I and the Bird #9

Thoughts of Birds


Birds can mark passages in our lives, as Laura Erickson reminds us in her sweet essay that celebrates her son’s 20th birthday. This is a nice little history of the relationship between her kids and birds. Laura, who is a good bird pal of mine, also shares this link to her gallery of bird wallpapers that you might want to download for your desktop.

Mariya is a first-time contributor to this blog carnival. Her short contribution describes how birds give her reasons to do things that she'd prefer not to do.

I'll bet that Mariya (and the rest of us) would be thrilled to join Duncan, who contributed this photo-rich essay describing three interesting days surveying birds in Australia. Duncan's essay includes a few links to outside webpages with pictures of the more interesting birds that he mentions. Duncan is a retired construction worker whose blog appears to be in the process of migrating to a new URL.

Seattle photographer Doug Plummer wrote that he sometimes is distracted from writing about digital photography and instead writes about birds. In this contribution, he writes about his recent visit to Chicago, when the highlight of his trip was watching a hunting peregrine falcon.

Thoughts of birds can distract us when we are sick, as the author of Bootstrap Analysis mentioned in her submission email to me. She was sick at home and thus remembered to submit an essay to this blog carnival, Audubon's “sweet little creatures”, which describes the natural history of the American Tree Sparrow, Spizella arborea. I hope you are feeling better now, Nuthatch.


Speaking of Birds


Amy Hooper wrote about Bobby Harrison's presentation about the rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker at the Midwest Birding Symposium. Amy is the editor of WildBird magazine and writes the blog entitled WildBird on the Fly.

Wild and crazy BirdChick attended the same birding Symposium as Amy Hooper did, but her description of what what really happens at birding symposiums gives a very different picture of the event. Includes some incriminating photographs of people and a few lovely photos of birds.


Lessons from Birds


This past summer, Pamela tried to make some real advances in her sparrow identification skills. Even though she did make some headway, she also managed to get herself rather muddled as well. She has already written about this twice on her blog, hoping that as the breeding sparrows left her area she could relax for the winter, and resume the challenge again next spring. But a couple of things prevented this, leading to the writing of Little Brown Birds, Part 3.

After three years of birding, Lynn still considers herself a novice, but her Guru of Ornithology strongly encouraged her to share this essay here. Student Revolt is an episode in a one-day trip to Hagerman Wildlife Refuge on the Texas-Oklahoma border. In it, Lynn and two of her birding companions scan the marshes for water birds and conflict breaks out between the journeyman birder and his protégé, the author.

Mike writes about all of the typical avian harbingers of winter in NYC that he’s seen and photographed in the past week.

Bughunter contributed this interesting overview of a recent article published in the top-tier research journal, Science. This article found that birds that evolve flexibility in the onset of their breeding cycle are likely to survive climate change. Bughunter is an unemployed biologist and author of the blog, Thinking for Food.


Guardians of Birds, Gifts from Birds


People may occasionally find an injured wild bird that needs help. This requires that the bird be housed in captivity while its injuries heal, and housing wild birds requires special facilities. Dave at the Bird Treatment and Learning Center in Anchorage, Alaska, writes about some recent repairs to the rehab mews by a handy friend and neighbor to Bird TLC.

Wise Crow, author of the blog, Crows Really Are Wise, is concerned for the future of the Cozumel Thrasher in the aftermath of Hurricane Wilma.

Canadian Clare talks about the easy familiarity of his favorite birding guide in Like an Old Friend. He and his new wife are currently building a Bed and Breakfast and will offer Eco-tours starting in the 2006.



Seeking Birds


John writes about his recent walk at Roosevelt Island in Washington D.C. He includes lots of links to outside pages for each bird species mentioned. John is the author of A DC Birding Blog and one of his stated goals is to see a cerulean warbler, Dendroica cerulea.

My blog pal, Tony, realizing the relative dearth of submissions to this blog carnival, nominated this essay by Ro Wauer from The Nature Writers of Texas blog describing the recent addition of a new bird species to his yard list, the Western Tanager, Piranga ludoviciana.

Birds provide continuity and wonder to our lives, as David reveals in his contribution, Signs in the Heavens. In this essay, he describes a rather ordinary day punctuated by some extraordinary moments as he attempts to settle in to his new life in Dallas.


Visions of Birds


This essay is older than most included here, but I nominated this blog, 75 degrees South, because it tells the tale of the adventure of a lifetime. The author, who is British, has lived and worked in Antarctica since November 2003, at a small research station, managing the data from the Upper Atmospheric science experiments. This essay, Visiting the Penguins, includes links to other essays about these penguins and lots of photos, including one that the author suggests using as your desktop wallpaper.

Huitzil shares several stunning photos of a lovely adult male flycatcher that he saw recently.

A Nice Set of Boobies We Saw at the Museum of Natural History was nominated by Dave, editor of the online magazine, Science Creative Quarterly (SCQ). Dave says this piece is just so funny that I feel it needs to be exhibited. The SCQ has recently reprinted this essay with permission of Chris, its author, and one of the SCQ collaborators.

This lovely photoblog about the Steller’s Jay, Cyanocitta stelleri, was sent in by my good Seattle pals at Dharma Bums. Be sure to poke around their site because they have other bird photoblog essays to share, too. One thing that makes me especially proud of this submission is that the authors of this blog told me that I was the person who helped nurture their interest in birds.

Even though Dave's Birding Blog appears to be rapidly running out of steam, he shares some lovely photos and stories of birds he's been seeing recently. Perhaps some encouragement by you, dear readers, might keep this photoblog going.


Humorous Birds


I nominated Speaking of Birds' collection of universal laws that govern birdwatching, including rules from several of my birding pals!

This story by Socar, author of Ratty's Ghost, asks do birders have a special uniform? Perhaps they should.

Ron said his essay about surface area of a bird is “sort of silly”. What do you think?


Future Birds


The next issue of I and the Bird will be hosted by Thomasburg Walks on 10 November. The deadline for submitting or nominating essays is 8 November. Please send your submissions/nominations to Mike, who will make sure the next host receives them in time for I and the Bird #10.


tags: I and the Bird, blog carnival, birds