Birds
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The Great Backyard Bird Count’s a comin’
This Friday is the start of the 2010 Great Backyard Bird Count. This citizen science project, run by Audubon and Cornell and sponsored now in Canada by Bird Studies Canada, gathers data over one weekend each February. It requires just fifteen minutes (or more if you'd like) of your time. Although it is called the
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Neat little boxes.
My ideas of what exactly makes a species have evolved over time. If I think back to my school days I remember the standard definition of a species was an organism that could breed with one another and produce viable young. But as time has gone on I've come to realize that the natural world
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I and the Bird Illustrated
Seabrooke, the wonderful blogger behind the brilliant Marvelous In Nature, has put together the latest I and the Bird (edition #117). Her edition? An illustrated one, simply clicking on the birds in drawing will take you to the various posts. Once again, as if you need reminding, there are marvelous words and photos from all
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Dipping in the cold dark.
I do know better, really I do. Something I've been meaning to do for awhile now, actually since before the Christmas Bird Count, is take a trip down past the St George Society Cliffs, out to Nuvua and search for Gyrfalcons. Prior to last winter I believed, and had been led to believe that Gyrfalcons
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Arctic Bay Christmas Bird Count, the fourth annual one.
I had high hopes for this years Christmas Bird Count, hopes that included a record three species. The count pretty much guarantees Ravens, plus I had a pretty good area to look for Ptarmigan this year. But the most tantalizing prospect was a raptor (likely Gyrfalcon) had been spotted here a couple of weeks ago.
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Silhouettes
Even though we have four vehicles (a truck, ATV, and two snowmobiles) none of them are working right now. The truck has serious braking issues (as in no brakes), the ATV probably could start but has been sitting in the cold for the fall winter and I don't want to spend the time required pulling
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Through an Aperture
There has been much keeping me away from the blog of late but I'll spare you the details, for now. In a little bit of spare time I've started playing with Apple's Aperture program, and the plugins for it from Nik Software. There is much to learn and I've only scratched the surface. Here is
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Feeding Time
Don't you just hate having someone looking over your shoulder while you're trying to eat?
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Dip
It's been a strange summer for me in terms of birds in many ways. Birds that I should have seen, for various reasons I haven't. Birds I didn't expect to see, materialized. Birds have shown me some jaw dropping behaviour that I've not seen in the past. And other people are seeing birds, telling me