Christmas Bird Count 2009

I took a Saturday off of Feeder Watch and participated in the annual Christmas Bird Count (CBC) in the Duluth area. I rode along with an astute team comprised of: Hawk Ridge Educators Debbie Waters and Sarah Glesner and Hawk Ridge Enthusiast and Bird Whisperer Andrew Longtin. We started early, and I miraculously made it out of bed at 5AM in order to meet my team in Duluth. For those that are not privy to Christmas Bird Count, it is an international citizen science project where bird enthusiasts and their friends and family garner winter bird population data. The data collected will be added to historical records and then analyzed for trends in populations that can then be used to make conservation decisions. For more details about CBC check out: http://www.audubon.org/Bird/cbc/

My group was a lively bunch, a must in a Minnesota winter birding event. We dressed in our warmest 'quiet' gear (mainly fleece and wool, no swishy materials, see Sarah's below left) and headed out around 7:30AM.


Our region mostly comprised of residential area, the luxurious Duluth Airport, the Duluth Mall, and various woodlots. The most common bird observed was the Black-capped Chickadee (see above right); however we had some less common birds as well like the Cedar Waxwing, Barred Owl, and Brown Creeper. My birding highlights included:
(1) Flushing out a very irritated Barred Owl, because we had phished in a cluster-fuck of Black-capped Chickadees
(2) +/- 150 mixed flock of Cedar Waxwing and Bohemian Waxwings enjoying the berries that covered the Mountain Ash
(3) Spotting an adult Bald Eagle in the Duluth Mall Area at 14:10
(4) The Brown Creeper doing what it does best, creeping slowly head first around a lichen covered tree

My favorite non-bird specific highlights included:
(1) The teddy bear Hit-N-Run, who may or may not become a Hawk Ridge Mascot

(2) Andrew's premonitions about the birds we would see. i.e. A Swainson's Thrush and/or Tree Sparrow being flushed out by a late migrating Northern Harrier being acutely watched by a Great Gray Owl
(3) Debbie and Sarah's vocal imitations of many comedic acts

Overall, though my toes are still thawing out, I enjoyed my first CBC. Here are my team's results:

Species	Zone O	Zone N
Cooper’s Hawk	1	0
Bald Eagle	0	1
Mourning Dove	2	0
Rock Pigeon	0	4
Barred Owl	1	0
Downy Woodpecker	5	9
Hairy Woodpecker	4	1
Pileated Woodpecker	0	1
Blue Jay	5	2
American Crow	8	22
Common Raven	3	0
Black-Capped Chickadee	116	82
Red-breasted Nuthatch	7	6
White-breasted Nuthatch	2	3
Brown Creeper	0	1
American Robin	2	27
Cedar Waxwings	0	150
Bohemian Waxwings	16	8
Northern Cardinal	1	2
European Starling	4	169
Purple Finch	1	0
Dark-eyed Junco	0	7
White-winged Crossbill	26	35
American Goldfinch	15	0
House Sparrow	0	27

Sentimental

Definition: expressive of or appealing to sentiment, esp. the tender emotions and feelings, as love, pity, or nostalgia

Can sentiment be escaped? I do my best to not get cheery eyed when true love beats the odds and conquers all. I don't know true love, and I do not know if it exists. I know joy, sadness, pain, pleasure, and a few others. I feel joy when I gambol through the woods or watch my niece play. I feel sadness when I don't get a job I want or when a tragedy takes a life sooner than I expect. I feel pain when a Bald Eagle pinches my skin through a glove or I touch a hot pan. I feel pleasure when I drink a well-crafted beer or a friend massages my shoulders. These emotions are easy to describe in simple scenarios.

True love is not so easy to describe. What defines true love. Many epitaphs and stories attempt to answer this question. Theories like: there is only one soul mate for each of us and we will know them when we find them. I am more enthralled by the lust of Pan's flute than this illogical search. I have heard the lyrics of love songs. They have been flooding into my head since my first Hank Williams record. The Beatles wrote, "All you need is love, dadadada." I want love, but I don't need the cookie-cutter kind. Love is all around me. I can love without true love.

So why this concept of true love?

Count #1 Complete

I have completed my first two-day count period. My species counts are as follows:
6 Black-capped Chickadees
6 Purple Finches
2 White-breasted Nuthatch
2 Red-breasted Nuthatch
4 American Goldfinches
1 Red-bellied Woodpecker
1 Blue Jay

10:30AM seemed to be a bustling hour at the feeder. The early morning and late afternoons were filled with squirrel antics. Including a red squirrel chasing a gray squirrel twice its size. I am going to construct buffers for the feeder to create an impasse for squirrels. Additionally, I would like to build a suet feeder. This might attract woodpeckers. I noticed the Purple Finches move about like a synchronized swim team. The banded female White-breasted nuthatch visited this morning. Her elegance caught my eye as she grabbed her seed perched upside-down. In short, I look forward to the rest of the feeder watch season and hope the Dark-eyed Juncos return.

Project FeederWatch

I am excited to participate in Project FeederWatch this season. The official start date is November 14th. I will be collecting my data at the intern house here at Audubon Center of the North Woods. I began preliminary observations this past weekend. I was delighted by the visits of Dark-eyed Juncos, White and Red Breasted Nuthataches, Hairy Woodpeckers, Fox Sparrows, and Black-capped Chickadees. Other visitors included: Blue Jays, Red Squirrels, Eastern Chipmunks, and Gray Squirrels. I will post a picture of the Fox

Sparrows soon. One of the White-breasted Nuthaches bore a small grey bird band. I suspect it was one that was banded here at Audubon, but I did not have the time to read the numbers.

If you are interested in Project FeederWatch,

check them out o

nline at: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/pfw/index.html

The Myth of Sisyphus, part 1

I have just begun reading Albert Camus's essay, 'The Myth of Sisyphus.' In discussing the difficulty of understanding a man's thought pattern that leads to suicide Camus writes, "But one would have to know whether a friend of the desperate man had not that very day addressed him indifferently." To me this means that the suicidal person, when they feel that even their closest acquntances place little value on their life, their mind equates this to suicide having little impact on their closest friends lives and also that they have little to live for.

Why I think this part hit me hard today...
Earlier this afternoon poignant greif stirred up inside me when I felt as though a person whom I care for deeply was post-poning responding to me. This has always bothered me. I find myself overcome by anxiety when I get the sense that someone that I assumed to care deeply for me would respond more quickly to a new acquiantance's request than my own.

A direction

My original intent for this blog was expressing factual behavior using poetry, I suffered writer's block and attempted to use it for short book reviews, but my recent chain of intellectual interests have veered off the scientific path. I am seeking to answer the age old question of "how should one live." I find myself being overcome by palpable waves of confusion in regards to what direction I want to go with my time. I enjoy time spent in the out of doors, but I do not so much enjoy exploring nature in a purely scientific manner or in a destructive manner. I feel most alive in matters of ethics. I do not like to watch children picking up toads with little concern for the treatment of it. I do not see myself finding joy in laboratory experiments on animals regardless of what discovery is to be discovered because of it. I am most content observing animal and plant-life in nature and then drawing or writing about what I have observed. I also enjoy exploring other writer's and artist's observations and creations. This is a working construction in hopes of finding answers to what it is I would be happy and ful-filled spending my time working on.

Stellaluna is sweet, but not quite stellar

Janell Cannon's "Stellaluna" was a sweet and simple tale about a bat that grows up with birds. The story is beautifully illustrated, but lacks wit and preaches good behavior while teaching little about bats. The story begins with Stellaluna and her mother being attacked by an owl. Stellaluna gets seperated from her mom and winds up in a birds nest with three baby birds.

Stellaluna is fed insects (even though she is a fruit-eating pteropodid) which she dislikes but have no health consequnces for her. The story misleads kids to believe that a fruit-eating bat would be okay if fed insects. When Stellaluna teaches the baby birds to hang upside down she is scolded. This part did succeed in teaching kids that baby birds do not hang upside down like baby bats can, but it came off as threatening to Stellaluna. It carried the mantra that if a child does something different from what a parent desires they will be thrown out of the house. Finally it ended with Stellaluna saving the baby birds after showing them how well she could see in the dark. In actuality it is unlikely that a baby bat would have the strength to fly around with three baby birds in hand. Bats are light-weight beings which is essential for their flight abilities.

Though this book is beautifully illustrated it does not provide the best messages for impressionable young minds. I would love to see this author illustrate a more meaningful book about bats!