Category Archives: Books & Events

Eagles on TV!

Birds of Prey, Books & Events

Bald Eagles congregate in winter (photo from PBS Nature)Sometimes I have the coolest job!

Last week Jill Lykins in our TV programming department asked if I’d review the upcoming PBS Nature show called American Eagle that will air this Sunday, November 16 at 8:00pm.

Of course I said “Yes.”  Who wouldn’t want to watch a show about bald eagles?

I received the preview disk yesterday and watched it last night.  To me, it was even better than “White Falcon, White Wolf.”

Instead of taking a hands off look at wildlife (White Falcon never had people on screen), this show follows two guys who are hooked on bald eagles.  We get to see what they see – and they see a lot!

Bob Anderson of the Raptor Resource Project and cinematographer Neil Rettig film eagles at their winter staging grounds in the Upper Mississippi Valley and in Alaska.  They talk about their memories of the time when eagles were scarce and how fascinated they are by these birds.  Both of them film eagle families at the nest.

I especially liked the nest scenes – it was like watching the peregrine webcams.  There’s great footage of eagles locking talons during courtship flights, parents incubating eggs and feeding chicks, fledglings learning to fly, eagles catching fish right out of the water, eagles playing tag with prey.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.

If you’ve been following bald eagles on my blog, you won’t want to miss this show on Sunday, November 16, 2008 at 8:00pm on PBS.  In Pittsburgh, that’s WQED.

(photo from PBS Nature.  Click on the photo to preview the show.)

Bird Blog is one year old!

Books & Events, Musings & News

Birdblog is one year old!Outside My Window is one year old today!

Little did I know when I started this blog how far it would come and how many people I’d meet.

A year ago blogging was all new to me.  I didn’t know the mechanics of WordPress (the software that displays this blog), I desperately needed photos to illustrate each entry, and I had a low level dread of running out of things to write about.  Added to that was the fear that no one would read it and my efforts would be pointless.

Those worries quickly disappeared.  Chuck Tague, and many new friends, supply me with beautiful photos.  I seldom run short of subject matter and the blog has been fun to write especially when I have to do research.  I’ve learned more about birds and hope you have too.

There have been ups and downs along the way, the happiness of baby birds and the sadness of a young peregrine’s death, the exciting blogs and the boring ones.  I’ve even received a little bit of unexpected fame.

But the best part has been meeting you, my readers.  I am amazed and pleased at how many of you there are.   You’ve helped me with questions, suggestions, photos and – thankfully – corrections.

So this celebration is really about you.  I’d love to meet more of you.  Leave a comment below and let me know which blogs were your favorites.  Have I missed a topic you’d like me to explore?  Do you have a photo or a question?

And please do tell me where you’re from.  I would love to know how far this blog reaches.  Does it go around the world?  Only you can tell.

(Thanks to Joan Guerin for the birthday cake.  Click on the cupcake and wait a few seconds to see a surprise.)

bird-thday

Owned by a Parrot

Books & Events

Book Cover of The Parrot Who Owns Me, by Joanna BurgerIf you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend The Parrot Who Owns Me: The Story of a Relationship by Joanna Burger, published by Villard in 2001.  I just finished reading it and I loved it.

Joanna Burger is an ornithologist and animal behavior scientist at Rutgers University.  The book is about Tiko, a Red-lored Amazon who has lived with her and her husband Mike since 1986. 

Tiko is a commanding presence in their household.  He’s the alpha parrot in a flock of three:  himself, Joanna and Mike.  His view is that he owns them, not the other way around.  Now that I’ve read the book and understand parrots better, I can see that he’s right.

Like all parrots, Tiko is highly intelligent and social.  Living with him means knowing him as an individual and learning to understand what he’s communicating.  He is very good at making his meaning clear.

For those of us who don’t live with parrots, these concepts are fascinating.  For Joanna Burger, a bird behavior specialist, it changed her life.  Tiko’s flock dynamics, his vigilance, loyalty and devotion, and his use of tools spurred her to study the same behaviors among wild birds and mammals.

The book gave me insights into the beauty of a long term relationship across species and the behavior of birds that I hope to see in the wild myself. 

(Click on the photo of the book cover to read excerpts or buy at Amazon.com)

White Falcon, White Wolf

Books & Events, Mammals, Peregrines

Gyrfalcon (photo from the PBS series Nature. www.pbs.org/nature)If you’re a falcon fanatic like I am you won’t want to miss White Falcon, White Wolf,  the season opener of PBS’s Nature, starring the largest falcon on earth.

The show tells the story of the brief arctic breeding season, focusing on a family of gyrfalcons and a pack of arctic wolves. 

The setting is the stark landscape of Ellesmere Island, the northernmost point in Canada.  It is summer, but only for three short months.  In that time all the arctic creatures must court and mate, give birth and raise young.  The challenge is in the timing.  If the food supply is not ready or not adequate, the young starve.

The photography is stunning and required lots of patience and stamina.  I can barely imagine the days – maybe weeks – the photographers must have spent in a blind on a neighboring cliff.   The sun never sets during the arctic summer so how did they avoid detection, not only by the gyrfalcons and wolves but by the many other birds and animals in the film?

Don’t miss it!  The show premieres this Sunday, October 26 at 8:00pm.  In the Pittsburgh area watch it on WQED-13, or if you have HDTV on WQED-HD.  If you live outside WQED’s broadcast area, check your local PBS station schedule to be sure it’s at 8:00pm.  

(photo from White Falcon, White Wolf)

p.s.  The gyrfalcons are beautiful, but for sheer cuteness watch for the arctic foxes.

Eloquent Eggs

Books & Events
Guira Cuckoo (Guira guira), eggs 2006 © Rosamond Purcell
Eloquent Eggs and Disintegrating Dice: Photographs by Rosamond Purcell

24 September 2008

If you’re interested in birds or photography you’ll enjoy the exhibit opening tomorrow at Silver Eye Center for Photography entitled Eloquent Eggs and Disintegrating Dice: Photographs by Rosamond Purcell.

For over 25 years Rosamond Purcell has photographed behind the scenes in major museums, producing stunning photos of rarely seen collections.   This exhibit features eggs, nests and birds from The Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology in Camarillo, California, the largest collection of eggs and nests in the world.  Also on display will be six photos of celluloid dice from magician and actor Ricky Jay’s collection.

Shown here is Ms. Purcell’s photo of Guira Cuckoo eggs, just a hint of the beauty to come in her book Egg and Nest being published this fall by Harvard University Press.

Eloquent Eggs and Disintegrating Dice runs through November 29th and includes special events you won’t want to miss – especially if you enjoy photography:

  • Photograph Behind the Scenes at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History on Saturday, September 27, 1:00– 4:00 p.m.
  • National Aviary Photographic Safari on Saturday, October 18, 9:00 a.m. –11:00 a.m.
  • Egg and Nest: Book Signing with Rosamond Purcell on Saturday, November 8, 5:00 p.m.

The Silver Eye is located at 1015 East Carson Street on Pittsburgh’s South Side.  There’s an opening reception this evening September 24, 5:30 pm-7:30 pm ($5 for non-members).

For more information, contact Silver Eye Center for Photography, 412-431-1810.

(photo by Rosamond Purcell.  Click on the image for information on the exhibit)

The Pigeon Book

Books & Events, Doves & Chickens
Cover of the Pigeon book

25 February 2008

For birders, pigeons are on the borderline between wild and tame, pests and pets.  They willingly live off our food scraps yet we vaguely feel there’s something wrong with this even though we feed backyard birds. 

Now there’s a book that tells us how pigeons got to where they are today and what special traits this has given them.  Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World’s Most Revered and Reviled Bird, by Andrew D. Blechman.

The saga began when humans domesticated the rock pigeon over 5,000 years ago.  Since then we have widely divergent relationships with these birds: from pigeon fanciers to pigeon shooters, protectors to poisoners, pigeon racers to compulsive pigeon feeders.  Blechman’s book delves into it all.

He also describes how:
•  Pigeons are naturally even tempered.  They do not bite or attack.  This made them easy to domesticate and it’s why them seem tame.
•  Racing pigeons fly non-stop more than 500 miles at more than 60 miles per hour.  This is even more amazing when you consider they are trucked to the starting point – a place they have never seen – and within minutes they figure out where they are and where home is.  Then they fly home immediately without stopping for food or water.
•  Pigeon hating is a relatively new sentiment, promoted by “bird control companies.”  For instance, if you use Google to search for this book online, the advertising links are all pigeon control companies.
•  A 100% guaranteed, permanent pigeon control method was invented in Europe and, amazingly, involves providing them with nests.  

After you read this book you won’t think the same old way about pigeons any more.

Participate in Project Budburst

Books & Events, Climate Change, Plants & Fungi

Participate in Project Budburst (photo from Project Budburst website) I’m going to take a brief side trip today and discuss plants and a very cool project you can participate in.

Last Saturday I listened to the radio show Living on Earth.  Here in Pittsburgh it’s broadcast at 6:00am on Saturdays on WDUQ so you have to be up early to hear it.

The segment that intrigued me was about Project Budburst in which volunteers help scientists track climate change by reporting when plants bloom or leaf out.

All you need to do is sign up online here.  Then, just record when a plant blooms or leafs out and where it was when you saw it.  Project Budburst does the rest.  They collect the data and correlate species, blooming time and location to chart the effects of climate change.

The project is interested in all kinds of plants.  The plants don’t even have to be native species.  You can report on lilacs, forsythia, dandelions and common weeds in your back yard.  Now, that’s easy!  Even I can do that!

I know that many of you spend time outdoors and in your garden.   Even if you only report once, it will improve the data.

Read more about the project – and the science of phenology – at the links above.  Or click on the columbine picture from the Project Budburst website and it’ll take you right there.

BIRD The Definitive Visual Guide

Books & Events

Book: Bird The Definitive Visual GuideWhen the weather is cold and miserable I stay indoors and read more.  In winter I am especially drawn to beautiful bird books because I want to see birds, not just read about them. 

This winter I can’t say enough about a beautiful book I got last month:  BIRD The Definitive Visual Guide, Audubon, DK Publishing, 2007.

It’s a gorgeous book, full of photos illustrating bird anatomy, bird habitat and over 1,400 species from around the world. 

Every page is beautifully done.  The layout is gorgeous and the contents are a fireside birders dream with informative species accounts, range maps, species size, habitat and migration.  And it includes a CD of 60 species’ songs and calls. 

I open BIRD at random for the “wow effect” and am never disappointed. 

It’s even beautiful when it’s closed.  The margins are printed with flock, jungle and feather patterns so the edges look marbled.

If you’re looking for something to do indoors, take a look at this book.

Read another review on the BirdFreak blog.  If you want to buy it, I suggest Amazon where the price is discounted.