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    Birding in Panama
                                    by Mary Warren, FAS President


I spent 10 days birding in Panama with Cheepers! Birding on a Budget…Fantastic trip!! The group of 10 came from VA, NY, CO, TX, OH, and AZ. WE had an amazing guide, Guido, who knew where to find ...
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Firelands Blue Notes  Dean Sheldon, Jr. Bluebirder Extraordinare!
                                 by Dean Sheldon, Jr.



BLUEBIRDS IN CEMETERIES

    
~14th in a series~
 

    Pick almost any Sunday afternoon for a pleasant drive all across the Firelands counties of Erie and Huron. You will be amazed at the huge number of lovely cemeteries within these two counties. Huron County, for example, shows over 80 locations.
     Many of them are
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Be a citizen scientist; count your birds!



Ohio Wildlife
Legacy Stamp

The inaugural
Ohio Wildlife Legacy Stamp
will
be available for purchase on March 1 of 2010 at a price of $15. 
 

Kids Nature Club explores winter-time tracks

Miss Amy educates us on animal tracks!  Photo by Lisa Wendt


 

No Child Left Inside .... making outdoor tracks of their own!

 

Birding Musings

By Brad Phillips

Birding Mu                        June 30, 2009                 

When I was growing up and learning to bird, I  discovered early on that certain birds would be found in certain places.
 

Indigo Buntings were invariably found on railroad wires, and Red-headed Woodpeckers were found on telephone poles by rural roads.

As I got older, I became wiser, and learned that Indigo Buntings were found many other places as well, including on my farm!  Red-headed Woodpeckers, sadly, were rarely found anywhere.

When I started working on the Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas, I discovered that Red-headed Woodpeckers, while uncommon, were still living in our general area, which was a pleasant surprise.   I have found them several places in Huron County, sometimes very near dwellings.  Just recently, I found a pair on Laurel Road, which is east of Olena.  Would you believe it, they were on telephone poles!

Watching the pair, I learned something else.  It appears they were using the poles as observation perches for hunting, sallying forth to fly-catch or to swoop to the ground and catch sizeable bugs from the road verge.   A successful catch was followed by flying to the very top of the pole, where the bug was mashed and minced to small pieces, then carried into the woods.  They were apparently feeding small young, who couldn’t handle whole bugs yet.

Another species I would like to mention is Vesper Sparrow.  Atlasing has taught me that this bird is also still found in our area.  I have finally learned where to look and what their song really sounds like.  The most promising local habitat seems to be weedy no-till soybeans, especially if there are grassy edges and a hedgerow for singing.  (Often Grasshopper sparrow will be in the same field.)  The song, which has been likened to a quarter spinning down on the table, can also be described as a cross between Song Sparrow and White-crowned Sparrow.  At least, that is how I hear it!

Summer birding can be very interesting and challenging; I invite you to get out there and try it.  And make a list of what you find and note where you were—it may be useful data for the Atlas!

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What's up after Spring migration?"
May 25, 2009

I got real excited last week when I found a singing Louisiana Waterthrush in the Berlin Heights Ravine.  It has been several years

since I last found them there.  Naturally, he is now recorded in the OBBA database!

We are in the tail end of migration and the middle of full blown resident birds.  It’s been great fun to chase the wave of neo-tropical warblers et al. as they pass through our area.  Now it is time to see how many have remained to raise young locally.

June is the golden month for Atlas work.  Nearly every bird in our area is breeding locally, so their mere presence is genuine evidence of breeding and therefore good data.  Seeing birds carrying food or nesting material , or feeding young, are several ways to confirm breeding, but the important point is to record that the species is in the block; the rest is gravy!

There are two local Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas events happening in June this year.  On June 12, 13, and 14, Terri Martincic has organized a birding blitz in the Wellington area.  I will be helping to find breeding birds in several blocks that weekend, and so can you!  We will be fanning out from Wellington Reservation of Lorain Co. Metroparks each morning and meeting at Burger King at noon to tally results.  There are also afternoon and evening walks scheduled.

 The second event is the following weekend on Saturday, June 20.  This one is centered at Norwalk Reservoir.  We will be atlasing in the Norwalk area in the morning and meeting at noon back at the Reservoir for the Firelands Audubon annual picnic. These are great ways to get a taste of atlasing with support from other birders.  Block maps will be provided as guides.

I invite you to participate in these events, and also to go out and bird for the atlas on your own.  Make your birding count by helping out with the Atlas.  Thanks.

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“Beware the Ides of March!”
March, 2009 

It was a bad day for Julius Caesar, but what does March 15 have to do with birding?  Answer below!

Signs of spring are all about now.  Woodcock are ‘peenting’, Grackles are ‘gracking’(?!), and numerous songbirds are singing! I have already seen Grackles and House Finches carrying nesting material.

 I was walking in Edison Woods Sunday and heard Spring Peepers, Western Chorus Frogs, and Wood Frogs carrying on.  If you haven’t been into the interior of Edison Woods lately, you really should make a visit.  Last year’s trail improvement/dike creation project has dramatically changed the scenery.  We now have the (vernal) ‘Lakes/wetlands of Edison Woods’ where the interior meadows used to be.  There were even a few ducks there, and I see possibilities for sandpipers and rails too.

Two Barred Owls were calling Sunday also, at 1:45PM!  You never know when those guys will sound off.  There is no substitute for time in the field!

OK.  Back to March 15th.  It is the ‘safe date’ for several early nesting bird species, like Tufted Titmouse, Red-bellied, Downy, Hairy, and Pileated Woodpeckers, and Northern Cardinal.  But what does that mean, you may ask? Simply put, a species within safe dates is countable as a breeding bird just by being there.  If they are in your neighborhood now, they are planning on raising young there.  They will be countable until the end of July. This makes it easy to record them for the Breeding Bird Atlas.  As the spring moves along, all breeding species will enter safe dates, though the latest don’t start until June 10. June, therefore, becomes the easiest month to gather data for a block.  See the calendar for some birding events in June where we will be gathering data for the Atlas.

Many other species, like the Grackle, are also beginning to nest, even though their safe date starts later.  If you see behavior which indicates breeding, it is countable, regardless of date.  The House Finch carrying material is countable as a confirmed breeder.  Write it down, put a date on it, code it CM for carrying material, and enter it into the database!  Oh yeah, you need to note where you were to count it in the right block.  More on that next time, and other indicative behaviors!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

February 3, 2009 9:15PM. 

 

*******************************************************************************************
Linda calls to me from upstairs-“I’m hearing an owl!”  And so she was.  Actually, two owls, which I discovered when I ran outside.  Two Great Horned Owls, male and female, in our old spruce trees.  They’re courting, of course.

How did I know their genders?  Females have a higher pitched ‘hoo’, even though they are bigger than the males.   It was very satisfying to hear them, (though I never saw them) because their presence enriches my sense of place.  Every species which shares this local habitat is precious for that.

 I got a similar thrill two days prior upon finding a horde of Snow-fleas on the Huron River Greenway. Hundreds of these tiny collembolids (not fleas at all, but a much more primitive insect) were springing about on the surface of the snow.  They possess a powerful spring-loaded appendage on their posterior, which can catapult them a great distance relative to their size, though in a somewhat unpredictable direction.

But getting back to the owls.  After I listened a bit, I ran back into the house and jumped on the computer.  It was not to post on the list-serve, but to enter this one bit of data into the Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas database.

 If you are not familiar with the Atlas, it is a five year project to record nesting and courting activity of all bird species nesting in Ohio, in all parts of the state.  We are now starting year four, and there is much to be done.   The goal is ambitious:  separately survey over 4400 blocks, with each block being about 3 miles on a side.  My personal stake is to oversee 75 blocks, comprising most of Erie and Huron Counties, with slivers of Lorain and Ashland Counties thrown in.  Much more detailed information is available on the OBBA website <http://www.ohiobirds.org/obba2>, which can also be found by clicking a button on this website’s sidebar!

Many if not most species nest in the summer, so our focus period is June and July.  However, some species don’t wait for summer, including owls, raptors, horned larks and others.   The prime time to observe them starts now!  Red-tailed hawks sitting side by side in a tree are pair bonded.  Horned larks singing and chasing each other across an open field are defending territory.  Hooting owls, especially if you didn’t call them in, are territorial.

Birding for the Atlas is a different kind of birding, but can be a satisfying kind of challenge.   I invite you to give it a try.  I will continue to muse on this topic in the near future, so watch this space!

 

 

 

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