Crow and As The Raven Flies, but one I really like only appears on his live album from the early 90s, Greetings From The West. Titled A Cry In The Forest, it is a very moving song about extinction; the words to the first verse are:

There's a cry in the forest, 
it's feathered and brown 
And it echoes off of nothing 
as the trees come down. 
It's the sound of a sparrow 
hittin' the ground
It's the sound of one 
eternity bound 
It's the sound of one 
eternity bound

The next verse is about whales, and then the chorus goes like this:

Whoa eternity bound 
Once they’ve passed into the timeless, 
they can never more be found. 
Is there anybody listening, 
tell me can you hear the sound? 
Of the gentle ones 
eternity bound 
Of the gentle ones 
eternity bound

(A Cry In The Forest lyrics ©Dan Fogelberg)

 I just love this song!

I know I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface - tell us in the comments the songs you know about birds or that make you think of birds!

- Kevin Doxstater

The Little Blue Gets its Hue

There are some species of birds that attempt to fool us with a name that inaccurately depicts them, such as Red-bellied Woodpeckers. In this case, one would visualize a sharp billed bird with a cherry colored stomach, when in fact these birds present with a red head and gray belly. Another species that can cause one  confusion based on its name is the Little Blue Heron.

Adult Little Blue Heron

As adults, Little Blue Herons do accurately fit the description of their name. These herons are, as their name suggests, both small and blue.

Juvenile Little Blue Heron

However, as juveniles, the slate blue hue that they are known for is unmistakably absent. Instead, juvenile Little Blue Herons are pure white. This lack of hue is actually quite helpful for the Little Blues as it allows them to blend with large flocks of other white waders, such as Great Egrets and Snowy Egrets. In a larger flock, these young herons have greater protection from predators.

Around the time the juveniles approach their first spring or early summer, they begin their slow morph from white to blue. This Little Blue, one of the first ones I saw this summer, was in the initial stages of its morph in early June.

I always enjoy seeing the Little Blues in this phase with their erratic mix of white and blue.

The above photo was taken in mid-July and below photo was taken at the end of August. I am quite certain that it is the same heron as I see this visitor regularly meandering around my neighbor's dock.

As this Little Blue nears it complete adult plumage, it now suits its name!

The Society of Nuthatches

White-breasted Nuthatch in Madera Canyon 3-28-2008

I like the society of Nuthatches

I like their cheerful chatter and “Yank, Yank” 

as they go about their business. 

I like their view of the world 

as they survey every situation 

From every angle— 

Theirs is a varying perspective, 

and whatever they see they seem to discuss 

Amicably among themselves 

Until a consensus is reached! 

What cheerful little creatures they are 

As they climb the tall tree trunks 

Or fly to my feeders for seeds, 

They always sound happy to me, 

And they always look curious. 

Yes, I like the society of Nuthatches. 

~Kathie Adams Brown (July 17, 2012)

White-breasted Nuthatch 1-21-2011 Andover, MA

White-breasted Nuthatch 11-16-2010 Andover, MA

White-breasted Nuthatch 10-29-2010 Andover, MA

White-breasted Nuthatch 4-9-2011 Andover, MA

White-breasted Nuthatches 4-9-2011 Andover, MA

White-breasted Nuthatch 9-2-2011 Andover, MA