The Wandering Naturalist

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Social Media workshop for birders

In case you have missed it, Gunnar Engblom of Kolibri Expeditions is currently doing a social media workshop for birders. This includes blogging, Twitter and Facebook among other things.
If you haven't seen it yet, check out day three of this 31 day workshop here.

In this post, he talks about Facebook and it's advantages and disadvantages. Many people do not use it to it's full potential. While it is indeed a social networking website for keeping in touch with old friends, it has a million other current and potential uses. Many tour companies have taken advantage of it as a marketing tool. It has also been used for meeting new friends, creating new networks, sending out rare bird alerts, creating business pages, as well as several other things.

Want to know what else Facebook can be used for? Check out the workshop! It's totally free. You can sign up for the email newsletter, but if that's too much, then just bookmark the blog and come back every day. Come to think of it, bookmark each post to use as a future reference!

Haven't clicked the link yet? Why not? Do it. :)

Thursday, January 14, 2010

New trip opportunity for Young Birders

Over the past few weeks, I've been talking with Gunnar Engblom of Kolibri Expeditions about doing a Young Birders budget tour to Manu or Carpish in southern Peru. After bouncing the idea off of me and my fellow Young Birder (YB) Kai Reed, Gunnar came up with the following:

An 8 day trip to either Manu or Carpish/Satipo Rd. Each trip would cost a mere $699/person. That's a crazy low price for a trip to Peru. In many cases, the airfare would cost more.

You can read more about it on Gunnar's blog:

http://www.kolibriexpeditions.com/birdingperu/blog/index.php/young-birder-trips-to-peru-8-days-699/

I was able to provide him with the photo at the top of the post. It is from last summer's Camp Chiricahua. Take a look! You may recognize someone!

This is an awesome opportunity to bird Peru for practically nothing, compared to regular prices. There may also be some chance that these trips will be offered in coming years as well.

Check it out!! Peru is calling!

Friday, January 1, 2010

And the Duck Says.........

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!

Friday, December 25, 2009

Merry Christmas!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Thursday, December 24, 2009

One more version of The Night before Christmas......

This one from the birdfreak blog. Enjoy!

http://birdfreak.com/the-night-before-christmas/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BirdfreakBirdingBlog+%28Birdfreak%3A+The+Bird+Conservation+Blog%29

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)