Beware the Ideas of March

Listening carefully
Originally uploaded by Laura Erickson

This is the script of today's radio program, available, like all my "For the Birds" programs, on iTunes:

When I was a freshman in high school, our English class read Julius Caesar, and I first encountered the portentous words, “Beware the Ides of March.” Sure enough, the next time March 15th rolled around, our family cat died, so it was a message that has stuck with me for life.
March 15 can be a very bad day for birds, falling within the month that migration can be stopped dead in its tracks with blizzards and ice storms. But those can happen any day in March. For birds, it’s not the Ides of March, it’s the Ideas of March that gets them into trouble.
The first idea of March that can be a bad one is for birds wintering in the southern states to start migrating during a balmy spell, only to be hit with bad weather. The worst victims of this bad idea are Tree Swallows and bluebirds, who sometimes arrive in the north well before the insects they need are available. Bluebirds fare a little better because they are better at finding and extracting nutrition from berries, but both birds suffer mortality. It’s heartbreaking for people to peek into a bluebird box and find one or more of these lovely little birds dead.
Another of the bad Ideas of March is to nest too early. We’ve had some warm weather in Ithaca in the past couple of weeks that has set our Canada Geese to mating and working on nests. Even geese that are quite old turn into teenagers in love in spring, and they just don’t think things through. Last year, the first geese to nest and hatch out eggs lost all their babies to the hungry snapping turtles that were first emerging right when the goslings were at their tiniest and most vulnerable. The geese who more sensibly waited until April to nest managed to raise most or all of their broods. Of course it can be argued that there are way too many Canada Geese as it is, so maybe I shouldn’t be giving them any bright ideas, but even if you know there are too many geese, there is something so innocent and sweet about a tiny baby goose that it’s hard to not feel sad when you’re watching a family of six young babies following their devoted parents everywhere, and suddenly it’s a family of four, then two , then one, and then none.
Pine Siskins and redpolls reach their highest levels of sociability and being twitterpated in March, a bad idea right when soil is warming up enough to release soil-borne bacteria that can infect wet seeds on the ground where hundreds of these birds collect and feed one another. Every spring there are salmonella outbreaks among these finches thanks to their ideas about friendly gatherings.
Of course, not all of the avian Ideas of March are bad ones. As much as we don’t want birds to arrive too early, we can’t help but celebrate the morning we hear our first robin singing away, or watch the Red-winged Blackbirds all displaying in top form atop cattails. Although the dawn chorus won’t reach its glorious peak until late May or early June, it starts kicking in in earnest in March. This month birds are bursting with ideas, and even if those ideas kick off behaviors that will end in heartache or death for some of them, the burst of daylight, occasional warm temperatures, and hormones of March are what makes the world go round.

Happy Pi Day!

Pushing Daisies on TheWB.com
Originally uploaded by TheWB.com

New York Times coffee shop article

Scarlet Tanager
Originally uploaded by Laura Erickson

The New York Times had an article about coffee shops in NYC, and didn't mention which carried organic or shade-grown coffee, much less certified Bird Friendly coffee. Here's the comment I posted:

Laura
Ithaca NY
March 11th, 2010
5:16 am
Some coffee beans are grown as row crops, depleting soils and loaded with fertilizers and pesticides. This is a major factor in destroying natural tropical habitat essential for tropical wildlife and also North American birds that winter in the tropics.

The Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center certifies "Bird Friendly" coffee that is organic and grown in diverse natural rain forest that meets standards ensuring biodiversity. Coffee grows more slowly in shade, giving the beans a richer flavor which most coffee aficionados prefer, so buying Bird Friendly coffee is a win-win.

I love a good cup of coffee, but unless I'm desperate will drink only Bird Friendly certified coffee. I order my beans mail order from Gimme! in Ithaca or from Birds and Beans in Massachusetts (which sells ONLY Bird Friendly coffee), and will always choose a coffee shop that specifically offers Bird Friendly coffee over one that doesn't. I wish that you'd indicated which coffee shops offer Bird Friendly coffee, or at least which offered fair trade, organic, and shade-grown coffees.

Twitterpated hawk owls

Northern Hawk Owl
Originally uploaded by Laura Erickson

Oh, man--I went to the Sax-Zim Bog yesterday and it was cosmically wonderful. The weather was warmish--upper 40s I think--and sunny, and birds were really feeling their oats. There were most cooperative Northern Hawk Owls, and I also had a pair of Boreal Chickadees singing. They don't have a whistled song--this was like a softer, more musical and more sustained gargle.

It was hard leaving home this morning--both from the "boy I wish I could stay in Duluth" sense and from the "Holy crap! I have to be at the airport at FIVE A.M.?!" sense.

A Letter from Roger Tory Peterson

petersonletter
Originally uploaded by Laura Erickson

Not many spaces left!

Troy Walters and I are going to be teaching our "Exploritas" class (the new name for Elderhostel) in Eagle River, Wisconsin, again this year, the week of May 23. We'll be doing some basic indoor stuff--lectures on warbler identification, birding basics, etc.--and lots of field trips to see the spendid birds of northern Wisconsin. I took this photo of a Canada Warbler during one of these classes, and Troy always scouts out the best places for finding Boreal Chickadees and other treasures. Learn more and sign up here.

I love my Prius

Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge
Originally uploaded by Laura Erickson

I've put 55,000 miles on this Prius and 160,000 on my previous one. The Toyota places where I've had these cars serviced in Duluth and Ithaca have been consistently wonderful. But that won't make the news, will it?

Register soon for the Sax-Zim Birding Festival

Great Gray Owl
Originally uploaded by Laura Erickson

Mike Hendrickson writes:

This will be the last week of registrations for the 3rd Annual Sax-Zim Bog Winter Bird Festival being held on Feb 12-14th in Meadowlands, MN. Since my last posting Great Gray Owls look like they headed back in the woods but in the last week or so Great Gray Owls seem to make a rebound and have been seen a few times in the Sax-Zim Bog! Thank goodness.

The feeders in the Sax-Zim Bog are still attracting Boreal Chickadees, Pine Grosbeaks, Common Redpolls and other winter residents. Black-backed Woodpeckers are being seen on most days along with Northern Hawk Owls! In Duluth there are still good places to view Bohemian Waxwings and the big news is the number of gull species being seen. Good numbers of Iceland Gulls in various ages, Thayer's Gulls, Glaucous Gulls and Great Black-backed Gulls. Also are Barrow's Goldeneye is still being seen among a large raft of Common Goldeneyes. In Aitkin County good numbers of Northern Hawk Owls and the big draw will be the Sharp-tailed Grouse displaying on their lek!

There is a lot to be found and seen during the festival.

To read more about the festival go here: http://moumn.org/sax-zim/

There will be bird field trips going to Sax-Zim Bog, Aitkin County and Duluth. There will also be a winter photo workshop led by Mark "Sparky" Stensaas and Shawn Zierman. Here birders will learn about winter photography and visit a private feeder to photograph winter finches. Along with the workshop and birding field trips there will also be speakers, vendors and much more!

Thanks for your time!

Mike

Sparky is a good friend of mine--the workshop he and Shawn are doing should be absolutely splendid. And the field trip leaders are superb. This is a really worthwhile birding festival, and this would be a good year to participate! Check it out!

Learn Wildlife Sound Recording from the Experts!!

Join Greg Budney and other experts at San Francisco State University's Sierra Nevada Field Campus in the Tahoe National Forest, California, this summer, for a fabulous week learning to record birds--and not just any birds. The station, located at 6,000 feet amid Ponderosa and Jeffrey pines, affords a wide range of recording conditions in spectacular surroundings, and the bird life includes such wondrous species as American Dipper and White-headed Woodpecker. This was my nemesis species until I took this workshop in 2001. I am not exaggerating when I say this field recording workshop was one of the best weeks of my life. I got some wonderfully useful skills, had SO much fun, and saw and heard and recorded such spectacular birds!

Greg Budney, curator of the Macaulay Library's archive of wildlife sounds, will lead a team of Lab of Ornithology experts to teach state-of-the-art techniques for recording wildlife sounds. Topics covered include:

• Selection and application of audio recorders and microphones
• Recording theory
• Daily field recording with hands-on instruction
• Recording techniques
• Documentation for sound recordings
• Use of software to analyze recordings

Dates: June 12-19, 2010
Fee: $945 (tuition, food & lodging)
For information call (607) 254-2153 or email ns29@cornell.edu
http://macaulaylibrary.org/inside/record/workshops/index.do

In my opinion, $945 for a week--including everything once you get there--is awfully reasonable, and you'll come away with a splendid bird list, amazing recordings, and a lot of useful skills.

Is this a cool strategy for evading killer whales or what?