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'I am not anti-hunting. I won’t pick a fight with hunters, as long as they eat what they shoot and don’t use lead ammunition. However, I will pick a fight with the Rip Van Winkle Rod and Gun Club in Palenville, New York, which is sponsoring their fourth annual “Crow Down” March 29-30, 2014. The “Crow Down” is a “hunting contest” where both adults and children slaughter as many crows as they possibly can in two days.
'Moving is a stressful endeavor. There are boxes to pack, valuables to secure, and furniture to disassemble. But when your shift from one home to another involves a pet, the undertaking becomes even more, err, ruff. And if you’ve got a dog or cat that doesn’t travel well, things can get downright hairy. But with careful planning and preparation — and plenty of patience — you can get through any location change without feeling as though you’re chasing your tail.
'Issue Date: 2014-03-31. Author: Joe Boissy, Chief Marketing Officer, Vendavo. Teaser: B2B sales will always demand a certain level of art and emotional intelligence. The same can be said for B2C sales. But it is possible to take the guess work out of B2B sales. With hard numbers backing their decisions, salespeople will be able to stand by prices with confidence, just like retail salespeople used to.
'Big news about a small bird broke earlier this month when bird researchers from several nations announced that the species formerly known as Spotted Wren-Babbler ( Spelaeornis formosus ) — a tiny, secretive bird of montane forests from the eastern Himalayas to southeast China — is not a Spelaeornis wren-babbler at all. Instead, it appears to be the sole member of a very old family ( Discovery of a relict lineage and monotypic family of passerine birds , Alström et al.).
'Birders have been eagerly anticipating The Sibley Guide to Birds, Second Edition , since it was announced that David Allen Sibley was working on it. The first edition, I think it is fair to say, has been pretty much become the go to field guide for North America in the years since it was first published back in 2000. We have all been wondering if the second edition would live up to the high expectations set by the first and as review copies have dribbled out over the last month some of our ques
'What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate. After scrolling through piles of furious emails regarding a recent blog about Rip Van Winkle’s Crow Killing Contest , it seemed to me that all of us needed Dr. Phil. Accusations were leveled, assumptions were made, direct questions went unanswered, and there was no monitor to call the room to order. The subject was not hunting; it was contest killing.
'What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate. After scrolling through piles of furious emails regarding a recent blog about Rip Van Winkle’s Crow Killing Contest , it seemed to me that all of us needed Dr. Phil. Accusations were leveled, assumptions were made, direct questions went unanswered, and there was no monitor to call the room to order. The subject was not hunting; it was contest killing.
'We barely started the drive, when a flock of 14 Common Cranes forced us to stop and reach for binoculars and cameras. Belgrade lies on the cranes’ migratory corridor and, especially in Spring, flocks are regularly spotted above the city. Further north, we slow down by the ruins of an old farm… and yes, a Little Owl greets us with its ‘smiling’ face.
'A loud chirp rang from the side of the mountain, and a handful of stones skittered down the talus slope. A bit alarming, given the events of the last few weeks in Missoula, but after years of close encounters with chipmunks and ground squirrels I have finally gotten to have a pretty good idea of a rodent when I hear one. Sure enough, I looked up to see a pair of yellow-bellied marmots, big woodchuck-esque creatures with adorable nose patches, come bounding and sliding down the steep, sparsely-t
'The sprawling city-state of Hong Kong is, without a doubt, one of the great capitals of the world, a gleaming metropolis where centuries of Eastern and Westerns culture blend with commerce to produce a true 21st century society. Despite impressive, often rampant development, Hong Kong reserves 40% of its land as greenspace. The result is a nature lover’s paradise rich with mountains, beaches, and birds.
'Be careful if you cross the feral cat freaks – they might protest your business, sue you, and drive you to suicide. Such was the sad fate of a New York City veterinarian who refused to release a stray cat she treated back to a feral cat freak who planned to release the cat back into a feral cat colony. Dr. Shirley Koshi was a woman who devoted her life to caring for animals and sought to prevent a cat from the miseries of living out-of-doors.
'Florida is known as the Sunshine State. It is also known for the 500 exotic species of animals and plants that now call the Sunshine State home. Exotic species are animals that did not historically occur in Florida. Most were introduced, meaning they were brought to Florida by humans. One such species is the familiar mallard (Anas platyrhynchos). Resident mallards are considered an “exotic duck” in Florida and have the potential to drive the native mottled duck (Anas fulvigula) to extinction th
'Some may consider talking about the weather banal, but I can’t help complaining during a winter like this. While March earns a reputation for coming in like a lion, the season rarely seems as wild and cold as Winter Storm Titan threatens to be over the next few days in the American Northeast, Midwest, and Mid-Atlantic. Seriously, if this continues into migration, the birds are all going to fly back south.
'Brian Stoneman (1946-2009) was a friend of mine and a top class birder. He grew up in the London East End and spoke hardly understandable cockney. After his early retirement due to lung cancer, when doctors were giving him up to two years more to live, he moved to the coast of Turkey where he bought a half-finished house whose foundations were washed by the waves of the Aegean Sea, met the love of his life and cheated the doctors for quite some time.
'I had the pleasure of heading to the Winter Wings Bird Festival in Klamath Falls, Oregon last month and it was a good time. It’s an area beloved by photographers for all the Tundra Swans and Bald Eagles that hang out in the area and the surrounding habitat makes for a beautiful backdrop. When you go to a bird festival to lead a field trip and you don’t live in the area, you are typically assigned a local guide who knows the best routes and what areas are going to be the birdiest.
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'Keep your eyes to the skies for uncommon birds like this leucistic Bald Eagle ! Daylight Savings Time falls this weekend in those areas that observe this tradition. Remember, springing forward means one less hour of sleep this weekend, not one less hour of sleep! I’ll be out and about in the Rochester area enjoying this sudden influx of sun. Corey will be birding the heck out of some random part of New York.
'My husband’s nickname for me is “Analog.” I go to the bank to deposit a check, whereas he snaps a picture of the check with his phone and drops it in our account without leaving the couch. I use envelopes and stamps instead of online billpay, and pay tolls with coins instead of a plastic transponder. I rely on my library of cookbooks rather than Google for recipes, and prefer my cassettes, CDs, and LPs to my iTunes collection.
'I’ve heard many people ask “why don’t they call it the Ring-billed Duck?” They do have a white band toward the end of their bill. But if you look closely, you can see the dark violet band around the neck of the male Ring-necked Duck ( Aythya collaris ). Click on photos for full sized images. The female has what some might construe as a “ring” around the neck where the light colored throat moves toward the more brown breast.
'The patch. All birders know what a patch is, and I’m going to do all of us a favor and spare you the definition of a patch and what it means’s to it’s “owner”…it is known. You are welcome. The real challenge in discussing a patch is making it somehow interesting to other birders…after all, a patch is a personal thing, so blogging about one’s patch is akin to blogging about one’s bird list…it may be interesting at first, but it gets old
'As most of my regular readers know, I am a big fan of nest cams, feeder cams, and other such technologies. By allowing viewers to get up close and personal without disturbing birds, they can foster a sense of engagement that until now was mostly achieved by nigh-Victorian pursuits like collecting and taking animals from the wild to serve as household pets — activities that enlivened the childhoods of naturalist-heroes like Gerald Durrell but much impoverished the natural world when widely
'I finally saw my first migratory Eastern Phoebe of 2014 today at Rockaway Community Park in Queens! It is the next-to-latest date I have ever had my first of the year. For me, spring doesn’t really begin until I see my first phoebe on migration so I am relieved that I finally saw one. Spring can now start! As I have for the last several years, I will now ask the same question of midwesterners and northeasterners that I ask every year: When did you see your first Eastern Phoebe of 2014?
'What makes this or that bird one we want to see on our next birding trip? Personal preferences are important, but there is certain criteria each species is tested against before it gets on the short wish list. I for instance, asked which birds would be on the wish list of someone visiting Peru, and what criteria birders use to generate such wish list.
'When Adam Riley let me know he had seen some cool frigatebird photos and wondered if we wanted to run them on 10,000 Birds I immediately said yes. After all, the last time Adam said he had some cool photos they were really, really cool ! In this case, Adam did not take the photos – they were taken by Ed Ritchie, who was lucky enough to view the behavior shown here on a recent visit to the Galapagos Islands.
'I was spending the morning this past Sunday checking out some random, out-of-the-way spots in Queens to see if any cool birds were hanging around in what I call my armpit of Queens route. I tend to hit lots of crummy and scummy bits of vacant land, polluted ponds, and other bits of marginal habitat that hides in the city’s interstices. At the north end of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park I was pleased to see what looked like a Green-winged Teal at first.
'Not one but two scientific studies linking birds to foul odors were released this week. The stinky results may actually have some side benefits for birds, and the planet as a whole. It’s a headline-writer’s dream! First up is a paper appearing in the new issue of the journal Science. It describes a Spanish researcher’s finding that Great Spotted Cuckoos somewhat make up for their brood-parasitism habit.
'Yes, that’s what’s happening at Midway Atoll, a chain of islands in the Pacific Ocean managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). You’ve no doubt heard about birds being put at risk by nonnative cats, rats, and even goats. But plants? In the case of Midway, a National Wildlife Refuge , the offending species is Golden Crownbeard ( Verbesina enceliolides ) , an innocuous-looking flower that’s native to Mexico and the Southwestern United States.
'Erika is a first year graduate student studying Ecosystem Science and Conservation at Duke. In her free time she travels near and far to find birds to continue building her life list, though many of her favorites can still be found right in her own backyard. She has contributed many pieces to 10,000 Birds and writes about her birding adventures on her blog, newbirder.tumblr.com.
'Hopefully, those of you who observe St. Patrick’s Day by doing more than donning green didn’t “celebrate” so much this weekend that you’re suffering today. Enjoy! When I saw a Turkey Vulture soaring serenely over the frozen tundra of Rochester last month, I took the sighting as an example of how confused, in a potentially fatal way, some birds can get.
'The Varied Thrushes came back. Then the Western Bluebirds and Meadowlarks. My Dark-eyed Juncos are trilling in preparation to retreat to quieter breeding grounds, the Black-Capped Chickadees sing their two notes, and the Song Sparrows absolutely will not shut up. For all that, though, migration here is still largely a water-based show, with the most spectacular signs of springs coming in the forms of ducks, geese, and swans.
'Signs of a changing season are busting out all over, but I can’t see any of them with all the snow that fell last night. We weary winter warriors need some serious respite. Shouldn’t someone be sending St. Bernards with brandy barrels on their collars to help us get through this? Like the fabled honey badger, grackles don’t care. The snow and cold hardly seem to faze them.
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