The New Barn

Several have asked how the barn was coming so I thought I would bring you up to date.  It has been raining in Lampasas so construction has slowed.  It started raining the day we poured the slab and has rained off and on a little every few days since.  If I had known all I had to do to get rain was pour some concrete we could have poured some kind of slab a long time ago. Since we are in the worst drought of our lives we are happy to have the rain.  The barn is now up but we still need to pour some concrete ramps so we will just have to wait until it gets dryer.  Here are a few pictures of the barn at the stage we are right now.  Wild Ed

Thinking About My Bird of the Year 2011

It's been an incredible year of bird watching. As I think back on some of the sweet birds I've seen—some of them lifers, some just old favorites—I find it nearly impossible to pick just one as my BOY—my Bird of the Year. Here are some of the nominees: Above is the lesser prairie chicken I got to see, with dozens of his fellow lekkers, outside of Woodward, Oklahoma, during the Lesser Prairie Chicken Festival. What a soul-stirring morning spent in a small blind, waiting for enough of the dawn to coalesce so I could see these incredible birds perform their ancient courtship ritual.

An even rarer life bird came to me (really I went questing after it) in central Texas in late June. The male golden-cheeked warbler that I found at Friedrich Wilderness Park north of San Antonio was my next-to-last U.S.-breeding warbler species (only the hard-to-see Colima warbler remains unchecked on my life list).

Actually the first golden-cheeked individual I saw was a begging fledgling, which looked a whole lot like an adult bird only rattier and fluffier of plumage. When the adult male came in, followed by the adult female, and the three of them dropped down to drink and bathe in a small pool 20 feet away, my identification was confirmed. And I began to suppress a scream of joy. It was a extra poignant to see a fledgling of this federally endangered species—and to think of how few fledgling golden-cheeked warblers there were in the world at that moment.

I'm often asked, as most birders are, to share which species is my favorite bird. Since my pre-teen years, my answer has been red-headed woodpecker. I'm not sure why, but this bird just gets me fired up. Perhaps because this is a bird of contradictions. They are increasingly rare here in southeastern Ohio, but they were common in the southeastern Iowa of my childhood. They are ID-able from a great distance in flight flashing the semaphore of white and black wings, yet they often go unnoticed as they perch quietly. Some red-headeds migrate, others don't. Where they are common they are reliable to see, but they can also show up just about anywhere, especially in fall migration. They are often confused with the much more common red-bellied woodpecker and species that has, at best, a red Mohawk stripe of red. And the red on the red-headed's head (say THAT 10 times fast)—well it's perhaps the most compelling red on any bird. Yep, it's my fave. This year we heard about a nesting colony of RHWOs about an hour away from home in West Virginia, so we took several trips there to commune with them.


While traversing the New River Gorge Bridge on the catwalk below the road surface, I got to enjoy my closest-ever look at an adult peregrine falcon. The above photo was taken with my Canon G12 point-and-shoot camera. This bird was CLOSE! The bird of prey highlight of the year for me.

The local birding grapevine whispered in my ear about a possible sandhill crane in our county. I was initially doubtful because we have an exploding population of great blue herons in the region. Sure enough, at dusk the same day I first heard about the crane, we found it. Foraging in a field of newly sprouted sweet corn. It stayed around long enough for me to get several birding friends out to see it. My first-ever Ohio sandhill crane and, if I kept a Washington County, Ohio bird list this would be a nice addition to it!

These are just four of the nominees for my BOY. I'll do my best to share the rest during the holidays, before the list stats anew at 12:01 am on 1/1/12.

New Barn and New Friends

As we are in the process of building a new barn on our place in Lampasas I have been spending a lot of time in the area.  We have had some land clearing done, a well drilled, electric lines put in, electrical boxes and breakers installed on the meter pole along with other miscellaneous expenses.  We have had the slab poured and actual construction has now begun on the barn.  Along the way we have made some new friends.  Last week I met a couple of great kids that have a passion for the outdoors.  One of my new buddies sent me a picture of a salmon he caught on a trip to Alaska in 2008 along with his recent kill of an axis doe back home in Texas, all pretty impressive for a kid just starting his hunting and fishing adventures.

Klein I hope you continue to have such adventures just remember to be safe in the field.  Also don't forget to be appreciative of your dad for taking you hunting and fishing as someday he will need you to take him with you on your adventures.  Wild Ed

Uncle Bob's Famous Homemade Yeast Rolls

My Uncle Bob and I have been more like brothers most of our lives as we are not that far a part in age and probably not that far apart in our beliefs and politics. Uncle Bob and I both end up doing a lot of the cooking in our families especially around the holidays. Bob is an excellent cook but often traverses on the edge of gourmet and spice filled ethnic dishes where I tend to stick mostly with Texas Style Barbecue, Country and Southern foods as my field of expertise. Bob has become famous with family for his pancakes and rolls. They have been found to be most excellent fare by not only his kids but also passed muster with the grand kids this year at the Thanksgiving table. I finally convinced him to pass on his roll recipe so that the rest of us could try and master these wonderful rolls. If you make them in big squares they also make wonder rolls for sandwiches and other tasty treats that you might wish to put between two wonderful pieces of bread. I prefer them with Chicken Fried Steak and cream gravy or stuffed with sliced BBQ Brisket. Here is Uncle Bob’s recipe for you to make yourself and hopefully your family will approve also. Wild Ed


UNCLE BOB’S FAMOUS ROLLS

Ingredients:

6&1/2 cups all purpose flour


1Tbs Yeast


2 eggs beaten


1/2 cup of sugar


1/2 cup of shortening (liquid)


1/2 cup Butter (melted)


1tsp salt


2 cups milk (warm to 95ºf)


1/4 cup water 95ºf



Preparation:


Sift flour and salt into a container set aside.


In a large bowl add 1/2 cup. Oil and 1/2 cup butter with the 1/2 cup of sugar.


Cream the above mixture, add eggs and cream again.


Add the yeast to the water and let it dissolve until it begins to foam.


Add the warm milk and yeast water mixture to the eggs, oil,& butter mixture, beat with beater a few seconds.


Add 2 cups of flour to the mixture, beat and continue adding flour until you can no longer beat with the hand beater.


Switch to a spatula, and stir in flour until a thick tacky ball is well mixed.


Turn the dough into a large bowl that has been well greased with oil, roll the ball around so the entire mix is coated with oil, and cover with a clean dishtowel, let rise until double in size.


Beat the risen dough down, cover with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator until about 80 minutes before rolls are to be cooked:



Cooking the rolls:


Preheat oven to 400ºF, place rack in center of the oven.


Melt 1 cup of butter on low heat in a sauce pan


Grease a large baking pan with butter.


Pour dough onto a floured bread board, and divide in half.


Roll out to desired thickness, and cut desired shape with a knife. I like to cut strips about 2"X 2", to be used for sandwiches later, if any are left after dinner.


(This dough can be made into any shape one desires.)


Place dough on to baking pan about 1/8" apart in all directions.


When the trays are full brush all around the rolls and on top with melted butter, cover and let rise until double in size. Repeat process with the other half of the dough.


When dough is ready, place in oven for 10-12 minutes, remove once the tops are golden brown, brush with melted butter again. COOL on rack and serve



Warning: Once the kids get a taste of this bread they will have to be guarded or they will be gone before it is time to eat.


Hope you enjoy, Uncle Bob

Return to Hog Island!

The famous Hog Island Audubon Camp in Maine is back in full swing this summer with a tasty menu of sessions for nature enthusiasts of all ages and interests. Julie Zickefoose and I will be instructors during the "Joy of Birding" week June 24 to 29. You can find out some details here.


If you look at an atlas of the state of Maine, you'll note that there are numerous islands named Hog. One can only presume that these islands were so-named because that's where early residents of Maine kept their swine—presumably safe from predators and, being on an island, naturally prevented from roaming. But there's only one Hog Island with an impressive history of nature study and education—that's the one in Muscongus Bay, Maine—and that's the one we're heading back to in June. Roger Tory Peterson and Allan D. Cruickshank are among the island's legendary instructors, dating back to the camp's founding in 1936.


Among this coming season's well-known instructors are Scott Weidensaul, Sara Morris, Pete Dunne, Lang Elliott, Donald Kroodsma, Sue Schubel, and Steve Kress who is the camp's director and is best known for Project Puffin, which helped to restore breeding populations of the Atlantic puffin (and other endangered seabird species) to islands off the New England coast.

I've written about Hog Island numerous times here at Bill of the Birds, including this post about visiting nearby Harbor Island, and this one about the last time we were instructors there.


The Hog Island experience is a unique one. The island is magically beautiful and just large enough that you can take a long hike around its perimeter and feel you are leaving the modern world behind. The sessions are informative and fun and the birding is really great, especially if you don't often get to see species that are common to the northern woods or to the northeastern Atlantic coast.

Every day is a new adventure. The food is great. The accommodations are rustic but comfy. And the air is clean and cool. We love going to Hog Island even more because our kids, Phoebe and Liam, get to come along. They play all day along the rocky shores and in the dark, mystical woods surrounding the camp, building cairns and imagining there are woodland sprites playing tricks there and pirates coming ashore to bury their loot. Like I said, Hog Island is magic.

Write it down, friends: Joy of Birding, June 24 to 29, 2012! Hope to see you there!

Texas Style Mexican Pralines

With the Christmas season right around the corner I thought some of you might like to have a Texas Style Praline Recipe to make some candy for gifts or guests.  I have tried many through the years and these are the best I have come across.  Whenever I make them they don't last long around my house or friends.  Enjoy, Wild Ed

Mexican Pralines


½ stick of butter


1 cup white sugar


1 cup brown sugar


2 cups chopped pecans or walnuts


¾ cup evaporated milk (small can)


1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix sugar, milk and butter in sauce pan and bring to a boil. Add nuts, cook to hard ball stage when tested in cold water. Remove from heat add vanilla and beat until slick and starting to cool. Drop onto wax paper and let it harden into pralines. Enjoy, ET


For a little different taste add one square of chocolate bark and a dash of cinnamon to mixture.

Kingdom of Kingfishers!

Smyrna kingfisher in the pre-dawn fog at Hula-Agamon Park.

I was in Israel on a birding tour over the Thanksgiving holiday this year, attending the Hula Valley Bird Festival. The trip was amazing and amazingly birdy almost everywhere we went. For this post I'm going to highlight the incredible density of kingfishers we encountered.

But first some background!

I'd been to Israel once before, in the late 1980s. I'd be shocked if any readers of this blog recall my article about that trip, written for Bird Watcher's Digest and published in the September/October 1985 issue of BWD. That was my first-ever BWD article written about my first-ever official overseas birding trip! Both times I had to do some careful thinking and planning both because Israel is a long way away and because it's in a part of the world that's often in the news, usually due to political unrest between neighbors. Fortunately on both trips, each lasting more than a week, any concerns I had were unwarranted—the people were friendly, the neighbors were neighborly, the weather was wonderful, the landscape was beautiful and the birds were beyond expectation.

Consider yourself warned that I'm working on another Israel article, along with a podcast, and a gallery of images for the not-so-distant future for BWD. Now back to the kingfishers.

Located as it is in the middle of the arid, mostly desert Middle East, Israel would be no more bird-rich than its neighbors except for one major factor: water. Water flows through this country from north to south and it is channeled and used in a variety of ways, especially for agriculture. Wherever this water occurs, so do birds, especially water-loving birds like the kingfishers. We encountered three kingfisher species during our time in the Hula Valley in northern Israel and on short trips out from the valley in all directions: the common kingfisher, the pied kingfisher, and the white-throated or Smyrna kingfisher.

Pied kingfishers at a fish farm.

Israel has a lot of fish farms. These fish farms have a lot of fish, which means they also have a lot of fish-eating birds. Nearly every day during our birding trip we stopped at some set of man-made ponds, reservoirs, fish farms, or water-treatment facility. We'd scan the water and shoreline for birds, often looking past the number of kingfishers present. In the image above, there are eight pied kingfishers on a single perch. We sometimes would see twice that many or more perched on sticks and posts along one side of a pond. It was nuts! Only a few individuals were so intent on fishing that they allowed close approach. This is likely a result of the bird-scaring efforts that the fish farmers have to do in order to control the loss of their "crop" to the crops of birds.

The small common kingfisher, which is widespread in Europe, seemed to be the most shy. We'd normally catch brief glimpses of one as it zipped low over the water from one hidden perch to another. Or we'd spy their glimmering iridescent plumage at a distance as we were scanning with our optics.

White-throated kingfisher, aka Smyrna kingfisher, aka white-breasted kingfisher.

The largest of the three kingfisher species we encountered is the white-throated kingfisher, also often referred to as the Smyrna kingfisher. These stunning and bold birds were noisy enough to make their presence known even when they were out of our direct sight.

The pied kingfisher is a study in blacks and whites as its name implies. Slightly smaller than the white-throated kingfisher, the pied was our most frequently seen kingfisher species. Both of the larger kingfishers could regularly be seen away from water, hunting lizards and geckos from a watching perch.

Water brings life to the desert and attracts living things from all directions. It is the kingdom of kings and the kingdom of kingfishers, too!

Here are a few of my better kingfisher images from last week's trip. Enjoy!

A pied kingfisher launching from a perch over water in the Hula Reserve Park.

Hovering pied kingfisher at Ma'agan Michael along the Mediterranean.

No one knows why this species is named white-throated kingfisher.

Common kingfisher held by a staff member at the Hula-Agamon ringing (banding) station.

Pied kingfisher at Ma'agan Michael.

Hula Haiku

Water source of life
brings us together looking
sky peppered with birds

Venison Burger Made Right

Many people have much of their venison ground into burger but are never really happy with the results.  The fat on deer as a whole is not a good tasting fat and there is no marbling of the meat like on beef.  Therefore unless you add fat to venison burger it will be dry and will not have much taste.  Since there is no fat in the meat to bind it together it will crumble if you try and make it into a patty. The solution to this dry tasteless burger is too easy, you just add fat.  You can have the processor add pork or beef fat to your venison burger and then use it just like ground pork or ground beef.  If you do it at home you can mix it many ways.  I try to end up with a product that is about 25 percent pork or beef fat to 75 percent venison.  I sometimes buy the cheap overly fat beef hamburger at the grocery store and mix in ground venison until it has enough fat in the mixture, this makes great burgers.  If my area grocery stores run the packer beef briskets on sale that have not been trimmed of the excess fat, I will buy one of those to grind and mix with my ground venison.  A brisket ground up with and equal amount of venison makes very good burger. I buy pork jowls or fatback to mix with my ground venison for my breakfast or link sausage recipes.  If you like the flavor of Bacon Burgers you might try my favorite way to make them.  I buy the cheap bacon ends that come in a box or a big plastic bulk package. These are the end pieces of slabs of bacon that are odd sized and cannot be sliced to go in the packages as sliced bacon.  It is just small and end pieces of actual cured bacon.  I grind it up and mix it with the ground venison until the mix fries up like you want and then it can be made into packages of formed burger patties.  The taste when done on the grill is of a great bacon burger, with a slice of your favorite cheese most will not be able to even tell that the wonderful burger they are eating is 75 percent venison.  I sometimes take the bacon burger mixture and add seasonings to make breakfast patty sausage, be sure and cut back on the salt as the cured bacon is already salted. This will make a patty sausage with a cured bacon flavor. With a little experimentation you can come up with all sorts of ways to use your venison burger.  My wife and I use the burger in mexican food, Italian food, meat loaf or any other way we would use ground meat. Just remember to add at least 25 percent fat when you grind the burger and you will have a product the whole family will enjoy.  Wild Ed

Walking the Catwalk!

Among the tiny handful of birding events that I do every year is The New River Birding & Nature Festival in Fayette County, West Virginia. There are plenty-plenty reasons why I love this annual spring birding bacchanalia: it's run by good buddies of mine, the birding is truly incredible, Swainson's and cerulean warblers, the landscape is breathtaking, it's a small and intimate gathering of the tribe, they let me play music, there are hottubs in the cabins, and it's only a three-hour drive from the Bill of the Birds man cave. Now, there's another reason. The catwalk!

In the photo above you see a view of The New River Gorge Bridge which carries WV Route 19 across the vast, rocky, gaping maw of the New River Gorge. Do you see the horizontal line of brown steel girders running below the roadway? That's where the bridge's catwalk is located. Come along little kitty-cats and take a stroll with me. If you are acrophobic, you might want to stop reading now. I suggest you google the phrase "Rick-rolling" as an alternative way to soothe yourself.

Here is the understructure of the gorge bridge, stretching off into infinity, toward the south and the Fayetteville end of the bridge. We're climbing out onto the catwalk on the north end.


The company that owns the rights to take people on the catwalk (they market it as "BridgeWalk") has figured things out quite nicely. You are fit with a rather all-encompassing harness—the same kind that mountain climbers or bridge maintenance workers use. You are instructed to bring only items that can be lashed onto your body (see my binocs in the photo above). If you drop your precious iPhone over the edge, it's gone, dude.

The harnesses are attached to a lead which is latched via caribiner to a turnbuckle device that rolls along the safety cable. But that cable is attached to the bridge structure in about 50 places along its length. This is where the ingenious turnbuckle comes in: it ratchets through the attachment brackets, like a mini paddlewheel, while keeping you safely attached at all times. A few gentle tugs gets your line and harness past each attachment point. It's a very clever solution and much safer and more convenient than having to unhook and re-hook each bridge-walker's harness.

We walked the catwalk with six other people, plus a guide. Geoff Heeter, one of the New River Birding & Nature Festival founders and the fellow who invited me on this little adventure, wisely suggested we bring up the rear of the group. This was a very good call as we were able, after the first few sections, to lag behind a bit to take photos and do a bit of birding.

Here's our group, lined up for a photo, taken by our BridgeWalk guide Jim Smith.

And here's Geoff all harnessed up and grooving on the view. And speaking of the view: it is spectacular. I've been to the New River many times in the past 20 years, but being out over the gorge like this was a new and thrilling experience.

As you move out over the gorge, there is only the metal grate of the catwalk below your feet and two steel bands plus a top rail guarding you on the the sides. I'm not afraid of heights, but my knees did wobble a bit for the first 10 minutes or so. Once you get used to it, the thrill takes over for the chill and the experience becomes utterly enjoyable.


That's the New River way down yonder! But there are other fabbo things to see, too!

We saw at least four peregrine falcons on the bridge. These birds are from a population that was hacked on a local cliff face as part of a reintroduction program. We noted bands on the legs of two of them. And the birds seemed utterly unimpressed with the humans clanging along the catwalk—probably because there is a constant roar of traffic on the bridge just feet above, and because there is a steady stream of bridge maintenance workers, and now bridge tourists, coming along the catwalk each day.
The structure of the bridge has numerous holes, ledges, and perches perfect for peregrines. They have nested on the bridge for the past couple of years. Perhaps the birds we were seeing were adults with this year's young?

The BridgeWalk experience is going to be offered at the 10th annual New River Birding & Nature Festival next April 30 through May 5. The festival fills up really fast, so if you've been thinking about attending, don't wait! This final photo shows how close we got on our BridgeWalk to one of the peregrines—my closest look ever at a perched p-bird!

Hope to see you next spring in West Virginia, on the catwalk or elsewhere!

Coons Take Over the Deer Feeder

As the pictures from one night this last week show, the coons have taken over the new feeder. It has become obvious that I am going to have to remove some raccoons from the habitat. We counted fourteen coons at just two feeders. You might enjoy some of the pictures taken by the new Primos Truth Cam 60. I am becoming a fan of the pictures and the quality of the product it produces. Have a great Thanksgiving and I will be back next week, Wild Ed