More Than Ticks on a List

This post is based on a comment I wrote on the "Speckled Hatchback," Dorian Anderson's post Bicycling for Birds blog.  One of Dorian's thoughts really struck me:

We must remember that birds are ultimately more than ticks on a list. 

 
AMEN!  This is why I consider myself more of a "bird watcher" than a "birder." It is assuredly an unfair generalization, but I view "birders" as people who are all about taking ticks on a list.  "I got the bird" and on to the next one.  I always worry when I hear about birders behaving badly, that too many people do forget this.  When we go out, we need to remember we are in danger of disrupting what that bird is doing--whether it is staking out a territory or eating and resting to recover from the storm that blew it out of its normal range. In other words, we need to respect it as another living being.  I say this despite the fact that I pretty much want to see every species of bird on the planet before mankind makes the earth uninhabitable for them. 

For me bird watching is about the joy of seeing these marvelous creatures going about their business--whether it's the Pileated Woodpecker visiting my backyard suet cage and a snag along my fence line like she did this morning, or me traveling elsewhere to see Black-legged Kittiwakes and Razorbills in their native habitat.

Word of the Day -- real this time

Last Sunday's word was made up, today's, according to dictionary.com is real:

vaulty [vawl-tee] 

adjective 1. having the appearance or characteristics of a vault; arching:

the vaulty rows of elm trees.

While the below image captures the idea of the word, I want to play with it a little.  Couldn't the word vaulty also be used to describe McKayla Maroni?

By Tim Evanson [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

Incidental Big Year

In my first post of the year I talked about Dorian Anderson's Green Big Year in 2014 (check it out, he's continuing to blog about it!) and Noah Strycker's

Dorian's Green Big Year...courtesy of the man himself

Global Big year this year.  I think I shall do a big year too.  I shall call it the Incidental Big Year!  It could also be, the Lazy Big Year...or the little big year....What do you think?

So here are my rules: I'll go see every bird I can without breaking my duties as cat herder-in-chief,  while holding down a job and without overwhelming my spouse's sense of humor!  To the extent I can travel this year, I'll include bird walks and outings, which is not out of the ordinary.  This year, I'll make a bigger effort to connect with local birders in the places I visit. With local help I'll actually see birds I'd not otherwise see and I'll make new, and hopefully reconnect with old, friends. That last bit was one of the coolest things about Dorian's big year--his interactions with folks he met, and reconnected with, along the way.

That's it for this morning...off to herd the cats!

Word Play -- Word of the Day: "Snuffy"

In this house full of writers, we find that sometimes inventing a new word or re-purposing an old one serves as well or better than existing words to describe an action or situation. The bonus is that making up the new word scratches ye ole creativity urge.

Word for today is "snuffy." As a noun, Snuffy, just as on Sesame Street is short for "snuffleupagus." It becomes the immediate nickname for Po, our food-motivated Tuxedo cat. It is onomatopoeic for the sound that Po makes as he roots through his wet food to find the pieces of dry food that we planted to encourage him to finish the wet.  As a verb, it is the act of both placing the dry pieces in the wet, and it is the act of finding the dry pieces.  BTW for those readers who don't know, "Po" is also a nickname, his given name is "Rascal."

Bonus points: Why "Po?"

Of Big Years and Inspiration

If Dorian Anderson could spend his entire year riding a bike across the country, seeing as many birds as possible, and blogging about it, I should be able to keep a blog going for the entire year of 2015 while going about my regular life!  Too often the last few years I've allowed cat herding, both literally and metaphorically, to get in the way of blogging. Let's see how I do this year!

Dorian's Green Big Year was highly inspiring for me. He set out an audacious challenge for himself and persevered, raising awareness and money for The Conservation Fund along the way.  It impressed me how he managed to keep it up in the face of adversity--whether it was really terrible access to food, gawd-awful head winds, getting hit by a minivan, or seeing too many birds as road-kill.  Furthermore his blog was educational, both through the knowledge that he shared and even by the things he didn't really talk about during the year: the kind of preparation just on the birds alone it takes to pull off his year.  Aspects such as what the migration patterns are, whether a bird will be singing on territory or not when he passes through, and what that song or call is.

This year, another self-proclaimed bird nerd is doing a Global Big Year. Noah Stryker is starting his year off in Antarctica, and like Dorian is going to set out on a generally defined route, rather than the out and back reaction-type travel that makes up many ABA big years. Noah's premise is that birds know nothing about borders, so why should we take them into account? I look forward to following his blog this year--gaining inspiration and learning about birds around the world.

I will add pictures of both when I update this post.  Happy 2015 everybody.

...of the day

On the first day of the new year, we start all over. I ended last year with 140 species of birds in North America.While I didn't have the opportunity to start 2015 off by going birding, I did manage to  watch birds while walking two sets of cats.  Of the 18 species of commoners that I saw today, the Golden-crowned Kinglet wins as most interesting bird of the day.

Happy New Year!

Of Birds and Politics

I have spent the majority of the time on my "vacation" doing physical therapy and home exercises for my shoulder, which has been time consuming but neither exciting nor interesting; watching my backyard birds; and keeping track of the media reports--both social and old media.

First the therapy: mainly it's offset my plans for most birdwatching. I'd hoped to get out to some of the local bird haunts that are not subject to the Federal Government shutdown, like Lake Fairfax, and Riverbend Park.  Great Falls and Dyke Marsh unfortunately were affected by the shutdown. But not being able to hold binoculars to my face for very long raises the priority of the PT!

Onto the birds I have seen.  My "first of season" arrivals in the yard have started.  I've seen a White-throated Sparrow and heard the "tseeep" calls of at least one other. I've seen my first flock of Canada Geese--yes an extremely common bird, but they generally don't fly over my yard, except in the fall. And I saw a Ruby-crowned Kinglet.  I did catch a glimpse of a possible thrush with an eyering in my stand of pokeberries. Unfortunately, when I turned to grab my binoculars, it flew away.  Interestingly either a late-staying Gray Catbird has shown up, or one has stopped over from farther north. Finally, a Northern Mockingbird has started staking his claim--from both the top of my Chimney and the big Virginia Pine in front of our house.  American Crows--which form wintertime murders of thousands of birds and roost nearby have just barely started to form up in family groups. I saw 8 fly over last night.

I also had an unknown hawk come to visit. I neither saw nor heard him.  The explosion of probably Tufted Titmouse feathers near my feeding table was the tell tale sign.  The circle of life gets very sad when you've watched the prey grow up from a new fledgling.

On to politics!  Given the self-inflicted drubbing the Republicans are getting in the polls, I expect to be back in the office on Monday. According to a Wallstreet Journal/NBC poll (even Tea-baggers can't claim that this is liberal media bias) the GOP is (rightfully so, I say) receiving the blame for the shutdown. And furthermore, it is in grave danger of having opened a schism within its ranks that will take a long-time in healing.  The wrinkle here is whether or not Senate Republicans' being fed up with their lower house colleagues' shenanigans and coming up with a competing budget plan will further slow this process or speed it up.

Either way, I will endeavor to keep my blog resurrected!