The Wandering Naturalist: May 2012

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

I'm back!

...Again, I know. The month of May proved too busy for me to even think about blogging. Now that June is almost here and my schedule is slowing down a bit, I'll have time to fill you in on the last month that I literally spent on the road, add some new book reviews (I just received the new Princeton Press Birds of India) and fill you in a little on some more things I see out on the river while I'm at work.

For this post, I'll just say that the birding is slowing down and the Dragonflies are picking up!

Halloween Pennant

I saw Green and Canada Darners, Cobra Clubtail, Twelve-spotted Skimmer and Prince Baskettail this past weekend! The Pennants are out and about and Eastern Forktails and Northern Bluets are around as well.

As the summer goes on, I'm hoping to pick up a few more lifer Dragons and Butterflies, as well as maybe a few new state birds here and there. :)

The Widow Skimmers will be out soon. Keep an eye out for them as they skim ponds, lakes, rivers and streams!

Widow Skimmer

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Almost time for the Biggest Week!

I've been in Ohio for not quite two days and I've barely had time to think. BSBO employees have been scurrying around like ants, scrambling to get every detail in shape for the festival, which starts tomorrow. I have been birding the heck out of Magee Marsh. The last two mornings, I haven't left the boardwalk until after noon. Both mornings were 20+ warbler days. Today, I totaled 23 for the morning. Best so far were a Prairie yesterday and a Canada today. Summer Tanager, Upland Sandpiper, Am Pipit, and a vireo slam were special treats as well. The festival itself starts tomorrow and I am double booked on field trips most days. I'll be attempting to blog in the evenings about the adventures of the day.

Many many people have come down for the festival. Our ABA president and first lady arrived last night and many other nationally known birders are here.

It's going to be an awesome week!
Stay tuned for updates and follow my twitter feed @Uppiesand for sightings updates.

Check the twitter hashtag #biggestweek for tweets about the festival.

Til next time, Happy Birding!

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)