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Old 03-06-2020, 08:40 AM   #1
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Birding

There are a lot of Bird Watchers out there. I am betting there are some here also. So, I thought I would start a thread on the general subject of Birding.

Why? Well, though I know little about birds, I find them interesting. If I had to come back as an animal, it would probably be a bird of some type like a kestrel. And birding can be done almost anywhere with a minimum of 'gear' needed.
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Old 03-06-2020, 08:41 AM   #2
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Here's my starting contribution. It's an article by a meteorologist explaining how weather radar also tracks the bird migrations.

https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2020/...ring-bird.html

Quote:
Every day I have been checking the weather radar for signs of the northward migration of our feathered friends, and Wednesday night I finally saw it.

Ornithologists and those tracking the seasonal migration of birds have used weather radar for decades. The radar signal of a target goes up rapidly with the size of the object (with the sixth power of the diameter) and thus a bird provides an immensely bigger signal than a raindrop.
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Old 03-06-2020, 08:54 AM   #3
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Great idea! DW and I are avid birders and know about enough to "be dangerous".

Thanks for the link. We are keeping a close eye out for the first of the Spring migrants. We put a hummingbird feeder up this week, as the first migrants have been spotted on the gulf coast recently.
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Old 03-06-2020, 09:34 AM   #4
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We’ve been avid birders for over 20 years now. Great way to spend quality time outdoors. Even ended up relocating to one of the best birding hotspots in the country. Lots of birders live here and visit here so there is a very active local community.

If you really get into it, Cornell has a very comprehensive home study ornithology course. I got a lot out of it.
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Old 03-06-2020, 09:51 AM   #5
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A very casual birder. Just got a decent set of binoculars last year.
Enjoyed the South Padre birding this January.
Montezuma Swamp near here is always great to bird watch. Eagles, Hawks, and Turkeys have made great come backs in the last 20 year all over the area.

Drive past the Cornell labs a few times a year. Will make time to stop this spring.

Cornell Lab of Ornithology
159 Sapsucker Woods Rd, Ithaca, NY 14850
(800) 843-2473
https://maps.app.goo.gl/NwQgkYHkLj5yLgza7
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Old 03-06-2020, 09:56 AM   #6
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We are probably not bird watchers in the same sense as some others are, but we watch birds for about an hour every day.

We watch them at the boat launch on Lake Ponchartrain, perhaps 1/2 mile from our houses. What fascinates us most, is their behavior. We record nothing and do not count species, but simply comment to each other about what we are seeing. It is so entertaining! I guess that what we do is not the classic meaning of bird watching but we enjoy it so much. Mostly what we see are seagulls, ravens, mallard ducks, and brown pelicans. The seagulls are the most common at this location and also the most interesting of the bunch IMO.

Bird watching at the boat launch has substituted for the pleasure drives we use to go on, after eating lunch at our favorite restaurant. We only discovered this pastime recently, despite living so close to the boat launch.
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Old 03-06-2020, 10:24 AM   #7
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I enjoy watching the birds in our back yard and neighborhood lake area.
We have a couple of hummingbirds who stay year round and feed on our winter camellias,
I love to see the hawks and pair of eagles nearby.
Not a birder by any means, but it is peaceful to watch them
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Old 03-06-2020, 10:29 AM   #8
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DH really enjoys birds. We have wren houses around and they perform for him when he's in the hot tub.

The last few days he's spotted a new kid in town, and had no idea what it was. He discovered MerlinBirdID.com and figured out it is Northern Mockingbird. There was a day we would have checked out a book from the library.
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Old 03-06-2020, 10:49 AM   #9
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DH and I are "birders" or as they call us in the UK "twitchers". This hobby gets us out doors, we get some exercise, it is relatively inexpensive and fun and something we can do together as a couple. We keep a list and count the different species we have see--we are close to 600 different species on our "life list". Sometimes we also keep a list of birds we have seen in a year or a day, makes it more interesting for us. Sometimes after bird watching for several hours we get "warblers neck" from looking up in the trees!

When we first started out we went on a few guided walks with experienced birders as trip leaders--it really helped us learn and now we occasionally lead such walks.
If anyone is in the Chapel Hill NC area contact us --we have a great place to see birds--we would be glad to take you on a birding walk.
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Old 03-06-2020, 10:58 AM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by harllee View Post
DH and I are "birders" or as they call us in the UK "twitchers". This hobby gets us out doors, we get some exercise, it is relatively inexpensive and fun and something we can do together as a couple. We keep a list and count the different species we have see--we are close to 600 different species on our "life list". Sometimes we also keep a list of birds we have seen in a year or a day, makes it more interesting for us. Sometimes after bird watching for several hours we get "warblers neck" from looking up in the trees!

When we first started out we went on a few guided walks with experienced birders as trip leaders--it really helped us learn and now we occasionally lead such walks.
If anyone is in the Chapel Hill NC area contact us --we have a great place to see birds--we would be glad to take you on a birding walk.
Excellent life list! Well done!
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Old 03-06-2020, 12:23 PM   #11
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I have been a birder since before I received my bird study merit badge as a scout. My home is in one of the top ten, and some peoples top five bird destinations. I have slowed down a bit I still try to add a life bird everywhere we traveled. My favorites are the hummers, today my feeders are hosting 5 different species, but will increase to 10-12 by the end of March. New for 2020 today was a dazzling male Broad-billed hummingbird. I also host summer long Lucifers hummingbirds due here in about a week.
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Old 03-06-2020, 12:27 PM   #12
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grasshopper--Wow! 5 different species of hummers. We are lucky if we see 2 species! Where are you?

Funny--my nickname for my DH is "grasshopper" because he cannot sit still.
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Old 03-06-2020, 12:34 PM   #13
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Originally Posted by Chuckanut View Post
Well, though I know little about birds, I find them interesting.
You might enjoy The Scientific Wonder of Birds from The Great Courses (12 lectures @ 1/2 hour per lecture). I recently finished watching this on DVD.

(This course was a rather daring experiment by The Great Courses because the presenter - Dr. Bruce E. Fleury - had advanced Parkinsons disease when the lectures were recorded. In the course introduction, Dr. Fleury describes how his great plans for his retirement were ruined by Parkinsons - very sad. He died last January. )
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Old 03-06-2020, 12:44 PM   #14
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Not a birder but we enjoy them immensely. DW is always spotting waterfowl in the lakes and rivers. I had a memorable encounter with a bald eagle two years ago and he's forever burned into my mind.

There is one trumpeter swan on a local lake when it's not frozen over. I saw it leaving last fall, from 10 feet below it's a great big bird. If you have ever seen these things take off it's an experience. It came back a couple weeks ago to check out the lake but it's still frozen. I did get a close view of it resting on the ice dwarfing a nearby Canadian goose.

A local crow and I have a frequent discussion. He lives behind our house and was born in a tree behind our neighbor. He's a big fan of walnuts and less so cashews.
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Old 03-06-2020, 12:48 PM   #15
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I'm kind of a recovering birder. I fell into the deep end about 15-18 years and got way into bird photography - marching around for miles with 30 pounds of camera/lens/tripod/etc. After about 10 years of that my interests shifted (or my back just got tired). I still have the big monster birding lens, but only drag it out maybe once or twice a year these days.
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Old 03-06-2020, 12:56 PM   #16
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My gaggle of cedar wax wings just did a hit and run in Md. Holly Berry’s and other berries GONE)) cars was parked under a tree for a few days, NEEDED wash... on their way to Canada.
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Old 03-06-2020, 01:03 PM   #17
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I wonder when the term changed from Bird-watching, to "Birding"? Do people nowadays do more than Birdwatchers always did: watch (and listen to) birds, talk about them, read about them? Oh, and take photos/videos of them, which falls under "watching." (Bird Surveillance?)

"To Bird" just doesn't make sense.

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There are a lot of Bird Watchers out there. I am betting there are some here also. So, I thought I would start a thread on the general subject of Birding.
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Old 03-06-2020, 01:04 PM   #18
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I have been a birder since before I received my bird study merit badge as a scout. My home is in one of the top ten, and some peoples top five bird destinations. I have slowed down a bit I still try to add a life bird everywhere we traveled. My favorites are the hummers, today my feeders are hosting 5 different species, but will increase to 10-12 by the end of March. New for 2020 today was a dazzling male Broad-billed hummingbird. I also host summer long Lucifers hummingbirds due here in about a week.
We only get our common one (Ruby-throated) in NE AL - MAYBE a vagrant Anna's now and then. That is awesome!
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Old 03-06-2020, 01:15 PM   #19
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I am a Naturalist by nature and a casual birder because it all fits into the scheme of things. I do manage an Audubon property of a little over 540 acres that is owned by our local group. Most birders don't know much about dirt and managing land and trees for wildlife and that's what I really enjoy.
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Old 03-06-2020, 01:19 PM   #20
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I am a longtime birder and it is my major hobby and interest. In fact, I leave in a week for a weeklong birding trip in Puerto Rico, so far, so good on the coronavirus. Birding is the focus of nearly all my travel, excepting trips to visit family.

I tell people that birding is very rewarding because you only get better at it as you get older (well, until various infirmities set in). But you never reach the end of accomplishment either. And there are so many ways to do it!

There's been an unexpected influx of young people into the hobby, which has been very gratifying. But I also, as a volunteer at a birding center, was VERY welcoming to all the middle-aged people, primarily women, who entered the field. I had been one of them. Yes, there are all the young turks who can see and hear preternaturally. But women are such a sustaining and giving group in this hobby, the ones who staff the centers, arrange the festivals, organize the group trips. Also the ones who lay out the money for eco-travel. I'm thinking of writing an article on the women who organized movements to save local, natural areas - a huge contribution.

I have given a lot of thought to how to describe the appeal of birding, to answer the fairly frequent question, "What do you do when you watch birds? Do you take pictures?" For me, it's not so much a question of "doing" but rather of "being." Birding makes you increasingly aware of the "other world," until you can't *not* be aware of it. All of the time. [Thinking of my late mother, admonishing me to "stop looking at the damn birds" when I drove.] That consciousness is very seductive, and the experience is similar to Dorothy's stepping from the black-and-white world of Kansas into the full-color world of Oz. It's SO rich. I sometimes think it must be similar to the experience of a religious person who lives with the constant consciousness of a spiritual world around him/her. That constant awareness is the appeal. Just yesterday, soon after I got up, I heard - through my closed windows - a woodcock "peenting" somewhere close by in the back. I knew it instantly, got myself out to my deck, in time to see it hurtling through the air. That's the appeal, being an active part of the Other World.
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