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That first field trip to Djerdap Gorge National Park, eight years ago, was made as a part of an ecotourism potential evaluation project. And in order to evaluate its potential, my agenda was to spend whole two days in the park and to produce the best possible evaluation based on that visit. Habitats: Check Birds… well, more presumed what the possibilities are, than actually checked… Sleeping: Check Getting around: Check I will come back to these topics in a while.
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As we all know, birding is very much a lottery. Visiting the same place repeatedly delivers a different cast of characters each time. Such is nature. Late yesterday evening we took a walk along an often-traversed trail through the Main Ridge Forest Reserve here on Tobago. I’m accustomed to seeing nothing while walking along some of these trails, but apart from a Golden-olive Woodpecker knocking the trunk of a palm tree at the entrance, it seemed extra quiet.
The thickly forested central region of the island of Trinidad isn’t often visited by birders who traditionally flocked to the Northern Range by virtue of the Asa Wright Nature Centre (which is still closed in case you were wondering); the furthest south one may have ventured on a weeklong sojourn likely would be the mudflats of Waterloo on the west coast.
Do Brown-headed Cowbirds really smell like freshly baked sugar cookies? Do Dark-eyed Juncos really smell like leaves and dirt or “ferns and Celestial Seasonings’ Country Peach Passion Tea? Do birds use odors and a sense of smell to communicate with each other? The Secret Perfume of Birds: Uncovering the Science of Avian Scent focuses on this last question, but you might find yourself fascinated by the first two, which come early in the book but linger on in the imagination as author
There are a number of podcasts dedicated to birding ( e.g. , American Birding Podcast and many others ), but many general-interest podcasts also feature episodes of interest to birders. Below are some fairly recent episodes that I have enjoyed and that may be of interest to others. All can be listened to for free online via the links. There are many many podcasts and I have only sampled a small number, so if there are episode suggestions, please leave them in the comments.
In the northern temperate zone, August is a time of hazy, lazy dog days, a month when you soak up that last bit of summer during outdoor picnics and shorebird chases. While growing up in Niagara Falls, New York, I often wondered if the warm and humid weather was similar to the constant short-wearing climes of tropical places. Having lived in Costa Rica for several years, I recall those glorious August days in the 80s and can say that yes, it is rather like August, all year long.
In the northern temperate zone, August is a time of hazy, lazy dog days, a month when you soak up that last bit of summer during outdoor picnics and shorebird chases. While growing up in Niagara Falls, New York, I often wondered if the warm and humid weather was similar to the constant short-wearing climes of tropical places. Having lived in Costa Rica for several years, I recall those glorious August days in the 80s and can say that yes, it is rather like August, all year long.
Over the past couple of months, my wife and I have had an interesting turn in our lives. This turn has resulted in our gaining new friends, one of them an avid (and professional) birder. In fact, it was birding that brought them into our lives. Certain special circumstances to this story will require that I go rather cloak-and-dagger with my telling of this story.
Well, Kai Pflug has beaten me again. I had spent a couple of weeks vaguely contemplating the need to write about my first wetland trip of the winter migratory season. Meanwhile, Kai continues to crank out two or more posts each week. Action was bound to beat contemplation, and so he wrote about his returning waders before I wrote about mine. Let that be a lesson, to me.
The twin-island postcolonial paradise of Trinidad & Tobago celebrates its 60th anniversary of independence today, and as much as I am vehemently anti-nationalist I figured I’d draw some attention to this fact. Partly due to the paucity of birding missions within the past fortnight, but more so because T&T is one of the few countries within which there are several birds bearing the national colours.
One of the pairs of Pied Oystercatchers on Cable Beach have hatched their eggs this week. There had been one egg in the nest scrape on July 25th and a second egg followed. This Tuesday I was expecting the eggs to start to hatch and they did just that. As you can see in the header photo the nest was in a very exposed area, but it was back from high tide and had survived for twenty nine days.
For some reason that I do not quite understand myself – given that I really rather dislike children and am not too positive about the rest of humanity either – I recently put up a little display of bird photos inside my Shanghai compound, which I share (as the only foreigner) with about 1700 Chinese. So, here are the photos including a few comments, showing species that can actually be seen in this suburban compound – incidentally (as one friend pointed out) in the same glass b
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When I was a kid (and don’t you hate it when blog posts start like this, with the author apparently just assuming that you care about how he spent his childhood), the first pets we had were a pair of Budgerigars. We even had some chicks – not that this was a big achievement. According to Tim Low (in “Where Song began”), “so easy were they to breed that by 1859 they cost less to buy in London than in Sydney.” Funny how the difficulty of breeding a species can b
I understood that my favourite, and in my opinion the very best field guide series in the world – Lynx & Birdlife International – is practically dead because of the high costs of developing a field guide and low sales during the pandemic. The first title of the ‘official’ series (there were two ‘prequels’) was “ Birds of Thailand “, published in 2018.
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Letaba is a largish rest camp in the North central part of the park. It is near a river, attracting some birds that like to eat wet food. As the national bird of Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, the African Fish Eagle is usually very busy whenever it stays in these countries, giving speeches, opening shopping centers, etc. So, it sometimes comes to South Africa to relax and enjoy relative anonymity.
Since I first told you of the Mistletoebird nest that was built in the bush close to our home there has been a lot of activity. All of the leaves fell off the tree, so the nest became a lot more visible two weeks ago , but there are trees close by that the Mistletoebirds tend to land in first before going to the nest. The tree in the header photo has also been used by the Brush Cuckoo recently.
Around this time of the year, the first few waders are back in Shanghai from their breeding grounds far further up north. Generally, being back here early is not a very good sign – it may indicate a failed breeding attempt, as suggested for Asian Dowitchers in a paper on their presence in Lianyungang somewhat further north of Shanghai. And as there are only about 23,000 of them around globally (of which the photo below shows about 0.01%), this is a bit of a pity.
Over the past week I have continued to keep an eye out for the Mistletoebirds that are breeding in the bush not far from our back fence. We have also been listening to the call of the Brush Cuckoo , which appears to have made itself at home in the same area. Brush Cuckoos can be found throughout the north of Australia and also down the east coast of Australia.
Careful readers of my recent posts, and surely there must be at least one or two, will note that I have had some pretty exciting outings of late. Most of these were due to my hosting some far better birders than I. Less momentous, though just as exciting for me, were my outings during a brief trip to northern California. So back in mid-July, in between hosting out-of-state birders, I decided to relax and go see some old friends — old feathered friends, that is.
According to Wikipedia, the national bird of Australia is the Emu – which I have not seen yet. On the other hand, some websites state that the Laughing Kookaburra is Australia’s national symbol. Anyway, I was much keener to see this kingfisher than the Emu (who I consider to be a bit of an underprivileged ostrich). Duncan – in a 10,000 Birds post – apparently also thinks it would make a good national bird.
I thought I should update you all on the Mistletoebirds that are nesting close to home, because I walk by the nest every day. Since I wrote about the nest a couple of weeks ago it has become a lot more obvious with the loss of leaves on the tree. Tree with Mistletoebird nest. Until very recently I had only seen the female Mistletoebird sitting in the nest with her head sticking out or on a nearby tree, which also has no leaves.
Every place has its common birds, the species that do very well in a given habitat. As we like to say, these are species that are “hard to miss”, birds that, if you are watching, will be seen. Some common birds take ease of being seen one step further, kick their visual presence up a notch by being noticeable to the non-birder. In being wonderfully obvious, such birds become avian ambassadors, special “signature” species with the potential to raise bird awareness, to reco
Down here in Mexico, many of the longest life lists belong to full- or part-time birding guides. Now, I’m no professional, but I am more than happy to take people to meet the wonderful birds of this country’s southwest. I have never received any pay for doing so, nor do I plan on taking any pay in the future. But sometimes I benefit in other ways.
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