November, 2009
A New Birding Tradition: First Annual Turkey “Hunt”
Life is too easy these days. Used to be you’d wake up Thanksgiving morning, hunt for a bird, and return home only when you had enough game to feed the children and nearby kinsfolk. I love the feeling of having earned a meal. Too bad that feeling normally resides in the foggy chambers of my [...]
Bird Photography? Yes, I Can. So Can You.
I’m not an idiot. In fact, I pride myself on being able to figure things out when I put my mind to it. I get that from my mom. She tinkers and dings and wrestles and pulls, then all of a sudden, your zipper is fixed, your model is built, your chair is reupholstered, [...]
Northern Mockingbird in Mid-Chew
Having just returned from an excellent birding trip, I’ve been unusually quiet here. I’m sorry for that. My excuse is technology: I’ve been wrestling with full hard drives, corrupt photos, and a learning curve on image recovery and digital post-processing. Things became so complex, I actually memorized my Apple Care case ID. Happy to report [...]
Food
Food. Luscious food. Steaming, heaping piles of food. My high metabolism comes at a cost. So after a full day’s birding, walking, and talking in the hot Texas sun, I need food. And lots of it. On Saturday, after spending the morning at Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge (where my group racked up about 72 [...]
Buff-bellied Hummingbird at RGV
I have exactly ten seconds to post something before festivities continue, so here is an image of Buff-bellied Hummingbird seen at Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. More soon!
Wind Farms & Birds: Interview with Bill Evans, Avian Tower Kill Authority
My post on Wind Farms and Avian Mortality continues to generate a good deal of interest. I’m impressed with the amount of skepticism and questioning it generated…This is good; questioning is the very reason I wrote the post. Bird watchers and bat lovers need to know more about how ‘tall man-made structures’ affect flying animals. So I contacted Bill [...]
Revved up for RGV!
In two days I’ll be escaping the chill of upstate New York and plunking myself down in the sun-drenched land of southeastern Texas for the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) Birding Festival (held in Harlingen, Texas). It looks like festival attendees are in for some good weather, as long as Hurricane Ida behaves. Already, early reports say [...]
Rio Grande Valley Festival Coming Soon!
Apparently, the Scissor-tailed Flycatcher that showed up in central NY last week had a message for me: Get to the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival! And quick! “You REALLY ought to get the Rio Grande Valley Birding festival, Laura,” said a friend a few years back. “It’s one of the biggest festivals of the year, [...]
