April Birding Events in Central Vermont

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Richard

After a morning of 4 degrees and a forecast of a foot or more of snow, it is encouraging to see calendars of birding events popping up on local web sites.  I took three local groups and put their outings on a Google Calendar which you can visit here.

Screen Shot 2013-03-18 at 8.12.49 PM

 

The North Branch Nature Center in Montpelier has a wonderful series of bird walks that are free to members ($25 single/$50 family) or for $10 for non-members.  Led by expert birders, they are low key and popular with skilled birders and beginners.  They are on Fridays and Saturdays in April/May.

The MadBirders club in the Mad River Valley is a collection of avid birders who have a great schedule of events, ranging from the Valley floor to the top of Mount Ellen.  The dues are only $15 a year for individuals/$20 for families, and they welcome newcomers.

Over in Huntington is the Birds of Vermont Museum, a must-see venue for any birder.  They have a bird monitoring walk on their property the last Saturday of each month.  The event is free but they ask that you pre-register by emailing museum@birdsofvermont.org or calling (802) 434-2167.

Are there other bird walks in April in Central Vermont that I’ve missed?  Mention them in the comment section and I’ll add them to the calendar.  Good birding.

Posted in Bird walks, Local Birding, Vermont Birding | 1 Comment

A Low Expectation Saturday Outing

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Richard

Things are really slow birding-wise right now with some of the winter birds gone (haven’t seen Common Redpolls for a few days) and just a few early arrivals.  We’re seeing some Red-winged Blackbirds, Common Grackles, and a few Killdeer but it will be a few weeks until water opens up more and we get more activity.  So, not expecting much this morning, I headed out with the dog in the truck to check out a few of the back roads.  We had an inch or two of snow last night and the temperature was in the 20’s — nice morning for January but not as welcome, to some of us, in mid-March.

It was early Saturday morning — things just waking up — when I drove into downtown Montpelier.  I noted a swirl of a dozen rock pigeons and then saw a raptor cruising along, having probably made a pass at them.  Big, long tail, easy wing-strokes, and a brief look as it headed west.  I also had to dodge a sidewalk snowplow and city sand truck but the look and the Jizz* told me — Cooper’s Hawk.  I snaked my way up State Street, hoping to see it perched, but no luck.  I pulled over, entered it into Birdlog on my iPhone, and had a new County bird for the year.

Encouraged by such a great start, I headed out on some back roads that we often cruise on local bird outings.  At one reliable spot, I saw a flash of red and sure enough, a pair of Northern Cardinals brightened the dull morning scene.  I saw all the normal suspects (blue jays, titmice, chickadees, nuthatches, and crows) and then moved off to a pull-off along the Winooski River where Canada Geese and four Hooded Mergansers plied the icy waters.  Here’s one of the few pictures I took:

Five geese ignore a male Hoodie paddling through the ice flows on the Winooski River. photo dickmfield

Five geese ignore a male Hoodie paddling through the ice flows on the Winooski River. photo by dickmfield

Returning on the rut-frozen River Road, I picked up a couple of Common Grackles – a species that I had yet to see this year — and drove home hoping to spot a Red-tailed Hawk.  Stopping to pick up coffee and a killer scone at Birchgrove Baking (to bring home to share with Mary) made a nice end to a nice outing.

*Jizz is a term used by birders to describe the overall impression or appearance of a bird garnered from such features as shape, posture, flying style or other habitual movements, size and colouration combined with voice, habitat and location.

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iPhone Digiscoping: Video Grabs

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Richard

Drew Weber,  a young ornithologist originally from PA but now living in central New York, is pursuing a master’s degree at Penn State University studying grassland birds and their relationships with different agricultural practices.  Not long ago, he posted a wonderful article on the Nemesis Bird blog, the first part of which, I have included below.  Unfortunately, I have an iPhone 4 but this may push me to upgrade.

iPhones have dramatically expanded the number of people that are digiscoping, and successfully getting great photos while they are out birding, without having to lug a big SLR + lens around. With digiscoping adapter cases that fit most scopes, the barrier to digiscoping has been greatly lowered. Lots of birders are getting great images with less effort than they would have imagined just a couple years ago.

Sometimes you are not looking for a publishable photo however, and just need to be sure that you can get an identifiable image of a bird, especially if it is rare and you are trying to document it. In these cases, it can be extremely tedious to try to time your finger on the shutter so that you get a nice profile image. Or it is skulking low in the bushes and you are having a hard time keeping it in your view.

The answer is video. The iPhone, especially the newer iPhone 4S and 5 models, have stellar video capabilities. Instead of trying to time your photos, you can just leave the video mode running and then go back later and grab a still image from the video. There are two easy ways that you can do this.

For my examples I will be grabbing a clip from a following video I shot at Webster Park in Rochester last fall.

Native method

The method uses the iPhone native method for getting a screengrab. At any point, you can push the Home and Sleep buttons simultaneously and the screen will flash. Whatever was on your screen will now be saved as a photo in your camera roll as a 960 x 640 pixel image.

  1. Take your video.

  2. Open the Photos app and find the video.

  3. Play your video until you find an image that you want to save and tap pause. You may have to tap the screen first to show the pause button.

  4. If you took the video in landscape mode, hold the screen in portrait mode and double-tap. This will zoom in and if you are lucky your bird will be in the middle. If not, double tap again to zoom out.

  5. If the controls are showing, tap once in the middle of the screen to make them disappear.

  6. Press both the Home and Sleep buttons simultaneously.

  7. Your screen grab is now ready to upload to Facebook, Flickr (to embed in eBird) and to SMS out to your friends to tell them of your good fortune, or ask for ID help.

Read the rest of the article

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Declining Grassland Birds & Pesticides

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Richard
Grasshopper Sparrow Photo: Nick Saunders

Grasshopper Sparrow Photo: Nick Saunders

A new paper by Canadian scientists Pierre Mineau and Mélanie Whiteside identifies pesticide toxicity to birds as an important factor in grassland bird declines. “Pesticide Acute Toxicity is a Better Correlate of U.S. Grassland Bird Declines than Agricultural Intensification” was recently published in the peer-reviewed, open-access online journal PLOS One. The study found that acutely toxic pesticides (rather than habitat loss) were the most likely leading cause of the widespread population declines of grassland birds in the United States. “The data suggest that loss of birds in agricultural fields is more than an unfortunate consequence of pest control; it may drive bird populations to local extinction,” said Dr. Mineau in a related American Bird Conservancy media release. To read the full article ,select this link.

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Multi-tasking Birding

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Richard

It’s a good thing that we have no neighbors close by.  We have a 30 acre wooded parcel that has a nice mile long walking trail which I trod with the Vizsla two or three times a day.  I always have binoculars, and often a camera, and bird while I get some easy exercise and the dog roams freely.  The trail is still snow-covered and rather icy from our recent melts but today, I decided to incorporate another set of tasks: PT exercises for my pinched nerve.  (Which I promised not to write about until it was healed.)

My physical therapist has given me a number of nerve glide exercises to do to encourage my ulnar nerve to glide normally as I move my joints.  I usually do them down cellar but this morning, I thought, “Why not do them while walking?”  So, picture a 73-year-old guy, walking down a snowy path, binoculars strapped to him with a camera hanging off a shoulder, extending a mittened arm in sort of a ballet move, ending with a wrist roll.  Fortunately, the dog is oblivious to weirdness while hunting and no one else walks our woods trails.  I wonder why?

It was a nice way to get one more set of exercises in, especially since the birding is still pretty slow.  And it got me thinking that nearly all birders multi-task:  we bird while driving, cycling, canoeing, or sitting near a window in a meeting in springtime.  I do some birding from my airplane, especially for hawks, and I suspect that we could come up with quite a list of multi-tasking birding activities.  That’s a great thing about birding — it’s there for us all the time.

What’s your most unusual task while birding?

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eButterfly is Ready for Vermont!

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Richard

 of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies posted this on the VCE blog.  In case you don’t get their material, here’s a way to keep track of the butterflies you see — and have seen.  It looks like a great international effort and pretty easy to use.  The hard part is photographing and identifying them — they are worse than warblers.  Why not bird early in the day and butterfly while the birds are napping?   And use eBird and eButterfly to keep track.

From 2002 to 2007 volunteer butterfly enthusiasts spent thousands of hours in the field in an effort to record the status and distribution of Vermont butterflies, the first systematicstatewide butterfly atlas to be undertaken. Observers have since made new discoveries, like the first state record for White-M Hairstreak or the incredible invasion of Giant Swallowtails. Where can we share and store all of our collective butterfly discoveries? Introducing our newest tool for the Vermont Atlas of Life, eButterfly, a project in which VCE is proud to be a partner.

eButterfly aims to bring butterfly enthusiasts like you together with scientists like those at VCE. With this new online database you can:
• Record the butterflies you see, photograph, or collect
• Build a virtual collection of butterflies
• Keep track of your butterfly lists (life, year, provinces/states)
• Find butterflies you have never seen
• Explore dynamic distribution maps
• Share your sightings and join the eButterfly community
• Contribute to science and conservation
With the flight of the first Mourning Cloak nearly upon us, I hope you are as ready as we are to discover and report your sightings of Green Mountain butterflies to eButterfly. But you don’t have to wait for the snow to melt. Many of you have records in your notebooks, photo files (must be less than 1mb in size) and collections that can be uploaded right now!First, make sure your internet browser is the latest addition, then visit the tutorial on eButterfly (http://www.ebutterfly.ca/contents/tutorial) to familiarize yourself with the system. Once you learn a few basics and enter some of your sightings, it will become quite fast and easy for you to use.
eButterfly was built for butterfly enthusiasts by butterfly enthusiasts. We are always striving to improve the experience and tools. Should you run into a problem or have any great suggestions for future updates and tools, please don’t hesitate to provide feedback.
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Where Did The Chickadees Go?

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Richard

We have a dog pen area underneath our deck which attracts a few birds and squirrels foraging on the dropped seeds and suets from the feeders above.  We also get a skunk there periodically so I always take a look at the area before letting the dog out.  This afternoon as I took Penny down for a pee, I noticed a robin-sized bird on the ground in the pen, and as the dog lunged to get me moving, I realized, “That’s a shrike!”  I got the dog back upstairs, grabbed the camera, and took some shots — although the fencing and window pane were causing the autofocus to go crazy.  Then it flew up to the apple tree.

NShrike1W

I ran upstairs and both Mary and I watched the Northern Shrike perch, as they do, on the highest branch of the tree.  I got a couple of shots as the bird flew off to another perch, came back for a bit, actively hunting.  At that time of day, we normally have a parade of chickadees, nuthatches, and woodpeckers but nothing was moving.  I saw one chickadee fly up to the apple tree, not too far from the shrike, and sized up the situation fast and was out of there.  I saw no other birds from 4:30 until dark — it will be interesting to see what’s up in the morning.

NShrike2W

This is the first Northern Shrike we have ever seen here in the 12 years we’ve been here.  In fact, as I have noted several times before, I had never seen a Northern Shrike — it was a goal for this winter.  I finally found one, about  quarter-mile off, that a friend had previously spotted.  I’ve seen that bird twice since. Now, to have one about ten feet away was pretty exciting.  At one point, it was looking right at me through the glass and opened its beak — like “Feed me.”  There was a side of me that thought about how hungry he/she might be but I’d rather not lose any of our birds.  Now, the four or five red squirrels that live under that apple tree and raid our feeders — “Go Shrike!”

Posted in Local Birding, Vermont Birding, Yard birds | 1 Comment

NEK Audubon’s Bird Notes; Birds in March, Veer Frost

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Richard

8432_166466626408_4256776_aThe Northeast Kingdom’s chapter of Audubon has a great Facebook page with wonderful photography by Tom Berriman and others.  It also has excellent writing.  Each month, Board Member Veer Frost writes an essay on nature in the NEK.   Here is the start of the post for March which when I read it, pumped a little energy into my thinking about birding in March in northern Vermont.  Here it is:

Birds in March

Anticipation! You can hear it in the first sweet notes beginning to brighten the clouded stretches of days we’re being granted just now in the Kingdom.

March brings us weeks that are neither winter nor spring, but at last we’ve reached the time of year when bitter Canadian fronts are followed by the irrepressible titmouse and chickadee tribes, sending songs out of the bare trees, like children thumbing their nose.

Woodpeckers may drum year round, but it’s in the weeks surrounding the spring equinox that their staccato banging against tree, house siding, and that perennial favorite, the tin roof, is most intense and frequent. By now, you’ve probably heard that the military-industrial powers are trying to figure out how a black and white urchin of a bird doesn’t ruin its brain with all that pounding, in order to copy its secret!  

The skies over the Passumpsic are featuring a yet more raucous sound than tree drumming, but one that adds its own power to this season of hope.

Raven pairs fly overhead in close double formation, intensifying their bond, vocalizing their intention to each other to support the rigors of nesting and rearing young. The new life that we anticipate so yearningly in the growing light of March must, of course, include instinctive sacrifice, hard work, and the danger of predators.

Read the whole article here.  Like the NEK Audubon page here.

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Alaskan Birding Trip – Epilogue

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Richard

It has been almost 24 years since the journey yet as I write this it seems like only yesterday. All that I remembered comes rushing back like the fast moving glacial streams. The experience we all shared together will always be with us and in our memories.

I can still see all that I told you about: such vivid pictures that no camera could ever capture. There are no words that can adequately describe the Alaska I saw. It is a land of gross hyperbole.  A land of adjectives and metaphors and still not enough to paint the picture. When I close my eyes and relive what I have seen and felt it is only then that I can in some small way understand this land.

On a day in Denali we climbed a ridge near the Savage River. Higher and higher we climbed and the wind became stronger, Finally near the top I stood alone high on this ravine catching the full force of nature’s breath. With arms outstretched and eyes closed tightly I wished, oh how I wished I could fly. To soar with eagles and ride the thermals, to sail in the wind. To be free!

"With arms outstretched and eyes closed tightly I wished, oh how I wished I could fly. To soar with eagles and ride the thermals, to sail in the wind. To be free! " photo of hiker by Paxson Woelber

“With arms outstretched and eyes closed tightly I wished, oh how I wished I could fly. To soar with eagles and ride the thermals, to sail in the wind. To be free! ” photo of hiker by Paxson Woelber

I remember standing on the cliffs on St. Paul. It wasn’t simply about the birds flying, the seals bellowing, and the foxes scampering over the land. The pyramid of life was there. From the oceans where it began to the cliff top where in us life has evolved to its highest end. In this intricate web of life we are all equals. We are not only related but need and depend on one another in order to sustain life itself. Let us never forget this bond.

As in all my trips I view my trip to Alaska as a privilege. A special privilege that makes me appreciate what has been given to me. The gift of seeing life as Mother Nature intended it to be. The beauty of the land and its flora and fauna; the daily struggle of life and death; and finally the birth of those that will offer the same view to others for eons to come.

We are not only guests to nature’s theater, we have roles in all of the plays and all the acts. But remember we are only co-stars on this the stage of life. We must make sure the curtain never closes on this show. The Greatest Show on Earth.

You only make the journey once so do everything you can to make sure your journey is rewarding not only for you but those that you will meet on your journey. Live the journey now , for every doorway that opens is a destination to a new journey.

Never the end just the beginning.

Gerry Cooperman

Posted in Birding Trip Report, Birding_trips, guest_post | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Local Airstream Company Expands

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Richard

The Plattsburgh Press-Repulican had a nice article about the continuing expansion of an Airstream sales/renovation company just across the lake. 
PLATTSBURGH — New models of an American icon are now available from a local business that has doubled in size within the last year. 
Nomad Airstream President and Sales Manager Steven Clement said they are now an authorized Airstream dealer with exclusive rights to the New York and Vermont sales territory.
“We’re getting calls from all over,” he said.
Market holds promise
He and CEO Guillaume Langevin see great potential for the market, particularly the Burlington area. Clement said it is difficult to find Airstream trailers in Canada, so they even expect to have customers from the Montreal market.
“We know customers will be coming down,” he said.
The company has already received some new 2013 inventory.
The International Signature and Serenity series includes models from 19 feet to 30 feet. The Classic Limited line has model lengths of 27 feet, 30 feet and 31 feet, and is the flagship of the Aurstream line.
The Airstream Eddie Bauer edition is available in 26-foot and-28 foot lengths. It features a wide rear hatch to accommodate outdoor gear such as a kayak or bicycles. 
“It really fits in with the Adirondacks,” Clement said.  Read the whole article.
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