Blog for the Birds

California Boy has Bright Future in Birding Photography

Ben Knoot, a San Mateo middle school student is a serious photographer of birds. He has won awards for his photography and recently a photo he took of the an American Bittern was featured in Ranger Rick magazine. His work can be viewed at his website (link here). It’s amazing work for an 11 year old boy and he should know by know he has a bright future in birding Photography.

Local boy’s bird photos win big

Southern Wisconsin Birders descend on Rare Find

Bird watchers in or around the town of Beloit WI are going to flock to this place because someone sighted a Green-breasted Mango. Wow, now that’s far north for that bird. It’s a tropical hummingbird rarely seen north of Mexico. I hope it finds its way home soon! It’s going to get chilly up there soon.

Rare Mexican Green-Breasted Hummingbird Spotted In Wisconsin

Organize a Birding Field Trip

Organize a Birding Field Trip

Below is a story about local bird watching trip.  Mundane to read about because I wish we could have gone!  But what about organizing your own trip? The trip below was just a small group of people led and organized by an expert birder with 25 years behind her.

If you’re experienced in birding, why not contact your local parks department and organize an outing? It doesn’t have to be all day not does it does have to be complicated.  Just bring a group and the bino’s. It’s a great way to share your knowledge and experience as well as a great way to promote birding.  It’s especially great for senior groups!

Bird-watching for Beginners

Gotwit makes Incredible Journey

A Bar-Tailed Gotwit stunned ornithologists with what is the longest non-stop flight ever recorded.  The gotwits winter in New Zealand and summer in Alaska.  That of course is coming from the perspective of my being in the Northern Hemisphere.  The ‘winter’ I referred to is actually summer in the Southern Hemisphere.

Anyway, 16 of the many thousands of gotwits that make this journey annually were tagged with satellite transmitters.  One called “E7″ flew 6,340 miles to a wetland area near the North Korea-China border where it stopped to rest and feed.  Then the amazing bird flew another 3,000 miles to Alaska!

This shows that godwits make the return trip southbound directly across the Pacific rather than along the Asian coast as many believed they did.  It was the return trip for E7 that really broke the records.  When it flew south, it flew directly from Alaska to New Zealand for a total of 7,145 miles!

Now those are some long flight patterns and it goes to show what incredible endurance those birds must have. 

Alaska Bird Makes Longest Nonstop Flight Ever Measured

Gulf States Now Getting Hummingbird Migration

Hummingbirds are at all times only a few hours from starving due to their extremely high metabolic rate. It’s this time of year, the fast flappers make their trip back to Central and South America, across that massive Gulf of Mexico.  Even for those birds that skirt the coast, it’s a long trip. To make this trip, they have to stock up and fatten up.

Here is a couple in Louisiana who’ve devoted their yard (and a good part of their lives) to hummingbirds.  They have multiple nectar feeders and a yard full of nectar producing plants.  What a grand ‘humming’ sight it must be this time of year! 

Yard Beckons hummingbirds

San Diego Park Closes Aviary

The San Diego Wild Animal Park closed it aviary due to the mysterious death of 10 lorikeets.  Apparently West Nile is not to blame here but it is unusual for so many birds of a feather to die like that. 

Lorikeets are incredibly colorful small parrots with rainbow feathers. The birds in this aviary were trained to land on people’s arms and hands and eat nectar from cups. While the experts don’t believe there is a threat to humans at this time, the park is taking precautions by closing the Aviary.

Wild Animal Park closes aviary after bird die-off

The Strange Debate over the Trumpeter Swan

When I have time to spare, I like to pick up an Audubon or the birding magazine. Today I ran across this article called The Big Flap from 2005. It talks about the issues surrounding the reintroduction of the Trumpeter Swan to the East Coast of the US.

The big question in the debate over whether to reintroduce them is whether they belong there to begin with. Trumpeter Swans were hunted to near extinction in the 1800’s but have returned in healthy numbers. There’s evidence that Trumpeter Swans could be found on the East Coast prior to the 1800’s but there’s a bit of a question as to whether they bred there or what level of their population could be found there.

Gerry Rising is one of those opposed to the reintroduction of the Trumpeter Swan to the East Coast and he details his argument on his website Swan Controversy. One of the problems he and others like him face is trying to prove that something didn’t happen (in this case, that Trumpeter Swans did not use the East Coast wetlands as breeding territory). It’s kind of like UFO’s. Most reasonable people don’t really believe they exist, yet how can anyone conclusively prove that UFOs don’t exist?

Whether or not one believes the Trumpeter Swan’s breeding legacy includes the East Coast, there is the question of what makes sense now? What merits the reintroduction of this giant bird to a region where wetlands, while prior to 1800 were plentiful, have now so greatly diminished?

People like these beautiful birds and love to watch them. That would seem the merit and while that’s a selfish reason for East Coast birders, is it the best thing for this bird? Let’s just state the obvious here. The East Coast looks a bit different ecologically now than it did in 1700’s.

It’s a Bird, it’s a Dino, no it’s Mahakala

A small sized fossil called Mahakala omnogovae may help provide the missing link between birds and dinosaurs. Scientists have long suspected a link between our Aviary friends and prehistoric beasts, but solid evidence has been difficult to come by. Mahakala is small enough to perhaps be that link; it sizes up at 70 centimeters (about 27 and a half inches) from head to end of tail. Still baffling to scientists, is the how prehistoric birds avoided the big ‘wipe out’ of 65 million years ago.

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