Winter Birds

Long time no post... Spent all of December in Germany. My schedule wasn't too conducive to birding, but I managed to snap a few shots, mostly of geese:

Greylag Geese:

Greater White-fronted Goose:

 And finally my nemesis bird, the Great Spotted Woodpecker cooperated for one semi-decent photo:

Returning to Chicago I saw my first ever Harlequin Duck:

A few more Winter birds here.

Welcome!

As announced on the Tonic Blotter, I have created this new blog specifically dedicated to my birding excursions and photography, so as not to detract from the main music mission of the Tonic Blotter. All the earlier blog posts dealing with birds have been moved here, along with any comments, as well as all links to birding related websites and blogs. I will be making a few more updates to the layout and look in the near future.

Sadly, I haven't been birding nearly as much this fall as compared to last year, mostly due to an inability to drag my ass out of bed and into this pissy gray weather to which we seem to have a subscription now. I have nonetheless started a new photoset on flickr of pictures from this fall, though they are few at the moment. A small selection below. As usual, flickr has larger resolution versions.

 Pine Warbler

Red-breasted Nuthatch

Brown Creeper

 The gist of Fall migration in one picture (Yellow-rumped Warbler)

Spring Birds

Spring migration is in full swing.

Yellow Warbler


Scarlet Tanager


Black Throated Blue Warbler


Barn Swallow

Lots more from both Chicago and Germany in my Flickr Gallery.

February Birds

It has been a good month for birding.

Common and Hoary Redpolls:





White-winged Crossbills:





A Barrow's Goldeneye in Evanston:



And Long-eared Owls:



Links lead to separate flickr galleries.

Geese, Planes, and Lawns

When planes crash into mountains, most people don't usually get the idea of bulldozing away all the mountain ranges of the world out of an overdeveloped concern for aviation safety. But when US Airways flight 1549 struck a flock of Canada Geese on departure from La Guardia, leading to a loss of power in both engines and a masterful ditching in the Hudson, immediately some exceptionally dumb voices clamored for a mass slaughter of geese. It is perhaps not surprising, given that we have a long tradition of both overkill and treating only the symptoms of deeper problems.

There are a couple of issues behind the Canada-Goose-strike phenomenon. Firstly, the media attention to US Airways flight 1549 somewhat overstates the threat to commercial aviation. While there are thousands of bird strike incidents annually, the overwhelming majority involve low-flying military and private aircraft, which are at far greater risk both because of the low altitude at which they fly and the fact that they are often powered by only one engine. As the New York Times found out:

"Crashes caused by bird strikes are intermittent in small planes and rare among airliners. Government records show five strikes with scheduled airliners in this decade, not counting Flight 1549, that have produced significant damage."

This is not to say that bird strikes aren't a serious safety concern for airliners when they do occur. But modern aircraft are designed to be able to suffer bird strike in one engine and still be able to take off safely with only one engine running. (See this youtube video of a Thomsonfly Boeing 757 taking off perfectly safely with only the left engine after suffering a bird strike and subsequent flameout in the right engine. The damaged engine is shut down at around 0:33 and the aircraft then commences a return to the airport and performs an overweight landing on one engine.) What makes US 1549 so unique is the freak occurrence of a double engine failure due to bird strike.

The lethal element here is the Canada Goose, which is large, heavy, lives in dense flocks, and likes human company - any one of those attributes would be a problem for aviation. Hitting a Canada Goose, which can weigh anywhere between 6 and 14 pounds, at 250 miles per hour will cause a lot of damage, one way or another. There is little one can do in the way of improved airplane construction that could render an aircraft Canada-Goose-flock-strike-proof without compromising the lightweight nature of the structure that allows the plane to get airborne in the first place. But there are much better ways of dealing with unwanted Canada Geese near airports, other than going on a shooting rampage.

As in the case of European Starlings, House Sparrows, some gull species, and feral pigeons, the mushrooming Canada Goose populations are directly linked to human environmental disturbances. Canada Geese are basically avian cows - they eat grass. And that is what attracts them to human habitation: our insatiable addiction to lawns. As this helpful guide to dealing with Canada Geese published by Cornell and the University of Wisconsin points out:

Preferred habitat for geese is a large, unobstructed lawn area close to open water. Many urban features, including parks, industrial sites, residential complexes, golf courses, and planned residential communities, provide such an environment.

And that is the real problem. We just love lawns. The total area surface covered with lawns in the US is almost the size of New York state. That is a lot of goose feed. This is all caused by a misguided horticultural aesthetic, inflicted upon us by the English, that is increasingly becoming an environmental problem in the US; not only because lawns attract Canada Geese, but also because of the immense consumption of water, energy, pesticides, and fertilizers used in modern lawncare. The main problem is that most grasses used for lawns are not native to America and are not ideally adapted to local climates. What might work fine in perpetually pissy Southern England, is ecologically wholly inappropriate for most of the United States, but especially for the Southwest and many parts of the South and the Central Plains that have been experiencing record droughts. In the US, up to 80% of domestic water consumption during the summer is used for outdoor purposes, and the majority of that goes toward watering the lawn. This does not even take into account golf courses, cemeteries, public parks, or sprawling lawns on suburban corporate campuses.

Do yourself a favor and read this excellent article by Elizabeth Kolbert from the New Yorker on America's affliction with lawns. In my neighborhood, there are a few houses where the owners have replaced generic lawns with wonderful assortments of native plants, grasses shrubs, flowers, etc. Their properties stick out in their variety of color and biodiversity next to their sterile neighbors. If we all switched from silly lawns to a mix of native plants, not only would we sustainably reduce unwanted Canada Goose populations, we would cut down our wasteful consumption of water and fertilizer, reduce agricultural effluents and pesticides and generally live in a more attractive neighborhood. The retarded idea of shooting geese undoubtedly will find its adherents. But they should know that as long as our green manicured lawns beckon, new geese will always find their way there to replace the ones we shoot.

And stop playing golf, for Pete's sake! It's such a silly game anyway.

Starved Rock Eagles & Friends

A few shots from Saturday's excursion to Starved Rock. Around fifty Bald Eagles were present.







More in my flickr gallery.

A Few More Pics Before Year's End

I have added a few more pics to my flickr bird gallery. I will largely be posting my new bird photography there instead of on the blog.

Non-Bird Photography

Sometimes on my birding trips and other excursions I run into non-bird-related motives worth photographing. I've created a separate gallery for some of my favorites on flickr.

Eastern Screech-Owl

A second, futile attempt at locating the Crossbills reported at Morton Arboretum results at least in a sighting of a napping Eastern Screech-Owl (red phase).

Snowy Owl

A week that started with a historic reassertion of democracy ends with my first sighting of a Snowy Owl.