The Wandering Naturalist: May 2014

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Big Day field trip!!

I led one of the Big Day field trips at the Biggest Week in American Birding today.

We were fortunate to have good weather and the birding turned out pretty decent!

Our first stop at Oak Openings Metropark gave us a good start to the morning. Tufted Titmice, Bluebirds, a few warblers, a flyby Broad-winged Hawk, and a Yellow-billed Cuckoo!!

The stream at Oak Openings usually provides some good warblers. Today, it was a Hooded, singing his alternate song.

Pearson Metropark is always a beautiful walk and good birding. The window on wildlife feeders are always fun and the mature deciduous forest is always a nice walk.

We finished up the day with a run to Metzger Marsh where we saw this Sora!

Our total ended with 126 for the day which was enough to win the friendy competition between the two Big Day buses and was an awesome day for us!

We ended with a bus load of happy people!

Just another day in the life of a tour leader at the biggest festival in the country!

Blogging live, sitting at the back of the room, listening to Kenn Kaufman's excellent presentation. He's currently telling us stories about seeing Gyrfalcons and plovers. He's talking about emotions in birds, instincts, how food drives them and more.

Kenn is always a superb presenter and it's always a treat to hear him speak.

There are more awesome presentations in the coming week and always more birds to see!

Monday, May 5, 2014

Magee Marsh; where you can photograph warblers with your iPod!

Off to Magee Marsh!

What I woke up to this morning after a gorgeous, sunny day yesterday. Heading off to Ohio shortly for The Biggest Week in American Birding! Where Birds Rule! Literally. ;)

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Saturday, May 3, 2014

Could it be? no rain?

Anyone have any idea what that weird bright thing in the sky is? It seems to be giving off quite a bit of heat...

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Friday, May 2, 2014

Broad-winged Hawk

Broad-winged Hawk from Wyalusing State Park today. It's a good time of year to see these small Buteos perched in the early mornings. I just wish the light had been a little better this morning.

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Garganey at Crex Meadows!!

Garganey is a gorgeous duck in the Teal family, from Eurasia. They're readily and easily identifiable as this photo shows. They show up in the US semi-regularly but very rarely in the lower 48. This one, that I saw at Crex Meadows Wildlife Area in Burnett County, WI yesterday constitutes the first state record of this species. They are awesome and beautiful birds and it was a treat to see one for the first time. They are occasionally kept in captivity, but most records are considered valid vagrants when they show up in pattern with season, following strong winds.

The rest of the photo set is on my Flickr page: http://ift.tt/1hkKG7a

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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)