Tag Archives: birds

The Joy Of Birding

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Avocet Chick – Bear River Migratory bird refuge

Birding is one if those things people do to get outside and commune with nature where many of the wild birds live. Their sole purpose is to look at those birds and say “I saw you, now I can go home and have a beer.” They make a list of all the different kinds of birds they’ve seen over the years and write them down in a little book, which is called their ‘Life List’. This is shown to other birders and gets them Street Cred in the “I saw a bird and you didn’t” world of birding.

This is not a sport for the uneducated. You can’t be stone cold dumb and be a birder. Many birders have attended highly prestigious places of edification where they don’t necessarily teach birding per se, but they do teach Latin which is used to name and classify bird species and confuse non Latin speakers. This makes the Latin user appear to be much brighter than the poor unwashed non Latin speaker and maintains the guild system that we Americans seem to love so much. It also keeps the rif-raf where they belong and the superior, well, superior. This system is primarily human based as the birds themselves couldn’t give a flying fig about what people call them. Except for peacocks, they are so vain.

One of the burning questions in the birding world is where to go to see birds. Where do they live? Are they accessible to Americans? Does one have to quarantine before looking at a bird? Can you see a bird if you don’t know its Latin name? What do they eat? Are they carnivorous? Do they favor the various root vegetables such as Rutabaga or Turnips? We know they don’t like Parsnips, nobody likes parsnips. These are just a few of the questions asked by people who don’t know any better but want to know so they can move up in the birding world.

One of the places where you can go and look at a bird is one of the various wildlife refuges. This is land that the government has deemed to be of absolutely no other use and therefore suitable to warehouse our excessive bird inventory. Species like those little brown birds you see pecking at everything everywhere. They’re all over the place. You’ve probably tripped over them. It’s very likely they have a Latin name of some sort but who knows what it is. Even if you heard it you wouldn’t know what it meant so one can safely discount and ignore them and go on to look at more interesting birds.

Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge near Brigham City, Utah is one of those holding pens where excess birds are held until they’re needed elsewhere. There you can see huge quantities of birds. They have them stacked all over the place. There are whole fields of those little brown birds spoken of before, which has been learned are actually a house sparrow or the Latin named Passer domesticus. There are great huge lumps of the White Faced Ibis piled willy nilly in unsightly stacks anywhere it’s wet. There you can select an assortment of birds for your own migratory bird refuge, if you have one. Way in the back of the refuge where it’s quieter, is an enormous area filled with lockers where larger birds such as the Tundra Swan are kept until it’s time to cut them loose and send them on up to the Tundra where apparently they are desperately needed at different times of the year.

One of the all time favorites for birders is the American Avocet. The image above is of a young Avocet or chick as they’re more vulgarly known. They look surprisingly like an adult Avocet only smaller. Its bill or beak has yet to grow into the graceful recurve that it uses to sweep through and syphon the water for its favorite food, the Rattle-back Shinsnuggler larvae which is only found here at the Bear River Migratory bird refuge. At least it is believed to be the Rattle-back Shinsnuggler larvae. There were no explanatory signs to indicate what the food is so an assumption was made which is believed to be close to what ever it is that the young Avocet or Chick is eating.

If you are interested in ‘Birding’ or its companion sport ‘Snake-ing’ you can contact any sporting goods store where they’ll sell you everything you might possibly need in the way of birding equipment. They also might tell you where to see birds but I wouldn’t count on that. However you already know where to go as you have just been told right here. It’s the Bear River Migratory bird refuge. So, Happy Birding then, and look down occasionally, that’s where the snakes are.

A Season Of Plenty

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It was a cold, cold day in January a year ago. It was snowing, the wind was like a knife as it struck you in the face and the temperature was dropping by the moment. So of course the only thing to do was grab your camera, put on all of your long underwear, every single pair, and go outside and take pictures.

But of what you might ask. Anything even remotely sentient was somewhere warm. Even the scenic always photographical trees were hiding under a mantle of warm snow and had faded from view, camouflaged and vaguely promising to reemerge again when the temperature registered on the thermometer once more, perhaps in the Spring.

But even with conditions like this there are those that must venture forth and do a job of work if they want to get fed. This bird, obviously some species that laughs at the cold and stares certain death in the eye from hypothermia or whatever it is called that freezes normal birds to death, was punched in and working its shift.

Busily harvesting tiny little seeds from a leftover seed pod it cracks them open with an audible pop, or at least it would be audible if there weren’t those gale force winds screaming past. There is just enough locked up energy in those minute seeds to power this small creature through another day of subzero winter conditions. It must eat a lot of those seeds as it appears to be in fine shape, almost portly as it were. For it, this is a season of plenty.

So on a cold blustery winter day when all normal people would be inside, except for wildlife photographers, Nature provides for its own. I’m sure this feathery adventurer has a place to go when it’s done eating. Perhaps a nice warm condo with in-floor heat, or maybe a clubhouse where it can wedge itself in amongst all the other birds of its type and share that body heat not to mention groove on that cool, make that warm, jazz playing in the background. Let’s not worry about it. If it can find something to eat in this weather, you know it has a backup plan.

5 Above And All’s Well

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It gets cold up here on the mountaintop. Not like arctic cold but cold enough you don’t want to leave any brass monkeys out. The colder it gets the harder it is to make a living. Unless that’s what you’re designed for. Many of the birds up here are designed for exactly that. We don’t see them when it’s warm out but let the temp fall below freezing and they’re everywhere.

When the fair weather birds are frozen solid or down south somewhere, these guys are in their glory. Food for them is pretty easy to find as it simply lies on top of the snow, waiting to be gathered. Plus they seem to like wallowing around in the snow, sticking their head in it, wings fluttering around, throwing the snow up in the air. They treat it like some birds treat warm water. During the day they’re scouting out where the best seed pods stick up through the snow and at night, well it’s unknown what they do at night. Probably sleep.

What they are however is an indicator that life can survive and even prosper during the long cold spells in the dead of winter. That gives one hope that if they can make it we can too. Although I’m not going out there and thrash around in the snow no matter how good those seeds taste.

Yellowstone Passes Inspection

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Those of you who follow the blog religiously or even non-religiously, know that we have just been on our bi-annual inspection trip of Yellowstone National park. We let you know of our plans to inspect the park in this posting http://www.bigshotsnow.com/the-words-out/ . Well we’re back and we are excited to announce that Yellowstone has passed its inspection with flying colors.

As mentioned before we went up there this year with a new research vessel, aptly named The Mothership, a newly commissioned, completely overhauled and refitted land yacht, large enough and strong enough to be able to tow our shuttle craft and haul the nearly eight dozen interns we intended to use as bait animal aggressiveness testing investigators. We had decided on a new strategy this trip which included dressing our interns up in various animal costumes, to mimic small prey and injured or helpless larger animals such as an elk calf with a damaged leg, etc. to see if the predator population in the park would act in an appropriate manner or not.

We have good news and bad news as to the success of that strategy. The good news was the predators acted in a completely predictable way when confronted with our bait animal aggressiveness testing investigators. The bad news is it resulted in a complete loss of every single one of our interns. That’s a great big oops on our part. We were hoping that at least a few of them would make it through the different testing situations but that was not to be the case. However we are able to completely verify that a wolf will always be a wolf and a bear will always be a bear.

After completing the section on our report titled “Predator population still aggressive in its pursuit of prey” we were able to check that item off as a yes and get on with the rest of the inspection. This resulted in The Director, who is of course me, having to handle a much larger work load than originally considered. (Note to self: Consider holding back some of the interns in the next inspection this fall to do all of the crap work required.) But as one who leads from the front we sucked it up and got on with all the remaining tasks involved in completing an inspection of a facility as large as Yellowstone National Park.

There are many, many areas to be checked to complete this task and over the following days we will attempt to show you the various areas and critical events which must take place to keep the park functioning at the level expected by the visiting public. Are the young being born on time? Are the thermal events turned on and operating properly? Are the predators doing their jobs? Well we can cross that one off now. We know the answer to that one. Are there the proper number of smaller activities being performed, birds doing bird stuff, plants situated in the most scenic areas, large overviews of the park like snow being on the peaks in the Lamar valley, rivers running up to their banks but not over, all the usual stuff the public doesn’t notice until it’s not there.

We can state at this time that park is functioning exactly as required. Our first function check, the one we do right before we release the interns, is to see if the Buffalo, especially the bulls, are placed strategically throughout the park and in the proper numbers. As our inspection of the park always begins through the West entrance of the park along the Madison river, it is imperative that a master bull, one of the better looking more regal appearing ones, be stationed just past Seven mile bridge, in the first major meadow but not too far from the road, so it can fulfill its duty as the official icon of the park. We checked that one off as done.

Watch this space for further reports on your very favorite national park. Tomorrow should bring something interesting.

Ms Lucinda

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This is Ms. Lucinda. She man’s, woman’s, answers our 900 hotline here at the Institute, where she handles the complaints, suggestions, comments, solicitations, threats, follow ups to our Nigerian investments, pizza orders and is our all around girl Friday.

She occasionally becomes upset and loses her composure when handling some of the calls we get since the addition of our new phone service. We pay attention to this as Ms. Lucinda has a rather shadowy background, we don’t know much about her except she did some time in the Merchant Marines and may have been involved with training some of the troops that were used in those failed attempts to oust Fidel in the late 60’s. Be that as it may she has a rather spectacular vocabulary. In fact after listening to her for a while, even with a fair knowledge of human anatomy, you can not believe that people could actually do those things to each other or themselves. Also she carries a knife so we tend to give her plenty of space until she calms down.

The problem is this, when we were shopping around for a phone system to handle the incredible volume of calls we get daily we needed to have an 800 number so our readers wouldn’t have to spend their hard-earned money in contacting us. I’m afraid I must accept some of the blame for this myself, as I went for the lowest bid and worked with “Phones Ahoy” an off-shore media and communications company and was swayed by the glib salesmanship of one of their sales people.

My main objective was to get a reliable 800 number but they were incredibly expensive to operate and as we were between grants at the time, budget constraints led me to choose option B which was a 900 number. Nobody told me what a 900 number was and why 100 silly numbers between 800 and 900 would make such a big difference. The salesperson said it would increase our phone traffic and expand our personal contacts which is what we constantly try to do here at the Institute, to increase our visibility and allow us to raise more funds to do our  good work.

Also it would probably have been wiser to inform Ms. Lucinda about the change in our phone system. It turns out that not all of our incoming calls are from our readers, in fact I don’t know if some of the people that call in can read.  And who are these people they keep asking for. Glinny the wonder tongue, Helga, Mrs. Whipsong, Maurice, we don’t have anyone by those names working here, and we certainly don’t sell home health care products, whether they’re UL approved or not.

I can certainly understand why Ms. Lucinda gets upset, but in going over our phone statements I’ve noticed that we have been generating a certain additional income from this 900 number thing. It seems that we get money when these strange callers call in so we have instructed Ms. Lucinda to see if she can assist any of these callers further, as it turns out you make more money the longer you keep them on the phone. Hmmmm. So far Ms. Lucinda has been cooperative but I think she may be reaching the end of her tether so to speak, so I’ve instructed her to begin training one of the new interns in our new advanced telephone technique, just as a backup.

We have always been quick to adopt new technology here at the Institute so if this 900 number thing will help our bottom line then we’re going for it. Anything that will advance our ability to help our fellow human beings and make us some fast dough is a welcome addition to our program. Now if we can just keep Ms. Lucinda together until we get that second line in we’ll be golden.

Got Spring ?

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We’ve had snow and the accompanying cold weather all through April and it has the feeling that spring is still along way away. It is virtually sacrilegious to speak ill of the snow and it’s moisture here in the west, especially since we’ve been in a drought and were worried where our water was going to come from. And of course the staff here at the World Headquarters of our Media Empire would never do such a thing, fearing to not only anger the gods but our neighbors in the realm, I mean neighborhood as well. It hasn’t been too long ago that one saw torch-light and heard cries of “There he is. Get a rope!” echoing through the valleys. It is just that after a long winter facing the trek up and down the icy goat trail that leads to the headquarters you begin to long for a little spring, a little moist, damp, high moisture content, spring. To that end we have set the scientific members of our staff, the snowologists, the NOAA guys that have joined us because it was just getting too boring going down to the south pole all the time, Captain Colorado our janitor, excuse me, building maintenance technician, who reads a lot, and several others to develop a new weather phenomenon that I can’t tell you anything about because it is really, really secret. I can tell you though that it has to do with creating 70 degree snow. Oh man, did I just say that out loud. Listen if you heard that you can’t tell anyone. We are way ahead of the Russians on this and getting to the patent office first is crucial to our funding here at the World Headquarters of our Media Empire so keep it to yourself. In light of the important, I would say crucial work, being done here, I think it is only fair that we ask you to pitch in, if you can’t send money then at least help us with some of our developmental problems, for instance we are having some difficulty with the whole melting thing, so your input could be critical. OK then, to answer the unasked question, what does that have to do with today’s picture? Well, everything. meadowlarks are the harbingers of spring, they need to get to work here. They can’t do that if they are feathers deep in cold snow. We need to get this spring thing on the road. So give us a hand, we need you and America needs you!

Bosque Sunset

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Bosque del Apache is a wildlife preserve located in New Mexico near the town of Socorro. Primarily a bird sanctuary it is the place to go if you want to see almost all the snow geese alive in the world today. OK, That might be a slight exaggeration but only a little. There are a lot of snow geese down here. They number in the thousands during the winter months and completely fill up the ponds so that it seems like there isn’t space for one more bird to land, but they do. Having said all that these are not Snow geese pictured here. These are Sandhill cranes. I’ll show you Snow geese in another post later. The Sandhills are here in record numbers too and they are really the main attraction for me as far as I’m concerned. Where the Snow geese are noisy and spectacular in the morning when they all take off at the same time, these guys, the Sandhills, are more graceful and sophisticated. They can be noisy also but it is usually when they land, or are calling their mates, or telling that neighbor he is way too close. They have a stately walk, they don’t scramble, they are polite to their mates bowing and nodding and will often engage in an impromptu dance to reaffirm how much they like each other. All in all, very nice birds. They congregate in small groups and those groups will make larger flocks and so on, but they seem to find smaller family gatherings preferable. In the early morning as they are getting ready to go to work they collect their other group members and begin the preparations to leave. In the evening as they return they glide in to the pond areas in formation and settle down for the night. This is the time when they seem to interact with each other the most. They talk over the days events, decide where they’re going tomorrow and then settle down until morning.