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'It was our third day in high elevation Hemis National Park, we had awakened before dawn and chugged down a mug of life-giving coffee before ascending a few hundred yards to a knoll above our tented camp in the Rhumbak Valley. Our group watching the first Snow Leopard from a knoll above our camp in Hemis National Park. At this very spot, on our first afternoon in the park, and within half an hour of officially beginning our Snow Leopard search, our expert local spotter had exclaimed “ Shan !!
'Creating special moments with your pet doesn’t take much effort, just a willing heart and the right “recipe” Here’s our Recipe For Moments: Cute and playful pet (dog, cat, bird, your choice). Favorite toy. Playful attitude. A little bit of space. Combine above ingredients together, add a dash of fun, and your recipe is complete!
'Issue Date: 2014-02-05. Author: Amanda Wilson, Director, Product Marketing & Programs, Qvidian. Teaser: Sales teams can’t find the right resources, so they spend less time selling and more time hunting for resources, which means lost opportunitie. Here are three new rules of sales execution to give you a fresh approach to stop enabling the poor behavior and start executing.
'How dramatic has this winter’s Snowy Owl irruption been? How about so dramatic that nine birds caught a ride on a freighter and some made it all the way across the Atlantic Ocean ? You can see pictures of them on this blog , which is in Dutch. At least two of the birds ended up in the Netherlands where they have been delighting birders from across Europe.
'Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge in Titusville, Florida, is an amazing destination to see a wide variety of wildlife including, of course, birds! And while I didn’t lead any field trips to the refuge this year during the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival I did visit the refuge on a couple of occasions. In addition to the usual stops at the visitor’s center (where it seems like every winter there are Painted Buntings coming to the feeders) and doing the wonderful auto
'House Finches are common enough birds at most bird feeding stations. Below is how we are accustomed to seeing the males at the feeder: The males are a bright reddish pink and stand out at the feeder. But sometimes House Finches get a little wonky. I was coleading a bird trip for the Winter Wings Bird Festival. Our trip stopped at that Tule Lake Visitor Center and we saw this: It’s a yellow variant.
'House Finches are common enough birds at most bird feeding stations. Below is how we are accustomed to seeing the males at the feeder: The males are a bright reddish pink and stand out at the feeder. But sometimes House Finches get a little wonky. I was coleading a bird trip for the Winter Wings Bird Festival. Our trip stopped at that Tule Lake Visitor Center and we saw this: It’s a yellow variant.
'Why does this little Screech Owl look so horrified? It’s not because of the color of the carpet, although I was probably wearing the same expression when I first saw it. It’s because she’s in a house, she’s scared to death, and she wants her mother. If that’s not possible, she needs the knowledgeable care of a licensed wildlife rehabilitator.
'I don’t mean people who steal birds. I mean birds who steal, sometimes from people. It’s a sad fact of life: sometimes birds take things that don’t belong to them. Raptors mug each other mid-air. Bowerbirds steal each other’s nest decorations. Stellar’s Jays take acorns from Clark’s Nutcrackers. Gulls grab french fries from tourists, and occasionally descend into shoplifting.
'So, we had a bit of excitement in my neighborhood yesterday, when a gunman robbed the Taco Bell a few blocks from my apartment and then disappeared on foot in the direction of campus. The area, including the University and several high schools, was put on lockdown and we were instructed to “shelter in place.” So what choice did I have but to watch my feeders all day?
'Half past six, barely one degree Celsius, but the snow is melting fast. East, down the Danube we go, to the Labudovo Okno Ramsar site (Serbian for “swan lake”). Near the sand dunes, the first “V” made out of a hundred or so Greater White-fronted Geese , They spend the night on the water and in the morning they spread over arable fields to forage; but most of them do so at the crack of dawn and these 100 must have overslept.
'The first stop of the morning: young White–tailed Eagle , right next to the road and several dozen Rooks around. Birding that starts with the largest eagle of the continent certainly bears promises… The next stop is the town park in Opovo, north of Belgrade, where local bird expert Ceda Vuckovic reported one, locally rare, Short-eared Owl. I observed this species in the Little Rann of Kutch in India and since then, have been burning with desire to see them back home.
'As if U.S. and Canadian birders needed another reason to pull ourselves out of the winter doldrums, how about birding for a good cause? Specifically, the plight of the Rusty Blackbird , which has experienced the sharpest rate of decline among North American landbirds, according to the International Rusty Blackbird Working Group (IRBWG), and has a conservation status of Vulnerable.
'Let a hot Merritt Island sunset keep you warm! Here in the northeastern United States, stultifying forces assail us from every side. Not only has the polar vortex established a permanent chill in our collective bones, but those who care about such things must also endure the winter doldrums. Very little is happening on the birding front these days.
'The Winter Wings Festival in Klamath Falls Oregon was awesome! Not only did I get to meet Sharon Stiteler, aka Birdchick , I also was able to chat with Bill Thompson III of Birdwatcher’s Digest fame who, by the way, gave a most interesting and entertaining keynote presentation on the “Perils and Pitfalls of Birding.” Even though the weather at the event didn’t always cooperate, a good time was had by all, especially the photographers in the crowd.
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'A nictitating membrane is a third eyelid that is translucent or clear. It is used as an extra level of safety for the eye and allows the creature that has it to still see while affording its eyes an additional amount of protection. Some birds, reptiles, and sharks have nictitating membranes as well as a few mammals. (Though many mammals have a vestigial nictitating membrane that does not cover the whole eye.
'We birders are very particular about the birds that we count. We can, of course, count wild, native, species. We can count vagrant species that made it to the area we are in under their own power. We can count introduced species that have met the criteria of the “Bird Police” for the area to which they are introduced. There are lots of birds we can’t count.
'Continued from. Birding Chaco at JV Gonzales. Our original plan was to fly from Salta to Buenos Aires and then to rent a car for 7 days birding from Buenos Aires to Iguazu Falls, and then to fly back to Buenos Aires. This plan was scratched when we arrived at Buenos Aires and were told by the rental car company that our car reservation was cancelled since the car return trip (driven by them) was too risky!
'While at the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival I could not resist making the drive north to Daytona Beach one day to witness the awesome gull fly-in from the dump to the beach. Every evening in winter an impressive array of a variety of gulls leave the nearby dump in the evening and come to loaf on the beach for awhile before they fly out to sea for the night.
'When I was 14, I went on an exchange trip to Germany with my high school band. It was a strange time for me, in which I got in a car accident, discovered bathrooms with heated floors, was disgusted with my classmates for going to McDonald’s instead of eating local cuisine, and missed out on drinking beer because no one wanted to hang out with the snotty girl who looked down on people who ate at McDonald’s instead of sampling the local cuisine.
'Now that Winter Olympic fever has gripped the global imagination, I can’t help but wonder why we don’t have more international birding competitions like the International Birding Rally in Peru. You’ve got to imagine that the only thing better than winning a gold medal would be getting the gold AND a bunch of lifers. Who can make this happen?
'As much as I love hearing about and sharing Best Birds of the Weekend, sometimes I have cause to ponder just what that term means. Obviously, the birds themselves are not jockeying for recognition. Rather, we designate best birds according to our priorities and perceptions of value. The Feral Pigeon has many virtues to admire, but who is going to brag about encountering one of those?
'For birders visiting Florida there are several different types of habitat that must be visited. One of those habitats is the pine flatwoods which is dominated by Longleaf Pine with a shrubby understory that consists of several plants well adapted to the sandy, acidic soil, most memorably, Saw Palmetto. It is in this habitat that birders seek out goodies like Red-cockaded Woodpecker and Bachmann’s Sparrow.
'Some birders like to see just birds, while others like birds, but don’t mind stopping or even taking detours to see other creatures along the trail. I lean towards the second group. I like to see birds for a long time and hear their vocalization; even if these are common species. In my last pelagic birding trip, I learn I could not do neither see birds well nor hear them; I learn that pelagic birding is not my cup of tea.
'The sun shines over Deep Bay, Hong Kong’s shorebirding playground. What is more restful for a birder than the weekend after a big birding trip? Obviously, when we’re away from home on extended journeys, various tasks and issues accumulate in our absence. But mundanities and minutia are easier to handle while reminiscing about avian adventures.
'My wife and I recently welcomed a second child into the world, so much of my birding has been of the theoretical nature of late. However, this past weekend I was able to get out for a couple hours to take in a phenomenon that birders in North Carolina have rarely seen of late. The Poler Vortex that has sunk much of the North American continent into the deep freeze has had an effect on us on the margins as well.
'Seth Ausubel, Rich Kelly, and I were getting out of Seth’s car at Breezy Point, Queens, on Sunday, when I declared that the only bird I cared about seeing on our outing was a Lapland Longspur. There had been flocks of Snow Buntings and Horned Larks regularly reported from the dunes at Breezy Point and I figured that with the absurd amounts of snow that the northeast had received this winter it was only a matter of time before a Lapland Longspur was driven from the snow-covered interior to
'I was at the Blue Heron Wetlands in Titusville, Florida, during the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival hoping to connect with a Purple Gallinule that the field trip I co-led with Laura Erickson failed to find. I wasn’t having any luck at all though I was enjoying the typical assortment of wetland species that make we New York birders a bit jealous of our southern compatriots.
' Ian Davies lives in Manomet, Massachusetts, and is a recent graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a bachelor’s degree in Widlife Ecology and Conservation. His obsession with all things feathered has led him to visit 20 countries around the world in the pursuit of thousands of different species of birds to watch, photograph, and enjoy.
'Much like the Bridled Tern is adrift in the Gulf Stream, I feel alone in my outrageous birding abilities. Being the world’s leading birder isn’t as easy as it sounds. Well, yes, finding and identifying birds is really, really easy, but there are other aspects that are troublesome. For one, both birders and the general public alike view me as some kind of ambassador of all birders…a natural thing to do I suppose, but I don’t think that’s accurate.
'Those of you who follow such things should be pleased to learn that this weekend was quite auspicious for sports teams named for birds. Until now, only one National Football League team out of a total of five had ever won the Super Bowl. But at last the Seattle Seahawks, named for a bird we all know and love , have won the championship and further advanced the cause of avian inspiration for athletes!
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