New Podcast Episode: Spring Sounds at Indigo Hill

There's a new episode available of my podcast "This Birding Life."

This episode (#36!) is a new type, I'm calling "Ear Candy" because it's audio-only. This is my attempt at creating shorter (but I hope no less interesting) episodes in between the longer episodes that come in both audio and enhanced audio (with images) formats. The longer episodes (I'm working on one about birding in Israel right now) take me a much longer time to create, which often means there are long lags between episodes. Which is why I'm hoping that Science can perfect cloning soon.


This episode "Sounds of Spring at Indigo Hill" is built with audio field recordings I did with my iPhone. And there's a bit of narration tossed in between. I hope you like it.

I'd also like to thank Carl Zeiss Sports Optics for their sponsorship support of "This Birding Life" and Podcast Central.

A Custom Flintlock At Last

I have been shooting blackpowder pistols and rifles since I was fourteen years old. My first was a replica 1851 navy I ordered out of the back of Outdoor Life magazine, I think it was $19.99 plus shipping. I had to include a statement that I was over twenty one and they were legal in my State. That was no problem since I had no idea what was and was not legal in Texas at that time in life and I was only 7 years away from being twenty one. I remember all the problems I had getting Longacre’s gun shop in Abilene to find some .36 caliber lead balls, black powder and some number 11 percussion caps, but they came through and kept me supplied for years. I was close to 16 before my dad heard me shooting that pistol down by the river one weekend at our family ranch and asked to see what gun I was firing. In hindsight it was a little louder than the twenty two rifle he had given me.  He looked at it, handed it back and asked no questions.

From that beginning I shot all types of old blackpowder firearms. Every time some company would come out with a new model I could not wait to read about it or see it at our local gun stores. I shot Thompson Center Hawkens, Senecas and Cherokees along with CVA and Traditions standard models. I even had a South American monkey gun and a cheap Japanese rifle for a while until I traded them off on something else. In the back of my mind I always wanted a real custom flintlock muzzleloading rifle. Something like you would see carried by Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett. Going to the Alamo in San Antonio was like a religious trek to the Holy Land of Blackpowder rifles. I would look at the rifles in the cases and paintings and dream of carrying one similar on a treck in the woods. Through the years I would read about great rifles and see them in museums. Once in a while I would even run across someone that had one I could actually hold. Later in life I lost interest and went to all modern guns, but as I have gotten older and hunt less I have returned to the slower older blackpowder guns. What a new world of customs and semi customs we are blessed with today. I have toyed with the idea of having a custom built but it seems all the builders I talked with wanted my first born along with their inheritance to build a rifle.

A while back I ran across a builder that makes a good looking product that is not a kit and charges a reasonable fee for his work. He carves the stock from a plank of wood and builds the rifles in the old styles even making such iron parts as the butt plate, trigger guard and thimbles. He does not use some company’s idea of what the rifle should look like in a precarved model and he follows old historic examples of the gun maker’s art. I will tell you more about this gun maker in the future and will provide you links to his website along with contact information. For now I will only show you pictures of the start of my rifle so you can wonder what I am having made for a while, Wild Ed

It's Arbor Day! Plant a Tree!

Today (Friday, April 27) is Arbor Day, a holiday with its origins in the pioneer days on the Nebraska plains in the 1870s. Back then, farmers needed to plant trees as wind breaks to keep the plowed soil from blowing away. While I have mixed feelings about most of the Great Plains falling under the plow, which necessitated the planting of trees (that would never have naturally occurred there), I do believe that planting native trees in places where they belong is a good thing. You can read the history of Arbor Day here and learn about the Arbor Day Foundation here.

The Nature Conservancy is using the celebration of Arbor Day to focus attention on their Plant a Billion Trees project. The project focuses on restoration in the Atlantic Forest region of southeastern Brazil. I spent a week birding in this amazing part of the world back in 2008 (you can read a few of my blog posts here.) I witnessed vast tracts of forest, filled with birds and animals. And I also saw thousands of acres where the trees had been removed—often by slash-and-burn—and the land turned over to agricultural use. Some areas were so overgrazed and eroded that they were just bare, rocky earth.

The goal of this restoration project is to plant a billion trees in Brazil's Atlantic Forest by 2015. To help make this happen, TNC is asking for donation of a dollar per tree. More details can be found on the project's fancy, informative website: plantabillion.org.

Or, if you're wanting to make an impact closer to home, plant a native tree in your own backyard. Then stand back and take a deep breath of fresh air, because (don't forget) without trees, we would have a lot less oxygen to breathe.

Myself, I plan to find a really nice old tree on Arbor Day, put my arms around it and give it a long hug.

More from the Red-shouldered Hawks' Nest!

I spent some time on a sunny afternoon at the end of last week with the spotting scope and camera, watching the red-shouldered hawks at their nest. The few times I stepped inside the back door of the office for a phone call, the action heated up at the nest. I don't think the adult hawks are the least bit perturbed by the activity around our office and parking lot. I just think my timing was slightly unlucky.

We hear the adults calling to one another in the moments leading up to some sort of interaction. One will be on the eggs, glancing skyward occasionally. When he/she see the mate, short high-pitched screams are given, which sends the BWD staff lunging for the nearest west-facing window in hopes of seeing some neat behavior. I've seen a couple of food deliveries and in both cases the one on the nest (the female is slightly larger, but this can be hard to judge) took the food and left to eat, replaced by the food bringer who settled down carefully onto the nest.


Once they are settled down, it's not easy to see the adult on the nest—at least not from our vantage point. The Carolina chickadees, American robins, and blue jays that frequent the upper reaches of the sycamore DO notice however and often set up a racket of protest. I'm curious to see if the Baltimore orioles that usually nest in this same tree will do so again this summer. Having such large neighbors could be good or bad for the quality of the "neighborhood."


This image (above) was snapped with my Canon G12 compact camera on full zoom. It was just prior to this that the bird on the left brought the bird on the right a nice foot-long snake.


The adults are very vigilant around the nest—just like we are!

Round Rock Unity Park Community Garden Open House and Fun Day

 

Join local gardeners for a tour of Round Rock’s first community garden for citizens, get gardening tips, and enjoy fun garden-related activities for kids.

Now in its third year, Round Rock’s first community garden is open to local residents who can rent garden plots and take gardening classes at the site located on Gattis School Road in Round Rock. The community garden also grows organic produce to supply the Hope Alliance Women’s Shelter and its clients.

Saturday April 28th

Noon - 4pm

Unity Park Community Garden

2746 Gattis School Rd

Round Rock, Texas

Red-shouldered Hawk Nest!

Red-shouldered hawk (this image was taken in Mississippi).

All of us at Bird Watcher's Digest are just as giddy as expectant parents. That's because we ARE expecting. A pair of red-shouldered hawks has set up house in a giant sycamore tree in the wooded ravine adjacent to our office here in Marietta, Ohio. We're watching the nest all day long during the weekday work days, noting changes, jumping on the office intercom to announce the latest observations.

The sycamore with the red-shouldered hawks' nest is in the upper left of this image, above the silver mini-van.

Red-shouldered hawks are year-round residents here in southeastern Ohio. We see and hear them regularly—they are one of the most vocal raptors, especially in spring. And that's how we discovered this nest, by hearing the repeated calling between the mates. My mom, Elsa, and brother Andy noticed one of the hawks carrying a branch up to an elbow of this giant sycamore, grabbed some binocs and discovered the foundation of a nest being built on that spot. After that we'd hear the birds and note their occasional comings and goings, but they never stayed near the nest for very long. We actually started wondering if this was just a dummy nest—the real nest being somewhere else—perhaps somewhere more concealed.

Zoom shot of the nest. The female's back is visible (if you use your imagination)

We worried a bit about the nest. It's plainly visible two-thirds of the way up the sycamore on one of only two large branches that jut out from the tree's right side. We have lots of squirrels around (notorious egg eaters), plus plenty of raccoons, American crows, and both barred and great horned owls nearby. Any one of these creatures could consumer the eggs or young while the parents were away. Worry. It's what parents do.

In this image, taken with my iPhone, you can barely see the male red-shouldered rounded head and pale sere above the middle of the nest, against the white sycamore bark.

I've been out of the office for most of the past two months trying to finish the writing on a book project. I come in on Tuesdays for staff meeting and to catch up on office work. Yesterday was one of my in-office Tuesdays and I was very happy to see that the red-shouldereds were actively attending the nest. In fact I'm certain there's an egg or two in it now. I've watched the adults take turns on the nest. Yesterday afternoon the male (he seemed smaller than the female, as male raptors often are) swooped low over the BWD parking lot and up to the nest to deliver a mouse to his mate. She clambered up from her position on the nest brooding the eggs (we hope—we can't see into the nest—it's a bit too high), took the food offering and swooped away. He then very gingerly adjusted something in the bottom of the nest and settled down onto it facing in the opposite direction his mate had been facing. She stayed away for more than an hour before we heard her cries keeyah, keeyah, keeyah! And back she came to resume her incubation duties.

Now it's Wednesday morning and the female is standing near the nest. The male is circling overhead, calling to her. She looks up, perhaps noting that he's got no food this time, and settles back onto the nest.

This is just such a thrill and a privilege to be witnesses to the home life of these wonderful birds! Tomorrow I'm bringing my scope for some digiscoping images!

Facts About Lyme Disease

My friend Rick over at Whitetail Woods has an excellent article on Lyme Disease this week that you should take the time to read.  It is becoming something that we are all exposed to in the wilds of Texas and I am seeing a lot of ticks this year.  Here is the link to the article. http://whitetailwoods.blogspot.com/2012/04/facts-to-know-about-lyme-disease.html
Leave a comment and tell him Wild Ed sent you.

Fly Fishing Texas Clear Creeks and Streams

I false cast a couple of times to let out just a little more fly line and softly laid the chartreuse popper in the shadows under the bridge. It drifted with the current into a sun lit pool where I gave it a couple of short twitches. There was a flash of orange and silver as a Longear sunfish slammed the popper and headed for deeper water. The little fish shook his head as he felt the resistance of my four weight rod. It swam in throbbing circles as I pulled him in for a quick release. The bright iridescence of these little sunfish from the pools of Brushy Creek are just as beautiful to me as some exotic in some hot far away place, besides it gets plenty hot right here at home. I repeated this contest over twenty times in the span of an hour and yet I was only twenty minutes from my house. The traffic pounding over the bridge above my head on IH 35 just north of Austin had no idea of the fish I was catching just below them. Brushy Creek runs right through the middle of Round Rock and I was fishing within sight of the famous Round Rock itself marking the cattle crossing on the old Chisholm Trail.



I had taken several species of sunfish along with a couple of Guadalupe bass and a Rio Grande Perch. All were well under a pound and returned to the water to be caught another day. Even if I caught a giant on Brushy Creek I would return it to the water as along with the population growth, sewer plants and septic tanks have been placed up and down the creek and it is not the same little creek I fished thirty years ago. I can remember when the water was pure and clean. There was none of the icky moss that grows in the creek today. I use to take home sunfish, bass, fresh watercress and wild onions for the table but no more. The fish still survive and are abundant even though we are trying hard to destroy the habitat.

The point of this all is get out and enjoy one of the small waters close to home. You do not have to spend a fortune on gas and lodging but the thrill of the catch is still the same. Carry out some trash and do your part to try and clean up these creeks in Texas so the next generation will also be able to enjoy them.  Get out and try some of the local small waters near you. You might be surprised how great the fishing right under your nose really is, Wild Ed

Remember to click on comments below to leave a comment or read the comments from other readers

The NEW Young Birder's Guide!

Well, it's finally here and I'm really happy about that. It's my latest book, the book closest to my heart, and the book that I really wish I'd had as a young bird watcher: The Young Birder's Guide to Birds of North America. That's right, this baby covers the entire continent, not just the East, as the earlier version did.

Writing a book is like baking a cake. You gather the ingredients, mix them all together in the proper order, and pop it in the oven. Then you wait. And 45 minutes and you have a cake! Or, in the case of a book, you wait a year while it bakes to perfection.

This new YBG has 300 of the most common, most commonly encountered, and most awesome North American birds in it. That's 200 species from the original eastern version of the book (158 of which have at least some distribution west of the Midwest) with 100 additional western species added. It's 368 pages and retails for less than $16. If you want one personalized for yourself or the young birder in your life, here's the place to make that happen.

What makes me really happy is that now young (or new) birders in the West have a book expressly written for them—a book that was conceptualized by their peers (my kids' elementary school classes worked on both books. This one is arriving just as Liam is about to leave elementary school and start high school!).

That's Phoebe Linnea Thompson on the left, me in the middle, and William Henry (Liam) Thompson IV on the right.

My hope is that this book, which is intentionally NOT comprehensive in its coverage of North America's avifauna, will be a great starter guide. Any young bird watcher who gets into our wonderful hobby will then be able to step up to a full field guide of his or her choosing.

I'll be hitting the road in a few weeks to promote the new Young Birder's Guide, heading to South Carolina, West Virginia, central and northwest Ohio, Alaska, North Dakota, Maine, and Florida to give presentations on it and, whenever possible, to go out birding with some young folks. If you've got a young birder in your orbit, I hope to see you out there with the birds. Trust me, we'll have fun!

Thanks to my good friends at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for allow me to be a part of the legendary Peterson Field Guide Series. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine this...

Jose Wejebe Killed In Plane Crash

Jose Wejebe was born in Cuba. His family fled Castro and he grew up fishing in Southern Florida. I have been watching Jose along with Flip, Lefty, Chico and others on their outdoor fishing shows for decades. I have even traveled to fly fishing shows just to meet these guys. I learned to fly fish in the clear streams and creeks in the Texas Hill Country and later to cast on the windy flats of the Texas Gulf Coast for Redfish and Trout. I still feel as if Jose and the others on his show were my private instructors each week and looked forward to each new Spanish Fly fishing show every week. I hope they keep running it for a long time.


When he wasn't fishing Jose was often working with the Big Brother, Big Sister, Make a Wish and other youth charities.  Jose was killed in a plane crash on April 9th while flying a private plane in which he was the only occupant. Our prayers and thoughts go out to the family of Jose. Jose will be missed by fly fisherman the world over and remembered by many of us every time we cast a fly over clear waters. Jose, I hope that where ever you are the water is clear, the wind lays and the fish are hitting hard. Thanks for all the lessons, Wild Ed

Customer Service Alive and Well at Primos

I got a call the other day from my brother telling me that a hail storm had knocked out his Truth Cam 60 game cameras at our family place in Lampasas.  I told him to send the camera in and find out if it could be fixed but that he might want to contact Primos and request return instructions.  The following is an email he sent to me and I pass it on to you guys as we always try and let you know about the products we find dependable in the outdoors.  Since we buy our gear just like you we are always looking for the best products and service we can get for our dollar.  Once in a while you find a company that you want to stay with and that you can depend on.  When we do we will let you know, Wild Ed

It is a rare thing these days when you can actually say you received great customer service by any business, much less a large company that really doesn’t need to worry about you as a customer. I will however, go out of my way to promote a company that showed me the kind of customer service that I recently received. Around two years ago I bought a Primos Truth Cam 60 and started my obsession with capturing all the animals that come to my feeder in Lampasas. The more pictures I captured, the more I came to love seeing all of the animals that now come to my feeder on a regular basis. Deer, turkey, raven, crow, grey fox, bobcat, coyote, raccoons, ringtail, jacks, cottontail, vulture, feral cats, dogs, dove, roadrunner, and too many other little birds and critters to list. This year has seen several big storms roll across the ranch and as documented by the Truth Cam 60, several hail storms. The last storm that came through was quite severe as documented by the TruthCam. It was hailing pretty hard when the camera took a direct hit to the PIR sensor cover and broke the lens. The camera actually took a photo of the hail stone that broke it! The camera continued to document the storm, but missing the sensor cover would now take a picture every few seconds until the memory card was full. I sent a request to the folks at Primos asking if I could mail my camera back to them for repairs. Their answer was quite un-expected. They told me a replacement door for the camera was on the way to my house and as far as they were concerned, the matter was closed. No questions, no charge.


This is the kind of customer service we all wish we could get and unfortunately, it is rare these days. I will be purchasing another TruthCam this year for the sole purpose of monitoring who is coming and going through our gate this year, and who knows what other surprises that camera might catch!


Thanks for the great customer service.

A satisfied customer.
Mike
Austin, Texas

NEW NORTH AMERICAN BIRD SPECIES DISCOVERED!

The newly described Dun Mountain Warbler, Pseudoseiurus monochromis, as painted by bird artist Julie Zickefoose!

Dear BOTB Readers:

I’ve been holding this story in for weeks. I’m about to burst with excitement. How often does a bird magazine editor get asked to announce a newly discovered species—in North America?? It’s every bird magazine editor’s best dream. But enough of my yakkin'. Here's the big news!

Ornithologists from the National Bird Observatory (NBO) in Osprey Chalk, Connecticut, are pleased to announce the discovery of a North American bird species that is new to science. The dun mountain warbler (Pseudoseiurus monochromis) was recently discovered by bear hunters on all-terrain vehicles trying to reach forested habitat on the far side of a 10,000-acre mountaintop removal site in southern West Virginia. The species was described by ornithologists from the NBO, who were alerted to its existence when the West Virginia bear hunters (who were being filmed for a reality television show) remarked on camera that "it was the only thing we seen that was alive for miles around."

"This species has apparently moved into the expansive wastelands left behind by mountaintop removal (MTR), and is thriving there," said Patrick Fitzmichael, director of the NBO and chairman of the E. R. Hare Citizen Science Endowment at the NBO. "We found more than 35 nests in southern West Virginia in just one weekend of searching. We think that this population grew out of remnant bands of birds that were living and apparently breeding above the treeline in the Appalachians on scree slopes where no one in their right mind would ever go for birding or anything else."

The natural history of the dun mountain warbler is most unusual. It nests on barren, rocky ground in mountaintop removal sites, laying its eggs among the stones and exposed clay. It flips rocks and pebbles looking for invertebrates, colonizing recent MTR sites, scavenging prey from reptiles and amphibians to insects, even following earth moving equipment with an alert expression and pertly wagging tail, waiting to see what is stirred up by the digging.

The plumage of the dun mountain warbler is described as dirt-brown and gray—or dun—which helps the bird and its cryptically colored eggs to blend in perfectly with their surroundings. Little is known about the dun mountain warbler's courtship, but field researchers were able to catch a short recording of its song, which is described as "a loud beeping tone similar to a piece of heavy earth-moving equipment backing up."

A spokesperson for the Consolation Coal Company reacted this way to the announcement: "We've known for years that our efforts to turn unusable tree-choked mountain habitat into nice, flat, open areas would be good for the environment. If a bird lays a egg on a mountain, what happens? It rolls to the bottom and breaks. The baby bird dies. We're happy that nature is finally realizing that our mining operations not only mean jobs for the local community, but they also make good places for birds to nest. Now THAT's family values, which is what we've always stood for."

Thus far, the dun mountain warbler seems to find its center of abundance in southern West Virginia's coal country, and NBO is mounting expeditions to neighboring states of Kentucky and Tennessee to survey MTR sites there. The future looks bright for this specialized but opportunistic species as mountaintop removal proceeds apace. The Obama Administration has recommended a study to determine if the species needs more breeding habitat. "We're ready to approve more than 150 MTR mine site permits if it means we can help this rare warbler survive and even thrive in the future."

The birding community reacted with great enthusiasm. Jeffrey Giordano, president of the American Birders' Society said. "This is AWESOME! A new bird for our members to chase after. This will certainly be our Bird of the Year for 2013!"

Bill Thomas III, editor of Birders' Watching Digest said, "This is the feel-good birding story of the year! More habitat for an endangered species--and a NEW one at that!"

The Old River Birding Festival in Oak Harbor, West Virginia, will be offering customized tours to see the Dun Mountain Warbler from now through September. Contact the festival at www.birding-wv.com.