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Do you want to help endangered birds? How about helping with conservation of cool tropical birds by listening to innovative electronic music? Whether you happen to be more interested in music or birds, you may love “A Guide to the Birdsong of Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean” Since this is a music project rather than an actual guide of bird vocalizations, there won’t be a catalog of antbird trills and toucan yelps.
Author: Luke Kreitner The element of surprise has been proven to be a powerful motivational tool. Scientific studies show that unexpected incentive rewards stimulate areas of the brain connected to behavior development and learning. With stay-at-home mandates causing what many reference as the “groundhog day” effect, your sales team is the perfect audience for incorporating surprise rewards as part of a sales incentive program to keep remote teams engaged and company morale high.
A Common Quail was calling from a small patch of greenery, across the mostly empty car park. Sitting in a cafe, I open my notebook and wrote it down, then look around for someone I know to share the bird, but I knew no other guests. The only strange thing about this observation, as I realised when I woke up a few seconds later, was that what I mentally transcribed wasn’t its “ wet-my-lips ” (or the Serbian onomatopoeia “puch-pu-rich”) but “whip-poor-will”!
“Look around, look around…” The refrain is from Hamilton , a demand and a plea to look with the brain and the heart and then to look again. Listening to them, I thought the words could also be applied to one of the more positive phenomena of the past few months, though in a very different context. People stayed home and looked around.
As we all well know there is something very different about 2020. Following on from our first camping trip for 2020 we took another camping trip a bit further afield. Having observed the Cattle Egret in breeding plumage at the Derby Poo Ponds on June 19th we found ourselves at Windjana Gorge first thing the following morning. I have written about Windjana Gorge before, because we try and visit it most years.
A narrow forest road takes us to the chain blocking the entrance, with a sign “Area closed – bear danger”. Ranko Milanovic, Tara National Park ranger, leaves the car to open the passage. Small letters say: “removal of this sign is punishable”, but Ranko is authorised to take us in. Soon, the forest opens into a clearing with a wooden feeding structure on one side and a wooden blind on the other side.
Another weekend is in the books. With hope, this was a memorable one for you, even if the birds weren’t particularly rare. My best sighting was a Herring Gull with a mantle so dark, I suspected Lesser Black-backed. However, many of the bird’s field marks were obscured because it flew far below me as I walked across the bridge I’ll always know as the Tappan Zee.
Another weekend is in the books. With hope, this was a memorable one for you, even if the birds weren’t particularly rare. My best sighting was a Herring Gull with a mantle so dark, I suspected Lesser Black-backed. However, many of the bird’s field marks were obscured because it flew far below me as I walked across the bridge I’ll always know as the Tappan Zee.
In Costa Rica, our July birding news usually consists of interesting sightings during the mid-summer tours. Which tours saw the most roosting owls? Did Cope have another site for nesting Great Potoo ? This odd nocturnal creature is around the same size as a Barred Owl. What has Chambito been seeing in Cano Negro? Is there a seeding patch of bamboo I can visit?
You know that feeling, when you get up early to go birding at your favorite lake, and when you get there, the lake is gone? I hate it when that happens. Lake Cuitzeo, some 30 km (19 miles) north of Morelia, is Mexico’s second largest lake. It stretches from east to west for around 40 km (25 miles), although for the most part it is only 5 km (3 miles) wide from north to south.
Like most North American birders, I never pay much mind to the European (Common) Starling ( Sturnus vulgaris ). Sure, they’re always a dependable, can’t-miss tick whenever you need them to be there, whether it’s the first day of the year, or the first few minutes of a Big Day or Christmas Bird Count. And, if you care to admit it, they do look rather attractive in their own sweet way, with their bright yellow beaks and their shimmering, purplish iridescence.
Summer felt officially “on” this weekend in many parts of the northern hemisphere. That summer generally signals a decline in local avian diversity probably hasn’t sunken in yet, but rest assured the birds you saw this weekend may grow tiresome in another month. In my case, the same old same old swallows up at the lakeshore did nothing to diminish gorgeous days at the beach; the Bank Swallows and I both had a great time.
Summer in Shanghai is not the best season for birding – most birds seem to agree with me that it is too hot. And yet, there are still birds to see … The Black-crowned Night Heron is one of my favorite common birds in Shanghai. If it wasn’t so common, I would be quite happy to travel some distance to see it. This Eurasian Hoopoe has just been pushed aside from its feeding spot by a Crested Myna – and even a juvenile, what a shame!
Our first Pied Oystercatcher eggs for this year’s breeding season were laid early and were due to hatch last weekend. This pair of Pied Oystercatchers never seems to have a problem with incubating their eggs. They take it in turns over the twenty eight days sitting or hovering over the eggs. Once the eggs are close to hatching they will display aggressively and call out.
I often feel the need to remind my readers in this forum that I am neither a biologist nor a photographer. I am a birder, who began photographing birds as an identification tool. Eventually, taking all those photos produced some that weren’t bad. And, with time and tens of thousands of photos (I like the constant shoot mode), I picked up some rudimentary skills as well.
In the course of our nearly weekly reviews here at Birds and Booze, we’ve come across an impressive variety in the depictions of birds on packages of beer, wine, cider, and spirits. Sometimes it’s a dignified depiction of a local species with some significance to the producer – especially when it comes to wineries, who are always eager to advertise their sense of place and a deep connection between the land and their product.
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As is standard operating procedure, once a song gets stuck in your head you must pass it off to someone else. In this case it is you, the innocent reader who should thank me for not setting the title of this piece to “Just Like Paradise” Not that I have anything personal against David Lee Roth but this isn’t a blog post about something that can be likened to paradise.
As I simply saw too many interesting birds during my short Delhi birding trip in 2019, I decided to cover the trip in two separate posts. Having a scientific background, I correctly posted part 1 before part 2, which is below. There is no ornithological rationale for which birds are featured in part 1 and 2 – it is merely a question of following the alphabet wherever it led me.
What with lockdown and all, it had been a while since I had made the one-hour drive down to Paso Ancho, my closest option for birding a full-blown tropical thorn forest habitat. At 3,300 feet (1,000 m), this is the edge of what Mexicans call Tierra Caliente, the Hot Country. But geographers and biologists would call it the northern edge of the Balsas River Basin, a hotbed of west Mexican endemism.
Juniper is a decidely wintery spice, and its piquant, piney flavor is generally used to season game, offal, and charcuterie, steaming heaps of sauerkraut, warming cordials, and other hearty fare best enjoyed during the shorter, darker days of the year. But take that same juniper and distill it into gin and you get a spirit with a sweet, floral bouquet that transforms this pungent evergreen berry into a cooling drink for even the most sweltering summer days – and one that’s made even better when
I know that June has a poetic reputation for perfect days , but July in upstate New York may offer the ultimate summer nights. Not many owls or nightjars in these parts, though, so we can’t consider them perfect. The last weekend lived up to my meager expectations of delivering only common species, but I did enjoy the Carolina Wrens in my yard chattering away, undoubtedly in delight that their aggressive House cousins were occupied elsewhere.
Following on from the sad loss of our first Pied Oystercatcher chick of 2020 the other eggs are now also hatching. The pair of Pied Oystercatchers that nest to the north of the vehicle beach access were due to hatch this week. I mentioned the disregard to the signage asking for vehicles to not go into the dune system two weeks ago. The vehicles continued to ignore the signage.
One of the abundant ancillary benefits of identifying as a birder must be the commitment to the highest quality optics possible… or, at least, affordable. When bird activity flags, we can focus our bins and scopes on various other flora and fauna, as well as celestial bodies under the right conditions. Did anyone get a good look at Comet NEOWISE this weekend?
Welcome to the doldrums. As we ascend to the height of the season, we become more likely to encounter extreme weather coupled with extremely mundane birding. This is not to say that you won’t find great birds where you are, but only that they will likely be the resident breeders or wintering species you’ve already grown accustomed to. Do not allow familiarity to breed contempt… seek out something fascinating while birding this weekend and share your finds with us!
The year 2020 has delivered (mostly unwelcome) surprises just about every month. Who can guess what August will hold? I’m hoping for more birds! I plan to get out to enjoy some outdoor excitement in beautiful upstate New York. Corey will attempt the same in muggy, buggy downstate NY. How about you? Where will you be this weekend and will you be birding?
I wrote previously about the prolific birding that is to be had in the small town of Baringo, Kenya. That post dealt specifically with the dry scrub that surrounds Lake Baringo, however. The lake itself is a whole other pot of gold. At an elevation of 970m, Lake Baringo is a typical freshwater Rift Valley lake with much of the usual suspects. But for a Caribbean birder like myself it was sensory overload.
While those of us in the Northern Hemisphere are just getting used to the idea of summer, birds have been in tune with the season for a while. From a phenological perspective, we are mired in the middle of the current season, which typically means minimal avian diversity. Fret not, for nature reveals new surprises every week. See if you can uncover one this weekend!
It’s hard to believe that a few weeks ago I was checking the weather forecast every day, eagerly anticipating any warm, southerly winds that might carry with them new arrivals during the height of spring migration in May. But that’s all a distant memory now in these first few days of July: migration ebbed to a mere trickle over a month ago, before giving out for good with an inevitable but always disappointing suddenness.
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