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Forum Birdwatching 2010

Thanks so much for the handling info Kotatsu, and the many pictures are a nice bonus. :)

Way back in 1987 was the only time I ever held a bird in hand. I was on my way to the arcade with a friend when I noticed a bird lying on the sidewalk. It looked the size of a small pigeon but the color seemed wrong. As I got closer I noticed it move a bit. It seemed to have flown into a storefront window and knocked itself out.

I gently picked it up cradling it on it's back in the palm of my hand. I was then very surprised when it spun it's head towards me and opened it's eyes, because it was an owl! It began extending it's very long claws and snapping it's beak open and closed making a clicking sound. It was a bit scary :eek: But very beautiful.

My friend said we should keep it. But I wanted to go into the arcade. He suggested I put it under my shirt and lets go play video games. :boggled: Not!

So instead I let it and go and it promptly did a 180 and flew straight into the window again. :(

I picked it back up, still dazed and this time went around back of the building into the parking lot and let it go there. It flew off into the night. :)


Oh and I just want to add, I love ducks. Glad to hear they are nice to handle.
 
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I've said it before, in last year's thread, but it can be said again:

There are few things as wonderful as having a bird in your hand. I cannot recommend enough to try to work with birds in some way. An easy way to do that is to see if your local university has some kind of local research program that would involve capturing birds. Unless the members of the team are strange, they will love nothing more than getting another volunteer to help them with nets and stuff, and above all help them clean out the nets from birds if there's a lot of them.

Another easy way is of course to see if there are some local banders, and see if you can join them. Anyone over the age of 4 could do it, so I encourage everyone to give it a try.
 
They're always bloody dead when they're in my hand. Yesterday it was a peregrine falcon. No foul play as far as we could tell.

Oh, and then there was the starling I had to release after he got caught in my bird feeder. I really wish I had photographed that.

Rolfe.
 
24/01/10 Scotland

Teal, Anas crecca
Wigeon, Anas penelope
Gadwall, Anas strepera
Coot, Fulica atra
Black-Throated Diver, Gavia arctica
Mallard, Anas platyrhynchos
Cormorant, Phalacrocorax carbo
Goldeneye, Bucephala clangula
 
William Parcher said:
FYI, there is a new claim of photographs of a living Ivory-billed Woodpecker.
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Well this one is more and more looking like a hoax (if not a scam). I was always a little sceptical of the initial evidence that was presented by Cornell and from further reading, I've come to realise that I was not alone. This site lays out the controversy from the sceptics point of view, culminating in an objection to the Draft Recovery Plan for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker...published by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) on 22 August 2007.

On a much brighter note, I recently read about a Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust effort in 2009 to save the Madagascar PochardWP. Declared to be possibly extinct by 1991, a small population was actually rediscovered in 2006. Story here at the WWT website.

Our list update is in hand. 2009 totals pending my definitive ID of Ecuador birds. I'm having to drop a number of mainland birds as I do not have sufficient field notes, so am taking a leaf out of Mercuchio's (?) book and only listing those I photographed.
 
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I have added records by everyone up to this point. For the first time, I have actually been consistent in the new taxonomy of gulls, and named all Black-headed Gulls Chroicocephalus ridibundus. I will change this retroactively as well. Among already reported bird, it affects the following species:
Bonaparte's Gull Chroicocephalus philadelphia
Silver Gull Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae
Laughing Gull Leucophaeus atricilla
Franklin's Gull Leucophaeus pipixcan
Little Gull Hydrocoloeus minutus

This division is based on the phylogenetic study of Pons et al., 2005. There are more divisions if we look at the family as a whole, but the ones listed above are the more relevant ones. Most of the gulls familiar to us in the West are still Larus.

I have also added the following species:
Gothenburg, 25th of January
Goshawk Accipiter gentilis
Greater Spotted Woodpecker Dendrocopos major

Still no "proper" birdwatching, as it seems this cold I got in Austria just never wants to let go. This weekend, however, I intend to try again, and next weekend will be the first birding excursion with the local ornithological society's new youth group, which I am responsible for.
Soapy Sam said:
While down south I saw several Kites, hunting the road edges- a couple north of Biggleswade and one south of the Thames near Eton.
Their range seems to be growing all the time.

There was also a white owl cruising the snowy Chalk cutting on the M40 near Oxford. White on white on white. It was rather pretty.
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I'm curious about these two:
I assume this is Red Kite Milvus milvus, correct?
Also:
White owl as in Barn Owl, or as in Snowy owl?
 
Sepulveda Basin (LA Area, California) - this time I actually made it to one of the Woodley Avenue Park lake. As an aside - I grew up in the midwest, and if this "lake" was in Ohio, it would barely make "pond."

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised by the number, variety, and tameness of the birds.

Birds that I got pictures of (dangling participles be durned):
Song Sparrow, Melospiza melodia - My first
Great-tailed grackle, quiscalus mexicanus
Osprey, pandion haliaetus
Turkey vulture, Cathartes aura
Anna's Hummingbird, Calypte anna
American Coot, Fulica americana
Canada Goose, Branta Canadensis
Double-crested Cormorant, Phalocrocorax auritus
Pied-billed Grebe, Podilymbus podiceps
Mallard, Anas platyrhynchos
Brown Pelican, Pelecans occidentalis
American White Pelican, Pelcanus erythrorynchos
Great Egret, Ardea alba
Great Blue Heron, Ardea herodias
Black-Crowned Night Heron, nycticorax nycticorax
Gadwall, Anas strepera
American Wigeon, Anas americana

No Pictures:
Red-Winged Blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus
Brewer's Blackbird, Euphagus cyanocephalus

I had to detour around that brown pelican. Those birds definitely look prettier from a distance. At night. In a heavy fog.
 

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Kotatsu said:
Do you know what the number on the wing signifies? Just banding, or are they part of some special program?
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I wonder if it may be a bird tagged as part of this programme?


Report Pelicans with Leg Bands and Wing Tags
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Fish and Game will continue to band and tag hundreds of young pelicans from both of Idaho's nesting colonies over the next two to three years. The Blackfoot Reservoir colony will get black wing tags, and Lake Walcott colony will get red tags. The tags will have white unique three digit codes, and all tags are on the right wing near the "elbow."
It will help the project to get reports of marked birds from the public. Anyone who sees one of the marked birds should contact the Pocatello Fish and Game office at 208-232-4703, the Jerome office at 208-324-4359, or Colleen Moulton in Boise at 208-287 - 2751; or send an e-mail to mwackenhut@idfg.idaho.gov, jbarrett@idfg.idaho.gov, or cmoulton@idfg.idaho.gov.

Please report the date the tagged bird was seen, the location, tag color, and the number if possible.
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Also, dasmiller, you may wish to email the contacts with your sighting.
 
Kotatsu said:
Do you know what the number on the wing signifies? Just banding, or are they part of some special program?
Click to expand...

Using my google-fu, it seems that the Idaho department of Fish and Game has a tagging program for white pelicans. The red tag means that it was tagged at Lake Walcott in Idaho.

ETA: EHocking beat me to it. I'll send Idaho an email.
 
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They'll be delighted to hear from you.
I sent in Canada Goose tag nos from sightings in London - they had never been reported before and had been tagged some 6 years previously. Tagging programme was very interested to hear from me.
 
In my experience, they usually are. I've never personally reported anything, but I've been in small research groups (at Ottenby Bird Observatory and at Umedeltat Bird Station) where we have reported various geese, shorebirds, swans and cranes, and getting records are always appreciated.

There's hardly a larger thrill than getting an already banded bird in a net, especially if it was banded in some exotic location. And just seeing maps of where birds have been recaptured, well it's astonishing. A Short-eared Owl Asio flammeus that was banded in Sweden was recaptured on Iceland, for instance, and an Osprey Pandion haliaeetus banded in a nest in Northern Sweden was apparently recaptured in Lake Balkash!

ETA: They're not on this map, but it does have some other nice things, like the Little Gull Hydrocoloeus minutus in eastern US and the Arctic Tern Sterna paradisaea in New Zealand!

ETA2: And apparently a Great Cormorant banded in Sweden was recaptured somewhere in -- I'm guessing here, because the borders are not on the map - westernmost Mali!
 
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Sent the email, which was pretty dry. I suspect that a lot of Idaho pelicans go through the LA area, so it won't be big news, but I'm happy to add a little data to their database.

And immediately after I sent it, I realized that I should have sent:

---------------
I saw your bird (American white pelican, red tag #720) at Sepulveda Dam yesterday. He seemed to be doing well. He said he felt bad for just leaving you like that without saying goodbye, but he was feeling kind of trapped and just had to get out of Lake Walcott, you know? He said that at first he was pissed about the tag, but he's okay with it now, and he admitted that he probably overreacted when you put it on. Anyway, he's moving on with his life, and he said that he hopes you are, too, though he looked kind of sad when he said that. He also said that he's thinking about heading back up to Idaho in a few months, at least for a while, and that maybe you two could hang out, but it would just be as friends.

By the way, he didn't mean to take your Dire Straits CDs. They got mixed up with his CDs when he was packing, and he keeps meaning to send them back to you, but he's been busy with, like, a lot of stuff, you know?
---------

Now I need to spot another tagged pelican so I can send that . . .

Or do you think that they get a lot of emails like that?
 
dasmiller said:
Sent the email, which was pretty dry. I suspect that a lot of Idaho pelicans go through the LA area, so it won't be big news, but I'm happy to add a little data to their database. ...
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I'm beginning to have second thoughts about the Idaho Fish and Game tagging programme.

Apparently its prime purpose was to gather population information to formulate a "management programme". That is protect the fish by driving off or killing the birds.

http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/cms/wildlife/plans/pelican.pdf

It seems income from recreational fishing is more important to Idaho than birdlife.
 
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EHocking said:
I'm beginning to have second thoughts about the Idaho Fish and Game tagging programme.

Apparently its prime purpose was to gather population information to formulate a "management programme". That is protect the fish by driving off or killing the birds.

http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/cms/wildlife/plans/pelican.pdf

It seems income from recreational fishing is more important to Idaho than birdlife.
Click to expand...

Oh, dear. The IDFG sites I'd seen earlier were more upbeat. But now that I've skimmed your link, I'm not sure I can come up with any nice interpretation for the phrase "lethal hazing of foraging birds." Especially (when I put my Skeptic hat on) when it's in the context of "While IDFG lacks empirical evidence of bird impacts on fish in these river systems . . ."

Okay, I don't have the whole picture on the pelicans vs. trout story, or even a significant piece of the picture. But after reading that, I'm a little queasy about this program, too.
 
Not being from a country where we have pelicans: would their reasoning be sound? Would pelicans go after the same sort of fish as humans, and would a small population of pelicans be a significant threat to the local fish industry or recreational fishing?

We have the same thing here with Great Cormorants, which the fishermen claim eat "too much fish", whatever that means -- I mean, the Cormorants take enough fish to survive and to feed their kids, whereas the fishermen take much more than they and their immediate family can eat, and then supposedly make powder out of it to give to various forms of livestock -- whereas ornithologists claim that they eat mainly the sort of fish that we wouldn't want to eat anyway, as it is too small or tastes too muddy. I have no idea which side, if either, is correct, but I believe very strongly that the monstrosity that is the European fish industry as no business telling anyone that they fish "too much".

In other news:
Another bird that uses tools, for a given, and perhaps unexpectedly low, value of "tools":
http://www.jesper.nu/videos/djur/7395-en_fagel_som_fiskar/
 
Kotatsu said:
...In other news:
Another bird that uses tools, for a given, and perhaps unexpectedly low, value of "tools":
http://www.jesper.nu/videos/djur/7395-en_fagel_som_fiskar/
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We have a Grey Heron that is pretty much resident at the ornamental lake near where I work. It takes advantage of people feeding the fish and ducks by wading into the crowd of Mallards scuffling for bread on the surface and waits for fish fry to join the feast. It then just picks them off at leisure while camouflaged from the fish by the flock of ducks around it.
 
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