Birdchick Podcast

A quick recap of the 2012 Biggest Week In American Birding. Bird festivals make it into Dear Abby or How to nail closed your coffin on the bird festival speaking circuit. Holy cow, the eagle cam drama over at the Minnesota Bound Bald Eagle Cam. One eaglet fell out of the nest, the other got tangled in nesting material but no worries, after intervention from The Raptor Center, the chick was rescued, rehabbed and back with its parents.  

  I have 2 Birds and Beers next week, one in Ohio at the Biggest Week in North American Birding and one in Point Pelee, Canada. Feral parrots in Australia are swearing...and teaching it to wild birds. These 2 stories seem like something we could reasonably fix and save millions of birds: The Washington Office of the Bureau of Land Management is urging all states to use partnerships and available funds to discover, then cap, fill, or pull pipes that are used for mining claims or other activities to prevent birds from going inside to use them as roosting or nesting holes. The sides are so smooth the bird get stuck and die inside the pipes. Western bird clubs, can you unite to help cap these things? TV towers kill millions of birds every years, the steady burning lights draw them in and they collide with the guy wires. If we change steady-burning lights on the 4,500 towers greater than 490 feet tall - about six percent of the total - could reduce mortality by about 45 percent and save 2.5 million birds. 2 pilots are on trial for harassing birds by flying to low. Their lawyer argues, "Can birds be harassed?" Bird Man of Devon fills out with 21,600 Bird Ornaments.  

Another whooping crane has been shot but this time not in Indiana, this time in South Dakota.  There's a $10,000 Reward. There's a hilarious story out of east Texas about a guy in a trailer park who found an ivory-billed woodpecker. Two stations covered it with footage they recorded. One got footage of a red-headed woodpecker, the other started with a red-headed woodpecker and then got footage of a pileated. One station tried to hide their footage, the other did a follow up that maybe the bird wasn't an ivory-bill after all. Meanwhile, a pair of teenagers found an actual rare bird, an elaenia.  Will we ever find out what species tho?  

Bird watchers on a cruise spot stranded fishermen and ignored by the captain of the Star Princess. Non native Mute Swan kills 37 year old man in a kayak in Illinois. Some weirdo in Indianapolis steals a bird feeder and pole from a dentist office. Terrifying cartoons about animals.  Birders will be interested in the shrike.

Well, my avian survey work may become obsolete. This is an incredible story about counting the emperor penguins in Antarctica via satellite!  Watch a video of it here on ABC. An article about how much we don't understand about bird migration...ie we can't prove that they sense magnetic fields in their beaks. Listen to WITS on Minnesota Public Radio.

NBB will rejoin the ABA if 10 more people renew or join. Owl raises chicks in a potted plant. Endangered species condoms. Playing taped bird songs compared to drinking wine. Is tail-pumping a predator defense? Great Blue Heron nest attacked by owl while on a webcam. Will the Nuthatch be divided into 4 species? A sandpiper in a gorilla enclosure. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI3As1LXcT0

On a quick non birding note, if you or someone you know is considering getting a kid a rabbit for Easter, please, don't.  They are a lot of work and are often surrendered to shelters.  Also, MSNBC noticed Disapproving Rabbits. There's a photo of an octopus eating a gull (Thayer's?).  The problem is that with one photo, some are calling fake.  However, there is a series of photos and for whatever reason the photog isn't sharing on the Internet.  But when you see the full series, it doesn't look fake. Oprah.com selected Julie Zickefoose's The Bluebird Effect as Oprah's Book of the Week.  Awesome! You can order it here. There's a turkey vulture cam! OMG! It's new and vultures have been seen there grunting (a mating thing) but you may have to check back a few times as it gets going. 10000 Birds has an interesting bird.  Is it a junco? Is it a hybrid?  Who knows?

  Fake Owls Don't Work A 22 year old female osprey  returns for nesting season. There's a great blue heron cam! Pelicans growing at an alarming rate! An ABA post on the agony of bird taxonomy changes. Though and April Fools prank, I'm sure some of the lamentation of listing birders is real. And finally: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaX7i1Q7-Rw But the best part of this video is the reaction some birders had.

Cornell wants you to vote on the names for the male hawk on their live cam. I'd encourage you to write in a name. BirdsEyeLog finally came out with their app for iPhone that allows you enter bird sightings in the field. It's currently only $9.99 but will go up to $14.99 soon, get it now. It's also available for Android. Are you seeing hummingbirds, the internet thinks it's up for debate. Speaking of controversy...The American Birding Association is going all Exlax by starting to some stuff and discussing app and phone etiquette in the field. There's a salmonella alert going on in Oregon, an excellent remind to one and all to clean your bird feeders! Dueling press releases! The Department of the Interior has released new voluntary guidelines for wind farm developers to minimize the chance of killing birds. National Audubon Society says, yay while the American Bird Conservancy says boo.  Can't we meet in the middle somehow? It's that special time of year when male birds fight their reflections. There's no easy solution to this apart from covering up the offending window (on the outside) for a few days.

Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a live red-tailed hawk cam, check it out! Remember the whole Scott's Wild Bird Food fine? GrrlScientist gives an in depth report and Wild Bird Marketing suggests it might be overblown.  Who to believe? Bird Proof Gel, Bird X, Bird Off Gel and Tangle Foot type bird repellents are dangerous to native birds. Experimental nest tubes are supposed to be bluebird and swallow friendly but keep starlings out. Incredibly mild winter leads to interesting sightings from this year's Great Backyard Bird Count.  You can read the full newsletter here. 10,000 Birds asks if people actually go birding when drunk...I see a videocast experiment coming.  Perhaps something along the lines of my favorite YouTube Channel: My Drunk Kitchen?    

We really only talked about sandhill cranes and these crazy pictures of a black vulture getting a little too friendly with a crested caracara.

How did we get here to the 100th Podcast? Thank you for listening! Someone in the New York Daily News was really excited to use the phrase "vomit bird" in a headline. Community upset about vultures roosting in their neighborhood and running amok.  The reporter calls them turkey vultures but they sure look like black vultures to me. In other vulture news researchers say vultures are changing the way we should age dead bodies left in the wild. It was so sweet the way The Monitor wrote up about the awesome webcam at the Sabal Palm Sanctuary...too bad they didn't link to it.  Don't worry, I will.  Check it out here (you might see a green jay live). Tho all we've seen is at night and it's full of raccoons:  Birds are found dead on the University of Central Florida (migrating birds hitting windows).  I almost ignored the story apart from this guy, Adam Hull and what does he have to say about it? "Birds are known to do that. They're kind of stupid."  I'm guessing he's not a biology major...and looks to have a promising career in establishing guidelines for the TSA. For those with two brain cells to rub together this a good reminder that it's migration and time for Lights Out.  Learn more at FLAP.  

Remember last summer when some Minnesota farmer claimed he snapped and destroyed a pelican colony with thousands of chicks? He actually got a large fine for doing it. Across the pond, Matthew Gonshaw who specializes in stealing wild bird eggs for his personal (and highly illegal) collection has been banned from visiting Scotland for 10  years. FINALLY, the red knot has been put on the Endangered Species List for the State of New Jersey.  It's not perfect, it's needs surrounding states to do the same and it needs to be on the Federal list.  The population for this birds has fallen 90% in the last 2 decades going from 100,000 to 15,000...because of over harvesting of horseshoe crab eggs for fishing bait. Artist Enrique Gomez De Molina charged in trafficking highly illegal birds to create his amazing artwork. He is claiming vigorously that he didn't know, but his email would indicate otherwise.  This is the video we reference in the podcast and this is the reason why people LOVE slow loris. In a similar story, there's a quandary over what to do with a late art collector's piece from Robert Raushenberg which features a VERY illegal bald eagle as part of it. Since it is so illegal to have a stuffed eagle and the sculpture was created after the Migratory Bird Treat and Bald and Golden Eagle Act it was valued at $0 in the estate's tax return. But because the IRS is aware of the artist's fame and that the piece could be sold on the black market illegally for a lot of money, they say it's $65 million. You can find Sugar Bean Ice Cream on Twitter. You can find Ken Plume singing on A Site Called Fred!

A snowy owl found its way into the Jefferson North Assembly Plant on the lower east side of Detroit. Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources tries to lay some of the blame on geese for keeping lakes open and snow mobile riders falling into lakes...rather than say, "You know, there were warnings and common sense with this year's weather should have told you to stay off of lakes." Shorebirds use their hairy tongues to slurp up tasty, tasty biofilm.

It's the Great Backyard Bird Count this weekend.  Please count some birds in your backyard.  Please. We were guests on someone else's podcast, Ken Plume's Bit of Chat...listen at your own risk...I apparently call myself the Han Solo of Birding and I might even rap.  Yeah, I'm apologizing now. What? A guy shoots a bald eagle and gets jail time! Kidnapped birders still missing in the Philippines. Mallard helps another mallard trapped in six pack holder...was it an accident or was he making the move on her?   Note: sorry about the mix-up. The podcast is active now.