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razz posted:Pretty much any bird that lands on an airport runway gets shot. I have a friend that works for APHIS and his entire job description is shooting birds that get on the runways. Raptors, waterfowl, shorebirds, tiny little warblers, literally anything. Yeah, I know. I know a couple of people that are wildlife biologists but were hired by the airport to 'harass' and shoot birds at the airports. Of course though the shooting of the Snowys is getting a lot of attention! Port Authority just released a statement that they are going to work now to trap and relocate at this point.
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Dec 10, 2013 02:15
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lord funk posted:Speaking of, who here does their local Christmas count? I'm doing a couple local ones the next two Saturdays. Assuming the weather isn't bad, I'll spend this week on a small boat out in Puget Sound doing a marine count. Should be pretty cool, but it's been in the 20's during the day this week so right now it sounds pretty miserable. The next Saturday I'm doing my neighborhood. I'm actually lead for my area, so we'll see how that goes. It's literally the most boring zone in the entire circle. Like, "I hope we get Mallard," kind of boring.
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Dec 10, 2013 05:58
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ExecuDork posted:I've been thinking of upgrading from my National Geographic Birds of North America Third Edition, that looks pretty nice. Ideally I'd like something with a more rigid cover, my book has been getting beat up lately - I tend to toss it into the back of the car and sooner or later my 500mm rolls onto it or my tripod or a water bottle or... I don't like the Gannet. They wet their own nests  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCM2nEBE0RY
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Dec 10, 2013 11:55
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I was able to see my first Snowy yesterday!! It was from a distance but still amazing. I hope to see more before the season is over. On my local listserv there was a report of a ton of them moving through Newfoundland so those might end up making their way here. I wonder how many are here already that we just haven't found? Sometimes I wonder this about all rare species. I am doing a couple CBCs this year. One this weekend and then one on the eastern shore the weekend of the 28th. Also they have stopped shooting the owls in NY. Kawalimus fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Dec 10, 2013 |
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Dec 10, 2013 14:35
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lord funk posted:Oh man that's great. I'm hopeful that this year's Christmas count will finally bring a snowy into the mix. Speaking of, who here does their local Christmas count? I do one on Long Island, NY! I love it. I go with the small Audubon group here, and we have a blast. Might catch the one in Queens this year too. I highly recommend doing a count if you haven't before.
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Dec 10, 2013 14:41
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I'm doing a Christmas count this Saturday, then possibly one or two more local-ish ones depending on my schedule.
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Dec 10, 2013 16:31
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I'm doing the Edmonton, Alberta CBC on Sunday. I just hope the weather improves a bit -- there's all sorts of reports of birds dying from the cold right now (including a poor barn owl that made its way up here  ). I went out on Saturday to find some owls and it was below -40 not counting wind chill (which probably brought it to -60).
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Dec 10, 2013 19:02
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Just saw migrating cranes for the first time in my life, in flight over Chicago. They made a ruckus, but it was a beautiful sight.
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Dec 10, 2013 19:47
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A report on how much of a mess our recent storm surge caused. Not quite Hurricane Sandy, and it didn't really hit too much urban development but still a mess. http://birdguides.com/webzine/article.asp?a=4113
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Dec 11, 2013 22:05
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razz posted:What do you guys think this is, a Laughing Gull or a Franklin's Gull? Hasn't been answered, isn't this 1st winter Franklin (tail, very white underparts, head colouration).
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Dec 12, 2013 15:05
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El Perkele posted:Hasn't been answered, isn't this 1st winter Franklin (tail, very white underparts, head colouration). Thanks, that's what I figured. Just thought it would be cool if it was a Laughing since they've been spotted in every surrounding county but mine (it's really under-birded here, tons of opportunities for new county records!)
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Dec 12, 2013 17:15
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So the RSPB's 2012 Bird Crime report is out. Sounds like it's bad news again. They just tweeted this photo of a pigeon tethered to a rock and covered in poison. There are some terrible, terrible people.
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Dec 13, 2013 10:27
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Pablo Bluth posted:So the RSPB's 2012 Bird Crime report is out. Sounds like it's bad news again. They just tweeted this photo of a pigeon tethered to a rock and covered in poison. There are some terrible, terrible people. Why?????
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Dec 13, 2013 10:58
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TLG James posted:Why????? The link says that it's bait for peregrine falcons. Probably left by a farmer or a hunter, they tend to see raptors as pests.
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Dec 13, 2013 16:30
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Speaking of bird crimes, I was about to head a few hours south tomorrow to get a look at a short-eared owl that was hanging around in the same area for a few weeks now but someone posted a picture of a rough-legged hawk killing the owl this morning. Does anyone know how common this type of behaviour is in roughies? There is a huge number of them in Alberta right now (compared to last year when I saw none) and I wonder if that's why I'm not seeing any Great Grays so far.
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Dec 13, 2013 18:48
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InternetJunky posted:Speaking of bird crimes, I was about to head a few hours south tomorrow to get a look at a short-eared owl that was hanging around in the same area for a few weeks now but someone posted a picture of a rough-legged hawk killing the owl this morning. Never heard of that- I always think of rough-leggeds as dainty so that's pretty surprising. I took a quick look at the Birds of North America account and they don't mention anything like that. Rough-legged can be kleptoparasites of short-eared owls, and in europe at least sometimes set up winter territories they defend against other raptor species, but nothing like what you mention.
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Dec 13, 2013 20:05
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Tardigrade posted:The link says that it's bait for peregrine falcons. Probably left by a farmer or a hunter, they tend to see raptors as pests. Don't raptors eat mice which actually are pests to their crops?
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Dec 13, 2013 20:31
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Shooting estates. Massive amounts of our countryside belongs to the landed gentry, who love to pheasant shoot. They release millions of birds each year, then get huffy when a small percentage get eaten. For the first time since 1960, no Hen Harriers managed to breed successfully in England; there's enough suitable habitat for 300 pairs. Pigeon-fanciers. Their pigeons disappear and they blame Peregrine Falcons. In the report there is a photo of an device they strap to pigeons that would cause any peregrine to get tangled to the pigeon and die. Egg collectors. Shepherds blaming Golden/White-tailed for loses.
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Dec 13, 2013 21:09
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Marshmallow Blue posted:Don't raptors eat mice which actually are pests to their crops? Peregrines prefer to hunt birds, but the impact they have on game/domestic birds is negligible and overexaggerated by people. Hawks hunt mammals, which is why they weren't hit as hard as falcons and accipiters.
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Dec 13, 2013 22:15
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One CBC down, one to go. The Oakland count is pretty crazy, there are just a TON of people who do it these days. The compilers split the count circle up into *29* different territories! Last year they had over 200 people, and this year it's closer to 250 (of course the amazing warm sunny weather didn't hurt either). Not only a high for participants, but probably for species too (~184 this year). It's funny because on our territory it felt like a down year, and we spent the whole day talking about "good weather bad birding", but turns out almost every group had unique birds and in the end the total was pretty high. (our team still had the most species~ 108 between all the observers in our territory). Nothing super noteworthy. Our best bird was probably Red Knot. This was our last bird.  Wild Turkey- Sunset View Cemetery on Flickr
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Dec 18, 2013 01:48
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Tardigrade posted:Peregrines prefer to hunt birds, but the impact they have on game/domestic birds is negligible and overexaggerated by people. Hawks hunt mammals, which is why they weren't hit as hard as falcons and accipiters. I ought to take a picture of this old ad I have framed in my house. It's a drawing of a Peregrine nailing a duck mid-flight and the heading is DUCK FOOD or something like that. If you go on to read the article, it's kind of a public service announcement for hunters telling them to shoot all hawks on sight because they're killing the ducks the hunters want to shoot. This was printed in popular hunting magazines and was once an acceptable form of "game management".
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Dec 18, 2013 21:42
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razz posted:I ought to take a picture of this old ad I have framed in my house. It's a drawing of a Peregrine nailing a duck mid-flight and the heading is DUCK FOOD or something like that. If you go on to read the article, it's kind of a public service announcement for hunters telling them to shoot all hawks on sight because they're killing the ducks the hunters want to shoot. This was printed in popular hunting magazines and was once an acceptable form of "game management". Would have liked to see the ads about the buffalo ruining train tracks for whatever back in the day.
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Dec 18, 2013 21:44
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Dipping on chases really pisses the poo poo out of me sometimes. I wanted so bad to see this Rough-legged Hawk but it went away just a couple hours before I got up to see it this morning. Then I missed the nearby Sandhill Cranes too. Just a part of birding. But the worst part!!
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Dec 21, 2013 20:52
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Here's the picture I mentioned above.
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Dec 21, 2013 21:19
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Kawalimus posted:Dipping on chases really pisses the poo poo out of me sometimes. I wanted so bad to see this Rough-legged Hawk but it went away just a couple hours before I got up to see it this morning. Then I missed the nearby Sandhill Cranes too. Nearly every time I chase a bird I end up wondering why I did it. If I see the bird, especially if it's one I've seen before and not something spectacularly cool, it's like, "Yep, it's still there." If I dip then I feel like I just wasted my time. I've been trying to spend more time trying to find my own rarities rather than chase other's. I'm not exactly finding a lot mega rare birds for the region, but I've found a surprising amount of county and regional rarities this year. razz posted:Here's the picture I mentioned above. That's kind of nauseating. In my experience modern hunters in the US tend to be in awe of raptors rather than viewing them as the enemy. There's certainly still dipshits around that want to shoot everything that moves, but they're few and far between. I did my second CBC on Saturday. I was the area lead for probably the least productive spot in the circle, which happens to be the area around my house. Pretty terrible weather, unfortunately, but it was interesting to see what I could turn up within a few miles of the house when I had to.
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Dec 23, 2013 16:31
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We had great weather this past weekend for my second count. No super-interesting birds though. Nice looks at a river otter, some urban Wilson's Snipe, great view of a Sora (didn't even use a recording- it was just super cooperative). Wild Turkey and Hairy woodpecker were relatively unusual for our territory. It's been so dry that one of our favorite areas for things like pipits and snipe had virtually nothing. I didn't make it to the countdown dinner so not sure if anything else we saw was a good bird this year. Still a fun day.  Wilson's Snipe on Flickr  Hooded Merganser on Flickr
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Dec 23, 2013 23:05
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BeastOfExmoor posted:Nearly every time I chase a bird I end up wondering why I did it. If I see the bird, especially if it's one I've seen before and not something spectacularly cool, it's like, "Yep, it's still there." If I dip then I feel like I just wasted my time. I've been trying to spend more time trying to find my own rarities rather than chase other's. I'm not exactly finding a lot mega rare birds for the region, but I've found a surprising amount of county and regional rarities this year. I have certain unofficial rules for when I will chase something. I chase something that I haven't seen before or rarely see, and is within an hour for the most part. I felt bad for the one lady who came up from Ocean City. Yikes! I will also chase if the bird in question will take me to an area I have yet to explore myself. I also will chase if the area I am going to can be birded anyway even without the rarity. These are my "rules" that I can think of. Someone could argue that it's just a cheap way to see a bird. And I understand this. But seeing the MacGillivray's Warbler like I did was completely worth it and gave me good experience with a bird that I would never otherwise see around here. And now that I've seen it I can use that experience to maybe even find it myself in the future. I wish I were better at finding rarities myself but I never seem to. But I did find some unassisted White-winged Crossbills last year. I wish I lived just a little closer to Swan Harbor so I could check it more. Seems like so many rarities turn up at that location!! There's Barnacle Geese up around there now. Even though I hate geese I'm gonna go check them out on Christmas morning if they're still around.
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Dec 24, 2013 01:35
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Kawalimus posted:I wish I were better at finding rarities myself but I never seem to. quote:I hate geese 
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Dec 28, 2013 00:45
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I just don't like them!  They're loud and annoying and poo poo everywhere. I do like seeing Snow Geese and Ross's. This weekend I saw a blue-morph snow goose. It's not really true that I don't find rarities either. I just don't usually go looking for ducks and shorebirds and such as much as warblers. But I am usually turning up the uncommon to rare species of warblers. But I always focus on what I missed because it's just always my mindset to focus on the negative. Speaking of which this past weekend I did a CBC on the eastern shore and I SAW AN ORANGE-CROWNED WARBLER!!! My first for the east. That brings my warbler total for this year to 36 when you include the MacGillivray's. I'd have a perfect year in MD if I had made it out to western MD to find Golden-winged. God drat it!
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Dec 29, 2013 15:53
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BeastOfExmoor posted:That's kind of nauseating. In my experience modern hunters in the US tend to be in awe of raptors rather than viewing them as the enemy. There's certainly still dipshits around that want to shoot everything that moves, but they're few and far between. I tend to agree with you. 99.9% of hunters follow the law and are very interested in the conservation of all wildlife, not just game species. I still know quite a few people who shoot hawks and other non-game species and they'll straight up admit it. I work with ranchers and you'd be surprised at the amount of flat-out WRONG information a lot of the old-timers have. Mainly old white dudes in their 60s-70s, they're the worst offenders. The ones who say things like "Well my grandfather/Dad did it this way and it worked for them so why should I do it any differently?" You would think these people that live off the land and have for generations would be a little more enlightened than your average hunter who doesn't farm/ranch for a living but nope. I've had people tell me that they shoot Northern Harriers because they kill... I don't even remember, prairie chickens or something? Which they do on occasion but so what? It's like that duck poster - shoot them so they don't kill the things you want to kill. I've had landowners tell me they've shot turkey vultures (why???), and one told me he shot a turkey and it had baby prairie chickens in its stomach (no matter that turkey season is not during prairie-chicken nesting season and also that turkeys don't eat baby prairie chickens). I also had a guy tell me he PERSONALLY WITNESSED a turkey stomp to pieces a prairie-chicken nest full of eggs. So therefore we have a turkey problem so it's okay for everyone to shoot more turkeys any time of year. It's insane the flat out LIES these people say. And if you ask them to elaborate they'll be like "oh well it wasn't ME that saw it but I swear my brother did!". And I have heard from MULTIPLE old ranchers that turkeys eat quail and if you want to get quail back on your property you need to kill all the turkeys. Don't concern yourself with the fact that your land management practices have removed almost all the quail nesting habitat on your property, that can't be the reason. It can't be HUMAN'S fault, it must be the turkeys. I know a group of ranchers who for some reason think they need to shoot brown-headed cowbirds, why I have no idea. One guy told me he was shooting them and went to get the dead bird and it was a LOGGERHEAD SHRIKE! How can you not tell the difference? They just indiscriminately shoot anything and say "well we're shooting cowbirds to protect the other prairie birds!" but in reality they're just out killing things and I hate these people. They don't care about protecting Dickcissels or whatever the hell their "goal" is. Studies on cowbird removal programs in the prairie states have shown that they don't really work, the cowbird removal programs do work for sensitive species like Kirtland's Warblers but in the prairie where I work, nope doesn't matter how many you remove. And cowbirds aren't even a problem here. Yeah they parasitize grassland bird nests but they're native and have done so for a million years and everyone is fine. Come work with these old rear end farmers and ranchers and enjoy pulling your hair out and hearing horror stories about guys killing 15 turkeys at a time or whatever. They WILL NOT listen to "facts" from "city people". That's exactly what they say. "Oh you work for Kansas State? Well I've lived out here my whole life and blah blah blah what do you know? You're from the CITY."
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Dec 29, 2013 17:05
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The ABA area big year record has been broken: http://blog.aba.org/2013/12/neil-hayward-does-it.html In less momentous news, I am five species short of tying my county's big year record (234, I'm at 229) after finally picking up Sandhill Crane on Thursday. I knew there were three chaseable, but hard to get, species probably in the county (Long-Eared Owl, Great Egret, and Prairie Falcon) but I haven't had time to go out due to a big project at work and holiday's with a five month old. No big deal until yesterday someone turned up a Harris's Sparrow and a probable Gyrfalcon in the county. There's also a Swamp Sparrow that was seen in a sewer treatment area during a recent CBC, but it's off limits to me. Life was so much easier to go to work when the chances of getting the record were almost nill. I must keep focusing on the fact that my goal was to get 202 species when I started and anything above 210 seemed impossible. edit: Kawalimus posted:Speaking of which this past weekend I did a CBC on the eastern shore and I SAW AN ORANGE-CROWNED WARBLER!!! My first for the east. That brings my warbler total for this year to 36 when you include the MacGillivray's. I'd have a perfect year in MD if I had made it out to western MD to find Golden-winged. God drat it! Wait, Orange-Crowned Warblers are hard to find somewhere? I'm irrationally angry that you managed to get to 35 Warblers in a freaking year without seeing an Orange-Crowned. Whenever my wife starts talking about trips we should take every idea goes through a warbler filter. Her family really wants us to to Houston in May next year and I completely rejected it. If it was April and I could've gotten down to High Island I would have been 100% for it. BeastOfExmoor fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Dec 29, 2013 |
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Dec 29, 2013 18:55
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BeastOfExmoor posted:The ABA area big year record has been broken: That's a great total for a single county. Good news that you can even go for it. My main counties basically can't be touched in terms of record. Orange-crowned are rare but regular migrants and wintering residents around here. They're a bit less rare on the eastern shore, so being there for the count gave me an opportunity and I was able to find one. Susquehanna State Park which is around here is great for warbler species diversity in spring(a guy got 29 warblers in one day last spring, and even missed a couple I think). You can find almost all the spring warblers there. This makes it fairly easy to get 30+ warblers a year if you can bird that regularly in the spring. edit: In MD you can get 36 warblers in a typical year. So I'm at 35 for MD. The 36th was MacGillivray's, which was in PA. The one I missed this year was Golden-winged. I didn't make it out to western MD and I narrowly missed it at my usual fall warbler place a couple times. It's rare in this part of MD. Used to be a lot more common several decades ago. Kawalimus fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Dec 29, 2013 |
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Dec 29, 2013 20:26
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2013 was the first year I was serious about birding and ebird reporting, and I ended up at 152 species. I imagine I'd be somewhere around 250 species if I actually could tell the difference between all the gulls, shorebirds, and tiny birds. The modest goal for 2014 is 200 species within Alberta. It sucks having to wait months before anything shows up though. Here's the last new species reported for me for 2013: Short-eared Owl 
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Jan 1, 2014 17:30
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I'm hoping there are some nightjar experts that read this thread, I'd love for this to be a lifer. I'm at my parent's house in Limestone County, TX (~45 minutes east of Waco), and yesterday I saw this Night Jar at a local park. It was in the leaf litter on the lawn of a picnic area near a lake. We accidentally flushed it, and then followed it to its next landing spot to get this picture, before flushing it again. It's either out of range or out of season. It could be an out of season eastern whip-poor-will, common nighthawk, chuck-will's-widow, which are the only nightjars that have sightings in the area. It could be an out of range common poor-will, or common pauraque, which have no eBird sightings in the area.  IMG_8414 by EPICAC, on Flickr
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Jan 1, 2014 20:29
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It's not a Common Nighthawk. How big was it? Did you see it fly? Chuck-Wills-Widows are HUGE compared to all the other nightjars. Looks like a either Common Poorwill or Whip-Poor-Will to me just by the way it's sitting and the coloration but hopefully someone else more knowledgeable will know. Did it have any white on the tail that you notice when it flushed? Common Poorwills have VERY obvious white corners on their tails.
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Jan 2, 2014 01:53
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razz posted:Here's the picture I mentioned above. So how does one take a shotgun and shoot just the hawk w/o blowing away 3-4 other ducks in the process?
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Jan 2, 2014 21:28
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Hawks aren't always a swooping on a duck, you know. Sometimes they do other things, & then they may be shot safely.
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Jan 2, 2014 22:32
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Mr. Squishy posted:Hawks aren't always a swooping on a duck, you know. Sometimes they do other things, & then they may be shot safely. I truly concerns me how these ducks didn't go extinct with all these predators about before guns and all. baffling... Every time I'm in the woods and a hawk let's me see it, it's always chasing food. Last time is was a quail / grouse / pheasant thing. Sounded like a god danm helicopter when flying around. Very powerful wings on both the hawk and the mystery ground bird.
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Jan 3, 2014 17:12
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Assuming budget wasn't a big issue, if you had to get a birding scope that would also working well when digiscoping, what would you pick?
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Jan 3, 2014 19:09
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InternetJunky posted:Assuming budget wasn't a big issue, if you had to get a birding scope that would also working well when digiscoping, what would you pick? Zeiss Photoscope is possibly the answer if you actually meant budget wasn't a big issue. Honestly, I don't really get the whole digiscoping thing. It can certainly come in handy in a pinch for documenting rarities, but in general I think they turn out poor photos of any bird you need a scope for. You can certainly sit in your backyard and get ok photos of birds at your feeders with one, but you could do that even better with a DSLR and a cheap lens. Superzooms seem like they might be a better solution for a cheapish way to document distnat rarities, etc. and they are way less awkward than holding a P&S/Phone up to your camera. I'm certainly not an expert, however, so feel free to show me I'm wrong. Scope talk reminds me that I bought myself a new scope for Christmas. Celestron Regal M2 80mm. I've only had it out a couple times, but it's a nice upgrade from my previous scope. It takes standard 1.25" telescope eyepieces so you can get a nice fixed wide-angle eyepiece really inexpensively.
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Jan 3, 2014 23:26
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