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!

Sunday Evening Bird Walk

Three of us had a nice walk on Sunday evening on the horse path portion of the Washington and
Old Dominion Trail. The temperature yesterday was pretty warm for the 6th of October. I brought my binoculars, but didn't start logging birds right away because it was so quiet and i had gotten no exercise in days. As we got closer to 630, the birds along the trail started becoming more active.  At first it was the usual dusk birds, Northern Cardinals "cheeping" and Gray Catbirds "meowing" from the stands of poke berry and the invasive honeysuckle.

When an Eastern Towhee started in with his "tu-WEE" call, things started to get interesting. As I stopped to admire the strikingly red berries on a dogwood, an Indigo Bunting  landed. I watched her eat the berries when what I thought was sparrow that I could not identify landed nearby. The bird was plain looking, with no eye-ring, no chest stripes, nor stripes on its head. It flew off before I could get a good enough look at it to make out any other distinguishing field markings. It could very well have been a female Indigo.  Then, that I fired up my e-bird App and started logging birds.

The other highlights of the walk were mostly heard: Pileated Woodpecker and a Barred Owl.  We did see a hawk of some type try to catch a Mourning Dove. It was dusk, so I only got a glimpse of its silhouette. The size differential made me think that it was a buteo of some type, perhaps a young Red-shouldered Hawk.

Forced Fall Vacation Pt 2

Day 4:  Because we had emergency  funds available, we'll not be immediately affected by the furlough--at least financially. We certainly have curtailed our economic activity--sorry Starbucks! At some point, I will go grocery shopping; it will be interesting to see what the list that my spouse hands me looks like.

Day 5:WOO HOO The House of Representatives apparently just voted to give us back pay while Speaker Bonehead tries to keep his job by kowtowing to the Tea Party.

What I did on my Forced Fall Furlough-caused Vacation

 I have long been bemused that my pursuit of a career in public service to my fellow Americans has been twisted by candidates and elected officials alike into a decision that makes me a parasite on the American tax payer.  That is all I am going to say on that because, I don't care to engage in a discussion that will just turn ugly. In what I think will be my copious amount of suddenly free time,  I figured I would try once more to resurrect my blog to pass the time, record and share some greater knowledge for others who might be in the same boat, and exercise my writing muscles because that it is what I do for a living. So here goes:

Day 1 - October 1, 2013:  Started the day with a medical appointment and rolled into work to engage in an "orderly shutdown" for four hours.  Wrapped up my performance evaluation and sent it to my boss--just in case the furlough lasts longer than the deadline for submitting.  The deadline is October 15. Given that the debt ceiling will be reached on the 17th, I have zero confidence that this mess will be cleaned up by then. (Passive voice is convenient because it allows me not to lay the blame where I believe it lies and get me into the discussion I'd rather not have.)  Cleaned up my desk (it's the office of a creative-type if you get my drift) and pulled some tertiary reading materials off the shelf that I have a personal interest in together and did some research on what my financial options are during a furlough.

Day 2 -  October 2, 2013:  Other than starting the day off with some rehab exercises for my rotator cuff, this was a totally wasted day. I felt terrible due to a touchy gut caused by the super anti-inflammatory med I'm taking. I spent the day sleeping, playing Tetris, Words- and Scramble-with-Friends. I did take the tom cats outside for their twice daily romps.  They are confused by my presence.  I felt emotionally bad that my telecommuting wife was busting her tail, while I lolled about.

Day 3 -  October 3: Woke up feeling much better after starting Prilosec and skipping the Voltarin. Started the day off discussing a bunch of issues follow from not knowing what may  looking up what the unemployment insurance options are. OPM's site makes it clear that during a furlough, government employees' unemployment benefits are governed by the state in which their facility is located.  I'm in Virginia, and VEC says I have to be out of work a week before I can file.  It doesn't look like Virginia will pay much, but by the two additional weeks pass by which time I could actually collect anything, every little bit will help.  Hell if this keeps up, 25 years of government service will seem like its been long enough, and I'll probably be checking out all of my options.

The New Birdwatching Year

Just as New Year's is a chance to change bad habits or take care of things that we've procrastinated doing in the past, it is also a chance to start anew on our yearly bird list. I use it to track changes in my backyard visitors, but also to renew my enthusiasm for seeing some of our more common visitors. This year started off with a bang.

This morning, before heading out on a casual bird walk, we peaked out at the feeders and saw a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers (1)visiting our suet station. They are amazing looking creatures! We headed off to lunch at the Old Brogue Pub in Great Falls before hopping over to the C&O canal. Today we decided to hike the eastern portion of the Billy Goat Trail from Carderock to the point where it rejoins the trail. It was a very quiet day on the river--for the birds anyway. The clouds seemed to lend a hush over them. With the time of day, we heard the typical calls of the Chickadees (2) and Cardinals(3). Among the birds we did see were the Belted Kingfisher (4), Turkey Vulture(5), Red-bellied Woodpeckers(6), a number of Canada Geese (7)(of course) and several pairs of Mallards (8). We also saw a group Golden-crowned Kinglets (9) with at least one White-breasted Nuthatch (10) and a Brown Creeper (11). I hadn't seen a Brown Creeper since the one(?) who used to visit my suet feeder stopped coming after the lovely Town of Vienna allowed the near-clear-cutting of three acres of woods to build houses on several years ago. Apparently the Brown Creeper needed those woods more than the real estate market needed the houses...but I digress.

I bagged one new species for my North America List: the Common Raven (12)--I've seen this guy in Ireland and the United Kingdom, but never identified him at home. Moreover, I think I saw a pair of American Wigeons: a pair of ducks in flight that did not look like Mallards, one had some green on his head and both had white patches on the wings. If the male is in breeding colors now, like the Mallard, it might be the bird, but I didn't get a good enough look to be confident enough to add him to my life list.

Other birds of the new year--and also for my backyard, include English House Sparrow(13)--of which I have scads (sigh)--American Crow (14), House Finch(15), Dark-eyed Juncos(16) and Mourning Dove(17). ( I saw 40 on December 30th in my bird feeding areas!)