The Wandering Naturalist: So I'm sitting at home reading the morning emails.....

Monday, April 7, 2008

So I'm sitting at home reading the morning emails.....

and an email came in from Mary Balch in NW IA about an Oriole that's coming to her feeders. She described the bird as a Black and yellow Oriole. My very first thought was Scott's Oriole. A bird that would be a first record for Iowa.

I asked Mary to send me the pictures she had taken. You can see for yourself that my initial guess was correct:

Both photos are used by the kind permission of Mary Balch.

Unfortunately, the bird is much too far away for me to chase.

For those that would like to chase the bird, I will post directions if Mary decides to let birders come and see this first IA state record.

5 comments:

David Bell said...: Too far to chase?!?! Although you'll probably see them at Camp C this summer... If it was a first NA record I'd be there!; April 7, 2008 at 4:51 PM
Chris W said...: Haha, actually, no bird is "too far to chase". It's just a little far for a bird that I'll most likely see anyway.

And yes, if it's a first NA record, I would do my best to get there. I did miss going after the Elainia though. That one really was too far and didn't stay long enough.; April 7, 2008 at 5:11 PM
David Bell said...: yeah, although if you had enough $ to buy a last-minute plane ticket you'd be set! :P...unfortunately that is not the case for people like us :( (at least for now!).; April 7, 2008 at 9:43 PM
Amila Salgado said...: Pretty little bird!; April 9, 2008 at 12:14 PM
Anonymous said...: I just got to see the bird on April 8. I went up with my friend Paul, and got some pictures of this neat bird. It was a new life bird for me making my list go to 254. Awesome bird!; April 11, 2008 at 4:25 PM

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Bird quotes.

"The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again."

(From William Beebe's "The Bird: Its Form and Function," 1906)

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' (I found it) but 'That's funny...'"
--Isaac Asimov

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
-- Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad

"I once had a sparrow alight on my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn." --Henry David Thoreau

"God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages." --Jacques Deval

"Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?" --Rose Kennedy

"No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings" --William Blake

"A wise old owl sat on an oak; The more he saw, the less he spoke; The less he spoke the more he heard; Why aren't we like that wise old bird?" --E.H. Richards

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song" --Maya Angelou

"When thou seest an Eagle, thou seest a portion of genius; lift up thy head!" --William Blake

"He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls."

--A.L. Tennyson, "The Eagle"

"This monument, perched like a duckhawk on this cliff, will scan this wide valley, watching through the days and years. For many a March, it will watch the geese go by. For many an April, it will see the redbuds come and go, and for many a May the flush of Oak-blooms on a thousand hills. Questing wood Ducks will search these basswoods for hollow limbs; golden Prothonotaries will shake golden pollen from river willows. Egrets will pose on these sloughs in August; Plovers will whistle from september skies. Hickory nuts will plop into October leaves and hail will rattle November woods. But no pigeons will pass for there are no pigeons, save only this flightless one graven in bronze on this rock.
Tourists will read this inscription but their thoughts will not take wing."
--Aldo Leopold ("on the monument to the pigeon". A Sand county almanac)