Crow snowboards

Bald Eagle and babies cam - just for pure pleasure

Live Broadcasting by Ustream

30 second commerical then on to the good stuff!

Largest inventory...of pigeons?

Red-Tailed Hawk behind Arise

I'd like to feed the pigeons but
I'd turn them into sitting ducks:
Beware, beware the red-tailed hawk!!

Name that bird

Do you think you could identify the name of a bird in a language you don't know?  I did surprisingly well on an online quiz in the New York Times where we are given two different words in the Peruvian Huambisa language, and are asked to decide which word is the name of a bird.  Try your ear and your intuition.

Photo: Peruvian hummingbird from Alobos' photostream at Flickr.

Why zoos can be a good idea sometimes

The lovely little chick with her foot in the air, ready to dance, is a Tawny Frogmouth, native to Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea. She was born at Seaworld but I found her at Zooborns.

The second, fearful-looking bird in the hand is a Worcester's buttonquail, shown moments before she was sold to be eaten in a market in Luzon, Philippines. Her species was believed to be extinct and, according to the National Geographic, known to ornithologists only through drawing made more than thirty years ago.

It is hoped that this modest species survives elsewhere in Luzon, the only place where it was ever found.

What's life like in the Philippines? According to the Philippine blog Spirituality Page,

The National Statistical and Coordination Board (NSCB) identified the following indicators of the said goal, accompanied by 2003 figures: people living below the poverty line – 30.4%; the poverty gap ratio – 8.4; the share of the poorest quintile in national consumption – 4.7% income and 5.8% expenditure; the number of undernourished children under age 5 – 24.6%; and people whose dietary intake is lower than the required 100% – 56.9%.

Independent surveys in 2008, however, revealed alarming figures. The Social Weather Stations (SWS) reported that in the last quarter, 23.7% or about 4.3 million Filipino households experienced involuntary hunger, the highest record of 11 points in a 10-year average of 12.6%. There are an estimated 9.4 million households or 52% who are ‘self-rated poor’ and 42% or an estimated 7.7 million households who are ‘food poor.’

Happy Penguin

Link: YouTube

Simple action could save hawks and eagles

Most Western Mass. residents have had the eerie experience of driving the Massachusetts Turnpike at night while approaching the Springfield exit and seeing fire burning in the sky-- seems that way, anyway, because we can't see the burners at the Chicopee landfill which are responsible for burning off accumulating methane.

I've often wondered why there isn't a way to recapture that methane instead of burning it but I never thought that the burner itself might be a hazard for hawks, eagle and other raptors.

Apparently, raptors will perch on the burners while looking for prey, completely unaware that fire could flare up at any moment. Most birds caught in that fire will die.

There's a simple and inexpensive solution-- install spikes or other excluder devices. Long-term solution? Find a way to use the gas so that burners are unnecessary.

There's a petition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that you can sign, asking them to direct landfill owners to make the necessary changes to their burners. Go to the Care2 petition site to sign.

Photos from the Petition Site and Paul W's photostream at Flickr.

Bald eagles and backyard birds

Massachusetts completed its annual bald eagle bird count this weekend and spotted 70 birds across the state, 17 of them along the Connecticut River and another 26 at Quabbin Reservoir-- not bad for a population once considered almost too far in decline to save. Goodbye DDT, hello eagles.

Here in Springfield, I've seen bald eagles on Allen St. and Rifle St., drawn, I think, by merging of the Mill and Connecticut Rivers. If you've yet to see one, start looking up.

The majority of us, of course, will remain most familiar with our backyard birds. The National Bird-Feeding Society can tell you exactly what food attracts what birds, and how to make your backyard, if you're lucky enough to have one, friendly to a wide variety of local species.

My particular dream has been to have birds eating out of my hand, and the other day I found a site that told me exactly how to do it-- doesn't even seem that hard. Maybe winter isn't the best time to try it, because it does require sitting still for a while. You can find out how at Attract Wild Birds.

Photo from Powdermill Bird Banding

Wednesday at the Wellfleet Library

A few days before leaving for the Cape I was in Goodwill browsing the books and I came upon a copy of That Quail, Robert-- a 1962 edition. I'd never heard of the book before, but the title caught my eye-- turns out it was written by a woman who lived in Orleans, MA all her life; one of her good friends lived in Wellfleet...in other words, a Cape Cod book. Very charming.

The rental cottage:

twenty cups and dinner plates

but only four forks.

Alphabet riddle

A, B, D, G, O, P, Q, R, U-- what do these letters have in common?

Picture Walgreen's and K-Mart-- these are the huge (and often lit and therefore heated) letters where little birds choose to nest. Look for yourself the next time you are there.

Stumbling around on the web, I found a Found Poem someone had written which perfectly describes an experience I love to have-- I'll stop thinking about writing a poem about it, because this one is perfect!



Mervyn Peake

Loaf of bread, gallon of gas cost me $105

OK, so I'm in a bad mood. Usually when I drive to work, when there are sparrows or crows or whatever in the road pecking at some crumbs, I say, "Watch out, little birds." Today I found myself saying, "Watch out, you stupid birds." At least I didn't try to run them down, although I'm feeling a bit "run over" myself.

I write a lot about poverty but I do not, generally, get into the messy details of my own life. To some degree I'm used to being broke. However recent events make a great illustration of how thin the margin for error is getting for so many people these days.

Mostly I do OK except when there are unexpected expenses such as a car suddenly needing repair. May and June's version of the unexpected was the sickness of my thirteen year old dog. Some $1,200 later, when it was clear he was suffering and wasn't going to get better, I made an appointment for a Monday to have him put to sleep. I'd used up nearly every penny left over from my previous two paychecks on his illness, so when I wrote the vet a check, I said, "This will not clear until Friday. Will you hang on to it until then?" The office manager said yes, and I put Friday's date on the check.

Low and behold, on Friday, when I checked my bank balance online, I saw that the check has been deposited on Thursday! Banknorth paid it, but that meant that three other smaller debit card purchases didn't clear. So I had $140 in overdraft fees. I checked with the vet's office, and they were apologetic, but....I called the bank, thinking that because they had honored a postdated check, I might be able to be reimbursed for those fees, only to be told that the bank will process any check submitted to them, even a postdated check.

"We stopped holding postdated checks three years ago," the man on the other end of the line told me, "and even before then, it was only a courtesy."

"And where is that information about your change in policy available?" I asked.

"The next time you're in the bank, pick up brochure #112C, and you'll see it there," he said. "Any other way I can be helpful?"

(Hey, though, I can just about guarantee that if my sister writes me a postdated check and I take it to my bank and try to cash it, the bank won't honor it!)

So OK, I don't like it, but I can handle it. This past Sunday, I had $48 in the bank, which I figured should be enough until Friday. Gee, the timing for my planned diet couldn't have been better!

Yesterday I bought a loaf of Italian bread at the supermarket and a gallon of gas at the gas station. This morning I check my bank balance to see if a clothing item I'd bought for my daughter's wedding but had to return (didn't fit me after all, part of the reason for my diet!) had been credited to my account yet, and what do I find? Apparently when my auto insurance renewed in June this year, the date on my automatic payment changed from the 21st to the 1st of the month. I called the insurance company and they were apologetic, but....."You signed a paper allowing that to happen," I was told. Yeah, I signed a bunch of papers that day, pro forma. So I'm an idiot. "Wouldn't it have been nice to point that change out to me?" I asked.

Now, if the bank had processed my deductions at the time they were made, I would have only had ONE fee, because I had enough money to cover the gas and loaf of bread. But, oh no, of course that's not the way the bank does things-- they deduct the largest expense first, no matter when it was made on that day. Why? Well, I'd guess to maximize their fees. According to a National Public Radio feature a few days ago, U.S. banks collected almost $39 billion in service charges last year, up 10% from the year before.

Now, the buck stops with me, of course, to manage my money better. I've stopped buying coffee on my way to work in the morning, and made a few other small changes, but there's just not a lot of fat in my budget.

If I had a couple thousand in savings, I could weather the unexpected expenses better-- but I don't. And I'll bet a lot of people don't. Meanwhile, in the classic "penny wise, pound foolish" mode, every few days I add power steering fluid to my car, which has a leak in the system that I can't afford to get fixed right now. I keep waiting for the landlord of the building where I work to tell me I've got to do something, as I'm ruining the parking space with leaked fluid.

All right. I'm starting to get over it. I may as well, because there's not a damn thing I can do about it! Just dig into my change for gas money this week, although the quarters are gone so I'm down to the dimes, but I'll go to the corner gas station where just about all the customers are poor and I won't have to deal with the arched eyebrow and slight sneer. And on Friday I'll get paid, and I'll have a chance to break this cycle.

Complain, complain, when at least I DO have a job and a car and a roof over my head. But it's tedious beyond belief. I'll just have to continue to suffer the joy of living in this wonderful land of opportunity where, as the song says, the rich get richer and the poor get shafted.

Do you watch starlings? Starlings watch you!

Science Daily reports that starlings and other birds can tell if you are watching them, because they are watching you! Experiments show that if you are near a starling's food and looking at the food, the starling will stay away, but if you are just as near but looking away, the starling will approach and eat.

Starlings are intelligent creatures-- maybe not up there with crows, but pretty smart. They have a wide repertory of their own songs and are good mimics of other birds' songs and repetitive neighborhood sounds.

The starlings where I work have two babies this year, and had them considerably earlier than last year's fated infant. I go in and out of my building a number of times a day, and each time i do, I say, with as close to the same tone as possible, "Hello, little starlings! Hello, little starlings! How pretty you are! How pretty you are!" Maybe somedfay I will hear a whistle with the same intonation; at the least I hope they will be less wary of me.

This is the time of year when starlings fall out of their nests. A good site obout starlings and how to care for them can be found at Starling Talk.

Where are Springfield's falcons?

The Republican reported this morning that the nesting pair of peregrine falcons, a familiar site in Springfield for the last 19 years, don't seem to be around this spring. Usually, they next on on a specially-build platform on the 21st floor on Monach Place, although they moved to the Memorial Bridge twice.

Peregrines had become endangered because of the use of the pesticide DDT-- the same pesticide responsible for the decline of the bald eagle-- but after it was banned on the last day of 1972, the population rebounded. You can find peregrines on every major land mass in the world except New Zealand.

Come home, falcons!

Starling Saga: please don't fall out of your nest!

Well, the starlings have refurbished the nest under the eaves of the building where I work and yesterday morning I found two-thirds of an empty pale blue egg. When I got home I saw another empty blue egg under the house's eaves that hadn't been there in the morning. I had this image of a starling calendar: mate on April's first Wednesday, finish building nest, lay eggs, hatch babies-- on different days but simultaneously across the city.

Does a bird's offspring inherit the nest of the parents? Where I used to live, there was a pair of starlings under the eaves for twenty years!-- four or five generation's worth, as it turns out; a starling in the wild lives from five to seven years, although domesticated starlings can make it into their teens.

Last year the baby starling at work fell out of his nest three times; twice I was there to put him back. the third time happened over a weekend; the bird was dead on my arrival.

So to this year's starling, who I could hear today faintly chirping: stay in your damn nest until you can fly! I don't want to have to resort to the whole Circle of Life mantra for comfort.Just do the right thing and be one of those long-lived starlings. Now if my readers will just say to themselves, "I do believe in starlings, I do, I really DO!".

Red birds gather

When I pulled into my driveway yesterday, before I got out of the car I noticed that a small, still-bare bush was sheltering: a robin, two red finches and a male and female cardinal! It's as if they said, "All red birds over here!"

Female cardinals are underrated, I think, for their beauty.

Photo by Tom Hindman

Is it mating season already?

I just watched a red-headed finch spend five minutes gradually inching toward its drabber companion on the telephone wire outside my kitchen window. Wish I knew more about birds. Maybe they've been together all winter, who knows?

Birds can die of thirst

From Super Cool Pets:

We all want to conserve energy these days for environmental and economical reasons. That's why we love the Deluxe Solar Sipper Birdbath. It keeps the birdbath drinking water from freezing by capturing sunlight to warm an air-insulated pocket. Effective to -20 degrees, depending upon weather conditions. Your backyard birds will thank you for supplying a much needed water supply in freezing temps. And in warmer weather, the insulation helps keep the water cool. Includes simple mounting bracket and hardware for placement anywhere in your backyard or garden.

Dimensions: 9-1/2" dia x 3-1/2" high

Birds can die of thirst

I had my first suspicions
when all of the ravens
flew north for the winter.
Everything seeded early
yet leaves clung to the trees
like it was going out of style
and squirrels cowered in the branches
instead of heading for my eaves
when the deep frost lowered.

Outside my window
life crouches against the earth
so as not to call attention.
I cannot change voices in this verse
to speak for the sparrow
chipping at the ice
not wanting to die of thirst
but I will call the answer
if one is given.

Saturday morning

Got up grumbling about my chilly apartment then grumbled some more when I had to go out in my rattletrap, slow to heat up car but about five blocks from home and three blocks from the market near my house, I saw a woman and her three children, one in a stroller, all bundled up and walking home with grocery bags. Jeez, at least I have a car, I thought.

Wild winds blew oak leaves across the road-- when I'd stop for a red light a whole cavalcade would dash from one side of the road to the other. Oaks are always the last leaves to fall. A day like today, I consider the earth's housecleaning weather.

At the traffic lights at Bay and Berkshire, I glanced over towards the old Friendly's (now a Chinese restaurant) and there was a man with a kitchen broom attempting to sweep the parking lot clear of leaves and the slender threads of snow!-- an impossible task given the wind. He'd sweep to the north and the leaves would blow in from the south.

That has to be the dumbest thing I've ever seen, I thought, but then I glanced to my left at the other car waiting for the lights and saw that it was a spanking new, cherry red hum vee-like vehicle with a price sticker in the window. No, that's the dumbest thing, I thought. The broom guy is just a working joe trying to make a few bucks. The people in the humvee are separated from reality.

A little ways down the road, a red-tailed hawk flew by me. I hope the day never comes when I don't think it's worthwhile to watch a hawk when I can. Good omen. Go home and be grateful.