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I and the Bird #62 Now Published
2007-11-16 03:06:00
Emerging from the great cat flap (now there's a picture!), I noticed that Greg Laden has recently published edition #62 of the 10,000 Bird s I and the Bird blog carnival. Greg has done a superb job of organizing the many fine posts written by birders, bird watchers, and ornithologists, both amateur and profesisonal, from all across the great electronic plain. It's well worth paying Greg's site a visit and exploring the wealth there to be found.Peace and good bird watching.
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Cat Fight, Post-Rant
2007-11-16 00:20:00
Not being a particularly confrontational person when I feel those whom I am confronting are not acting out of malice themselves, I am always uneasy for days following any such disagreement, be it public or private. Such has been the case following the posting of "Cat Fight ." While I still stand by the reasoning I outlined there - that TNR is insufficient to address problems of cat predation, that cats need a greater level of control exercized over them for the public good and their own safety, and that humans have largely failed in their responsibility to cats by allowing them to roam at large or turn feral - I think that there is little if any chance that many minds were changed by my essay.I was going to let the whole thing simply slip gently into the past, but upon my return home this afternoon, what sight greeted me but that of my neighbor's fat orange tabby crouched into the closest thing to a pre-pounce position of which he is capable due to his weight and contemplating the f...
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Cat Fight
2007-11-15 04:06:00
I have been mulling over the feral cat control issue for about a month now. I did not want to choose a side until I had taken the time to consider a sufficient amount of information from both sides. However I now feel that I have done so to at least my own satisfaction and can clearly declare that I am decidedly of the opinion that measures need to be taken beyond the Trap Neuter Release (TNR) paradigm popularly advocated in many communities across the United States if we are better to control feral cats. I have also come to the conclusion that a review is in order of the perspective we, at least in the U.S. as I cannot speak for the policies or societal norms of other nations, hold as a society regarding the population of cats in our midst if a long range solution to the issue is to be found. This last point especially requires a bit of explanation and I will return to it shortly.Before turning to matters philosophical however, I would like to bring attention to a very current affa...
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Subtle Flicker Observation
2007-11-14 01:47:00
Every so often, or more often than that if you're paying attention, a particular behavior is noticed being exhibited by a bird that is deemed significant. The significance might be subtle, and it might be thought so ephemeral that you aren't sure if you should even be noticing it. Yet notice it you do and proceed to ponder it at length. Unsure if you should share your observation with anyone, lest in return you receive that quizzical stare that, as a bird watcher, you have likely received before, you still can't help but think you may have witnessed something that to you is simply interesting but to another may be the final piece of a puzzle they have been mentally assembling for years. Thus, trusting to the wonderful, unabashed, unashamed "nerdiness" of all my bird watching bretheren (and sisteren), I here open my mind and share what I have recently noted.Yesterday, during the declining portion of a windstorm that also brought significant rain with it, I made an observation of a...

Mail Call - Bird Watcher's Digest
2007-11-12 23:11:00
Carolina Parakeet, Conuropsis carolinensis; a bird few of us living today have ever seen alive. Yet a bird that was once among the most numerous birds found in North America. Known to me only by drawings, I was startled upon opening the most recent copy of Bird Watcher ’s Digest to see an actual photo of one, even if it was only a taxidermy-mounted specimen from the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois. Even in a preserved state, the vibrancy of the greens, reds, oranges, and yellows of the plumage is astonishing. One can only imagine what they looked like when alive. Fortunately, Howard Youth brings us all an insight into their former existence, and a few reflections on how and why they are no more in one of the many enthralling feature articles in this present Bird Watcher’s Digest.Among the other articles I found particularly intriguing in this edition was one by William H. Funk titled “Scavengerangel.” Not previously being a particular enthusiast of the locally ubiquitous Tu...
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The Right Note
2007-11-12 01:59:00
One of the best ways to set a positive tone for any day is to begin it on the right note - BirdNote , that is. I discovered BirdNote a few months ago while searching for bird and bird watching related podcasts. Since that time it has become a regular part of the start of each day, putting my mind in the proper frame to withstand whatever chaos may inadvertently occur.BirdNote, a production of Tune In to Nature, is a daily two minute presentation of an ever-changing assortment of bird-related topics brought to those within the broadcast radius of National Public Radio affiliate KPLU, 88.5 FM in the Seattle, Washington area or KOHO, 101.1 FM in Western Central Washington, or downloadable world-wide via the Internet. From profiles of individual species to insights into particular bird behaviors and topics as far afield as paleo-ornithology. (Ever heard of a species named Titanus walleri? You could on BirdNote.) Sometimes poetic, other times funny, always interesting, BirdNote is readily...

Take a Seat for Science
2007-11-10 23:21:00
Project FeederWatch 2007-2008 began today. Generally preferring to treat the day with great reverence and celebration, primarily observed by pouring a nice cup of tea and parking my keister in a comfortable chair by the window affording a good view of our feeders out behind the house, I was thwarted this year by the necessity of my attendance at an all-day lecture on business strategy as part of my course of study for an MBA. No matter, I can make my initial observations tomorrow.That’s one of the great things about Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Project FeederWatch – you can set your own schedule. So long as you can watch and record the birds visiting your feeders for two consecutive days each week (or each fortnight if you are submitting records on paper rather than via the Internet), the rest of the schedule setting is up to you. The keys are consistency and regular observation.As I have previously written, the cost of participation is very low, the returns – both scientifi...
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Thirty in Thirty
2007-11-10 03:12:00
Everyone needs a goal in life. At the moment, mine is to make thirty posts in thirty days (I didn't say everyone needed a monumental goal...).That's why Born Again Bird Watcher is participating in NaBloPoMo - National Blog Posting Month. The concept is pretty simple: during the month of November, have a blog and upload thirty posts to it.Not only is this a bit of enjoyable blog zanniness, it's also good practice. I have been wanting to increase the level of posting here and this is an ideal opportunity to do it. Reaching thirty posts in November, I will then continue to seek thirty as a baseline each month while trying to increase beyond that when possible; perhaps eventually achieving forty or even fifty posts in a month. Wish me luck and join in the fun yourself - if nothing else you get to include this neat cat logo on your blog.Peace and good bird watching.

San Francisco Bay Oil Spill
2007-11-10 02:12:00
Early in the morning on Wednesday, Novermber 8, a ship reported to be the Cosco Busan had a run-in with the San Franc isco Bay Bridge, resulting in what is now calculated as the spillage of 58,000 gallons of fuel oil into San Francis co Bay. Never a good thing in itself at any time, the oil in the bay at this particular time is putting in danger the tens of thousands of birds on migration that annually arrive in the bay area. Immediate and comprehensive action is needed in order to help mitigate the damage that this spill has already caused and will cause in the weeks to come as more birds arrive.If you would like to volunteer to help or support the efforts to alleviate the damage of the Cosco Busan spill, contact the International Bird Rescue and Research Center (IBRRC) at (707) 207-0380, or visit the website of the Oiled Wildlife Care Network. You may also make a donation to Point Reyes Bird Observatory's Oil Spill Response Team by e-mailing Nancy Gamble or calling (707) 781-2555 e...

Musical Interlude
2007-11-08 18:37:00
One of the first songs I can remember from my childhood is "This Land Is Your Land." I think I first heard it on the radio or perhaps on television (for some reason, the Smothers Brothers are connected to the memory; perhaps Arlo Guthrie appeared on their program). Later, I learned to sing it in a school music class, along with "America the Beautiful" and other standards of the early 1970s U.S. elementary school curriculum. It was not until years later in a high school English class through the reading of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath that I came to learn of Woody Guthrie and discover the history and significance of the song. It was then that it took on a whole new meaning to me and became one of my favorites.Why this trip down memory lane with not a single reference to the slightest bit of natural history? Two reasons. First, knowing the commonly published background of the song - that it is thought to have been originally written by Woody in 1940 as a response to Irving Be...
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47.7 Million Bird Watchers
2007-11-07 22:44:00
That’s the most recent estimate of how many bird watchers there are in the United States – 47.7 million. How do I know this? After months of patient waiting followed by a few more months of somewhat impatient waiting, I finally received an e-mail message this morning conveying to me words I’ve so longed to read, “The U.S. Fish and Wildlife today released the complete 2006 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation.”While indeed it is a 174 page government report produced by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Census Bureau packed to the covers with sufficient charts, graphs, statistics, and tables to bewilder a strong economist or two weak ones, this is a document that should be read by all who have an interest in wildlife, particularly bird, conservation. It plays a vital role in the future planning of countless national, regional, state, and even local budgets and policies....
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Bird - Truly the Definitive Visual Guide
2007-11-06 18:57:00
In the world of ornithological literature, or more popularly “bird books,” myriad subcategories exist, each with their own specific interested group of readers. There are field guides to help the perplexed identify birds they have seen (or just as commonly, inspire dreams of birds they would like to see). There are life histories to guide the curious through the stages of development of everything from a single species to an entire order of birds. There are monographs to address topics of highly specialized inquiry and there are introductory surveys to help bring the beginner into the outermost of the many concentric circles of bird study. All of these and more, such as histories of ornithology, biographies of famous ornithologists, and tomes of avian biology, physiology, and taxonomy, are well represented in a bookcase that spans the width of an entire wall in my home. Yet nowhere in this vast assembly is there a single volume that is similar in breadth, scope, or overall appli...
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Oregon Shorebird Festival - Day One
2007-09-01 07:46:00
After six and a half hours behind the wheel, two pit stops, a two liter bottle of water, a bottle of Lipton's Pure Tea, and a bag of Pepperidge Farm Orange Milano cookies, I arrived in Coos Bay, Oregon around five in the afternoon; just in time to check-in to my motel (the less said the better about my present accommodations) and scoot on across the South Slough bridge to the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology for the 21st Annual Oregon Shorebird Festival 's opening evening program.The festival was opened by a few words from the festival's seemingly tireless and no doubt extraordinarily tired Dawn Graf of the US Fish & Wildlife Service.Dawn has done a spectacular job not only of assuming the mantle of chief organizer of the shorebird festival, she has also been the project leader of the recently completed the Oregon Coastal Birding Trail project. Like so many USFW professionals, Dawn works long hours on a bewildering variety or projects, most of which are underfunded, for which sh...

Oregon Shorebird Festival - Getting Ready
2007-08-31 02:32:00
Preparations are well underway for my journey to Charleston, Oregon tomorrow in order to attend the 21st annual Oregon Shorebird Festival . One of the longest running birding festivals in Oregon, it is one that for some unpleasant reason I have not yet previously attended - probably due to the fact that the time of year during which it is held coincided with one of the most hectic times of the year for me when I was in my former occupation. However those days are over now and I am free to travel as a "civilian."The level of excitement surrounding this year's festival is quite high. There have been a remarkable number of "good" birds seen on the southern Oregon coast over the past few weeks, and as the weather looks to hold steady through the week-end with no major fronts moving through, the birding should be very good indeed.As before any trip, I am readying and checking my gear. Putting my bins, spotting scopes (yes scopes - on coastal trips I take my regular Kowa and a high magnif...
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New Additions
2007-08-29 06:49:00
Please welcome another new addition to the BABWBR - 2 Birders To Go. This blog came to my attention through an act of spendidly honest curiosity. Bob (of Bob and Cynthia, 2 Birders To Go's owners) sent me a question that I have been awaiting ever since I began Born Again Bird Watcher but had until I received his note not yet been asked - is the name reflective of a theological position or of another origin? Extra points certainly awarded for complete candor and a hearty welcome to the blog roll as well.Another new addition, this time to the Useful Websites links, is the Oregon Dragonfly and Damselfly Survey. If you are at all of an odonatological (careful how you spell that one or you could quickly go awry into Old Testament territory...) predeliction this site is well worth knowing. With links to a wide range of odonate-related sites, it's not just limited to odes in Oregon, although for Oregonians needing odonatalogic orientation it's outstanding (time to service the assonance ...

Helping Out a Friend
2007-08-29 06:24:00
Laura Erickson has a bit of a problem on her hands. It seems that when a seeker after birding wisdom enters "Laura Erickson Blog" into the Google search bar, the top result is not her blog but rather a site with no current affiliation to her site at all. Such are the ways of web traffic algorithms.To help her out, I am adding an extra inclusion of the address of Laura's Birding Blog here so that there will be an additional link to it for Google to count in their page rank calculations (blog roll links don't seem to count in Google's ranking methods). I would ask all other blogging friends of Laura to do the same. It's only right that one's own blog be the top result on Google when an obvious description of it is entered into the search bar.Peace and good bird watching.
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A New Way to Blog
2007-08-29 04:49:00
The other day a new birding blog caught my attention, not so much for its content (it's quite new and so only has a few posts thus far) but for the idea behind it. Unlike Born Again Bird Watcher and the rest of the birding blogs I know, Teach Me About Birdwatching works somewhat in reverse. Instead of sharing the collected knowledge of an individual about a topic, this blog was established to learn information about a subject from others already versed in it.The owner, a charming lady named Melissa who is Peruvian but presently living as a student in Argentina, is calling upon the collective wisdom of the blogging birders (stop snickering...) to teach her about bird watching. I don't know if Melissa knows this yet or not, but one of the things I've found, and admittedly now also embody, is the fact that bird watchers like few things better than to help newcomers to the community learn the craft.I've added a link in the BABWBR to Teach Me About Birdwatching. I encourage all to st...
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The Scappoose Hillside Ramble
2007-08-27 05:43:00
When I stepped upon the bathroom scale the other morning I saw something I had never before seen in my life - the number 250 clearly displayed upon the face of the LCD read-out. Before a subsequent message reading "one at a time please" could appear, I quickly stepped back onto the linoleum.Two hundred and fifty pounds? How did that happen? As my fortieth birthday will occur in less than two months, I stopped to contemplate what 250 pounds of body weight could portend. Visions of me grasping my chest and falling face first into a plate of biscuits and gravy quickly filled my mind. Something needed to be done to bring this expansion of my corpus to a halt before it changes from corpus to corpse.Then an idea hit me: do a bit of walking every day. With a bit of walking, I can of course do a bit of birding as well. As I live on a hillside, a good brisk jaunt up and down it once each morning would do me a world of good. And as for the birding, a fellow birder here in Oregon by the name o...
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Preparing for the Journey
2007-08-25 05:51:00
Well, I've bought my plane ticket, reserved a car, and made my hotel reservation; now all that's left is the waiting. As with all serious birding trip planning, it's the waiting that's the most difficult part.I haven't been back to visit all my friends in Cape May, New Jersey for just about two years now. I've seen many of them here and there along our various journeys across the U.S., and in some cases even around the world, but there is a special difficult-to-describe feeling to journeying back to where I saw my first Atlantic bird species. Back to the place with more concentrated birding history than any other single location in North America.As the British Bird Watching Fair is the international Mecca for bird watchers, Cape May is surely the direction toward which we in the U.S. all face and offer daily prayers for "good" birds to be plentiful and for rarities to be still visible when we arrive at their last reported location.I remember distinctly the first time I journey...
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Seven Birding Question Meme
2007-08-22 20:19:00
Patrick at The Hawl Owl’s Nest tagged me for the birding meme – seven very thought-provoking questions originally asked, I believe, by Cogresha at Earth House Hold.1. What is the coolest bird you have seen from your home?Without question, the coolest bird seen from my home has been the yellow (xanthochromic) Purple Finch (Carpodacus purpureus) that appears in the logo for Born Again Bird Watcher. This bird has become something of a personal totem for me as a symbol of the beauty to be found in being quietly different.2. If you compose lists of bird species seen, what is your favorite list and why?I use Avisys as well as a hand-written journal to keep my records of birds seen. I keep track of four essential area groupings with these lists – world, AOU area, ABA area, and the property around my home. I think I like the AOU area list best as unlike the ABA area, the geographic area covered includes North and Central America from the North Pole to the boundary of Panama and Colomb...
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Welcome!
2007-08-21 06:07:00
Long-time BABWBR (Born Again bird Watcher Blog Roll) denizen Birds Etcetera brought my attention to a wonderful birding blog from Asia that had thus far eluded my awareness - Dig Deep. When I pointed my browser to it, I was greeted with some truly briliant bird paintings from the blog's creator (who keeps himself anonymous). There are also some very interesting trip reports to be read there.While exploring Dig Deep, I noted a link there to another Asian birding blog that seemed promising - Shore Birds in Japan. Now, this site is in Japanese but even if you don't read that language, the photos and video clips alone are more than worth the time spent exploring the site.If you are at all interested in Asian birds and birding there (and let's be honest, who isn't?) these two sites should certainly be included in your regular bird blog rounds. I'm adding them to mine as well as to the BABWBR. A hearty welcome to them both!Peace and good bird watching.

New RSPB Podcast
2007-08-20 22:58:00
Being one of the most enthusiastic non-British members of the RSPB as well as an unrepentant podcast junkie, I'm not sure how I missed the release to the virtual airwaves of the new Nature's Voice podcast. So when I learned of it yesterday from the most recent edition of the E-Newsletter of that fine organization, I immediately loaded all three editions into the trusty iPod and gave it a good listen.To everyone at the RSPB: brilliant work all, brilliant work indeed.The monthly episodes, each just under 20 minutes in length, contain three or four stories each. So as not to be unrelentingly serious, longer opening pieces (for instance, H.R.H. the Prince of Wales speaking on the subject of albratros conservation) are well balanced by shorter, more lighthearted pieces (such as the eminent writer Dominic Couzzens explaining what type of bird he would most like to be). In this way there is something to hold the interest of all listeners regardless of their level of interest in bird cons...
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New Moth Book!
2007-08-20 01:24:00
As our society has far too few books in print addressing the natural history of the lesser known but larger portion of the lepidoptera, moths, I was extremely pleased to learn that the Wedge Entomological Research Foundation is poised and ready to release a new title by James P. Tuttle, The Hawk Moths of North America.This new peer-reviewed tome will cover all of the 127 species, of the estimated 1,200 global members of the family, of hawk moths (Sphingidae) occurring in North America. It will include 19 color plates illustrating both adults and larvae, as well as copious amounts of information on life histories and distributional notes.I don't know at this time if the book will be generally available through the standard bookstores or if it will only be available directly through the foundation. However as the foundation is offering a special price for anyone ordering a copy prior to November 1, 2007, it would be rude not to accept such a gracious offer and not put in an order.Pea...
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Going Buggy
2007-08-19 01:23:00
As my doctor has ordered me to refrain from "close work" (reading, writing, using binoculars, etc.) for a few days in order to allow my eye to heal, I am, as anyone whose life involves a considerable amount of reading, writing, and glassing would be, going a bit bughouse. So instead of writing a long piece of prose, I am simply going to share a couple photos I took just before the surgery of a Striped Meadowhawk, Sympetrum pallipes, that was visiting our back yard. Peace and good bird watching.
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Adventures in Post Offices
2007-08-17 04:34:00
Linda, one of my dearest and longest-standing friends, called me this evening to check on my well-being following my surgery today. I was pleased and relieved to tell her that all went more or less well, save a small bit of unpleasantness involving some less than fully effective anesthesia (I'll save you all the details; suffice it to say that the words "suture" and "eyeball" figure prominently).But back to Linda. She is one of what I call the Truly Good People in this world; someone who is, by her compassionate ways and view of life in the largest perspective, an excellent role model for anyone seeking to improve the karmic balance of their life. This is proven by the fact that her innate humility will no doubt cause her to deny all of this the moment she reads it.For purposes of the bird watching community, Linda is a true amateur. She has no professional connection to it nor academic training in it; she does it out of sheer enjoyment. As her interest in it has grown over the yea...
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Preoccupied
2007-08-16 06:48:00
As I sit down to write this my mind is elsewhere. I am scheduled for my second eye surgery tomorrow and even though I have been through it before I cannot help but being a little distracted by the thought of it. My doctor is one of the best around and I have complete faith in him. Still, it's not the type of thing one just ups and volunteers to go and do...In any case, I did note a bit of bird news on NPR this morning that I intended to turn into the theme of today's post. It seems that the peer review of the "Draft Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted Owl [ed. note: Strix occidentalis caurina] (2007)" has been released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The USFWS contracted both the Society for Conservation Biology and the American Ornithologists' Union to review the plan and to report back with their findings. From the initial press reports, the SCB and the AOU weren't pleased with what they found.I plan to give the draft plan itself (which I have already read once) and ...

Free Dead Bird Button
2007-08-15 03:39:00
I received a very nice note from a community member in Hawaii following my post a few days ago noting that state's great new campaign to encourage people to report any dead birds they might find. Christy, the writer of the note, wanted to be sure I new of their new one stop reporting website at http://www.gotdeadbird.org/. Once again, mahalo to all in Hawaii for showing us the way with some great proactive work in the area of avian disease control and management.Christy's note got me to thinking; what more could I do to help in this cause back here in the continental 49? I posted a link to the CDC's website in my first piece about reporting suspiciously deceased birds, but even then I thought "this just isn't enough; I can do more?"Then it came to me - a button! We Web 2.0 enthusiasts love buttons and banners to help guide our visitors to places out on the great triple W ranch that they might find interesting, useful, or just plain fun. If I could marshall what little graphic sk...
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Max Understands
2007-08-13 20:10:00
While scanning the intellectual page of my semi-local newspaper this morning, I noted a particularly poignant entry in Jan Eliot's Stone Soup.Some people just understand the true balance of life better than others.Peace and good bird watching.
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Mail Call - WildBird
2007-08-12 19:05:00
Beneath the cover bearing a brace of what I have long thought to be the most dapper appearing of all the bird species I have thus far observed, the Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum), the September / October 2007 issue of WildBird has a wealth of interesting and handy articles for its readers.The focus of the issue is the announcement of the winners of the 19th Annual Photo Contest. I don't envy the judges this year as each of the images selected for honors was well worth the top prize. While the image declared to be the Grand Prize winner is quite striking, I found myself most emotionally captured by the image selected as the winner of the Water Birds category (I think you'll see why when you open the issue).In "Conservation Corner," Dr. Peter Stangel brings readers insight into the biological and habitat challenges of a much beloved long distance migrant, the Red Knot (Calidris canutus). On the flip side of migratory distance records, Pete Bacinski offers a very informative and...
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Sign of the Times
2007-08-12 07:29:00
As I drove my trusty Toyota Prius into the parking lot at the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge, I noticed this sign reserving the best parking spot.A sign of the times? I certainly hope so.Peace and good bird watching.
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