Project FeederWatch!!

It's almost time for another season of Project FeederWatch! November 8, 2008 is the start of the winter-long survey. Being a Citizen Scientist is a lot easier and more rewarding than you might think. This is a joint venture of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Bird Studies Canada, the National Audubon Society and the Canadian Nature Federation and it's a great way to contribute to the birds that you love and enjoy so much!

All that you have to do is sign up here:https://secure.birds.cornell.edu/eCommerce/FeederWatch/Start.do, wait for the packet to come to you in the mail and then start counting and reporting! There is a $15 dollar participation fee, but you not only get membership into the program but you also get a Research Kit, which contains instructions, a bird identification poster, a wall calendar, a resource guide to bird feeding, and data forms! Not only do you get these items but you are TRULY helping with the conservation and protection efforts that go on year round! You just need to sit back, relax and count some of your backyard friends.

It really is a great program and I would love to see a bunch of new participants this year! Here is a good page to start on: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/pfw/Overview/over_index.html It will answer a lot of the questions you have, but the entire site is full of other information and a ton of photos.


Here's a neat link. You can explore all sorts of data that has been collected over the years.
http://watch.birds.cornell.edu/PFW/ExploreData?cmd=stateReport


With this link you can look at all the Rare Bird reports (and accompanying photos) from over the project's lifetime. http://www.birds.cornell.edu/pfw/DataRetrieval/rare_index.html


This link will show you the Top 25 Feeder Birds (with ranking number) from over the years. You can see how some birds have become much more popular while others have declined over time. http://www.birds.cornell.edu/pfw/DataRetrieval/top25_index.html


This link will take you to all of the photos from birders around the Continent!
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/pfw/Members/FeaturedPhotos/FeaturedPhotoIndex.htm


And here is the link to their Home Page
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/pfw/index.html

KATU Interview

This morning, KATU's outdoor reporter Grant McOmie and his wonderful cameraman Tom, came over to do a piece on the Great Backyard Bird Count coming up this weekend. Karen Munday, from the Portland Audubon Society, also came over to be a part of the interview. It was a wonderful experience and Grant put us at ease right away. He and his cameraman were very down-to-Earth and pleasing to speak with. They stayed for about an hour and we talked about all sorts of birding programs, but of course, the focus was on the GBBC. Karen was a wealth of knowledge, and we were very glad she was able to fit us into her busy schedule.

Here are some photos my sister took of the whole event. We are very thankful that she came over. Without my sis, we wouldn't have had any photos as we were too busy talking. Thanks Tess!

The segment will air on Friday, Feb. 15th during the 4:30-5:00 news and again on Sunday.

This is us right before they got here. She is so gorgeous and I

am such a lucky man!!

Tom trying to get some bird video.

Of course, as soon as he set up his camera, all of the birds

took off, and the apartment next door started with the

leaf blower and the lawn mower. Arg!

Getting the microphone in place.

Showing Grant the GBBC website.

Filming the filling of the feeders. Hot stuff!

More feeder filling.

In front of the "Otis House". Built from plywood, 2x4s and roofing

left over from when the new roof was put on this winter and named for a

character from a scary B-movie.

Interview with Karen Munday. She was wonderful.

Thanks Karen!!

Filming Michelle looking through the binos.

She really didn't want to be on camera but she

succumbed to the pressure!!

Now, filming from Michelle's view. As I said earlier,

there weren't many birds to see or film. Figures!

Tom attempting to get more birds on film. There were a

few Lesser Goldfinches so we hope he got them.

Grant doing his wrap-up shots. Thanks again Grant, Tom and Karen!

It was a blast and hopefully we will reach a lot of potential GBBC counters!

As always, Good Birding!

Great backyard Bird Count!!!

It's almost time for the National Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC)! Get you pen and paper ready folks. This February 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th is the GBBC and anyone, and I mean anyone, can do it! You don't have to be a member of Project FeederWatch, the Audubon Society or anyone else (although, being a member of those organizations has a lot of benefits!). There are no fees and the only thing we ask is that you devote (at least) 15 minutes over the 4 day period to counting birds. If you want to spend 15 minutes on one of those days, great! If you would like to spend 15 minutes each day, terrific! You want to spend 40 hours over the four days, I will come and wash your car!! You can spend as much or as little time as you want. Just write down (or keep a mental note) of what species you saw and how many you saw. It's that easy!

After you record the species/number, just go to http://gbbc.birdsource.org/gbbcApps/input anytime after Feb 15th and enter the birds you saw.

If you are like me, you have tons of questions. You can go here for the how-to guide http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/faqs-1/how-to-questions/ or you can stop by here for more general questions http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/faqs-1/how-to-questions/

Even if you don't think you have the time (or inclination) to count birds and then go to the GBBC website and enter the info, please email us (nepobirds@yahoo.com) what birds you saw (between Feb15th-18th) and how many and we will enter them on your behaf. Just let us know what area you are from and we will do the rest!

As always, the more information gathered, the better. So please, take a few minutes and count some birds where you are. Your backyard, the park, the coast or wherever you find yourself. Thanks and good birding!!

Just an update

First, I called the Audubon Society to see how little #92 (our injured Pine Siskin) was doing. They said he's doing great! Eating and maintaining his weight, moving around a lot and in the next couple of days, they will move him to a rehab cage so that he can have more room and exercise his broken wing. Good for him!

Still on the lookout for those wrentits. A fellow OBOLer is going to come over and do his great imitation of the wrentit. I guess he has had quite a bit of success calling these little guys out. So, we are crossing our fingers!

Other than that, it's been pretty normal in the yard. The Varied thrush and the Spotted Towhee seem to be getting more comfortable in the yard. They are getting closer and closer to the house and don't immediately fly off when we go into the yard. It's nice to see them up close.

I've posted a few photos taken recently (hopefully soon, we will be getting a much better camera). Most of the better photos on this site were taken with my sister's camera. We just have a little 3 megapixel, 3x optical zoom guy. I would love something with 12x or even 18x optical zoom! I'd be a pic snapping fool. Wishing you all the best and good birding!

A quick trip

We had an errand to run in Beaverton yesterday. We stopped at the duck pond just off of Murray and Scholls. We were only there for a few minutes but we were able to see Canada Goose, Mallards, Canvasbacks and Wigeons, both American and Eurasian! We hadn't been able to add any of these to this years list, so it was very exciting. This was our first attempt to identify waterfowl of any kind. We were able to identify some of them from our books and the photos we took but others weren't in any of the books nor could we find a good site online. If anyone has a link to a good site for identifying waterfowl, it would be greatly appreciated. Here are some of the photos from yesterday. What types do you see?


Then, on the drive back to Portland, we took the back roads and were able to spot an American Kestrel and at least 3 unidentified hawks. Not too bad for just running an errand.

Let us know what you think. Thanks and good birding.

So far this year

This is a list of the birds that we have seen so far this year:

1) Am. Crow
2) Am. Goldfinch
3) Am. Robin
4) Anna's Hummingbird
5) Bewick's Wren
6) Black-Capped Chickadee
7) Bushtit
8) Canada Goose
9) Cedar Waxwing
10) Chestnut-Backed Chickadee
11) Common Raven
12) Cooper's hawk
13) Dark-Eyed Junco
14) Downy Woodpecker
15) Euopean Starling
16) Fox Sparrow
17) Golden-Crowned Kinglet
18) Golden-Crowned Sparrow
19) House Finch
20) House Sparrow
21) Lesser Goldfinch
22) Merlin
23) Northern Flicker
24) Pine Siskin
25) Purple finch
26) Red-Breasted Nuthatch
27) Red-tailed Hawk
28) Rock Pigeon
29) Ruby-Crowned Kinglet
30) Sharp-Shinned Hawk
31) Song Sparrow
32) Spotted Towhee
33) Steller's Jay
34) Townsend's Warbler
35) Varied Thrush
36) Western Scrub-Jay
37) White-Crowned Sparrow
38) Yellow-Rumper Warbler

I feel like I'm thanking people at the Academy Awards and I am so afraid that I'm leaving someone out...hopefully not. Not too bad for a beginning of the year backyard list and we have a couple of bird walks planned so I'm sure we will be adding a lot more! This is, by far, the most exciting hobby in the WORLD! I swear. Every day brings hope and promise. Every season bring wonder and awe. Every flit out of the corner of the eye, every crunch in the bush, every unidentified chirp might just be a new species! How awesome is that???? Pretty dang cool, if you ask me.

The Budgerigar, pictured above, flew into our yard last May and hung around for a while. We saw him a few times after that and then, unfortunately, never again. I think we can safely assume that we will not be adding him to our list this year. We searched high and low for an owner, newspaper, Internet, shelters...never found a report of a missing pet. So, here in Seth and Michelle's Birding World, we can only deduce that he must be a stray from a wild flock of Budgies! It could happen.

Good birding to all!

Great Backyard Bird Count

The GBBC is coming up quickly! Mark your calender for Feb. 15-18. I don't know how many of you take part in the GBBC but I think everyone should. I know there are a lot of different counts to participate in out there but this is one of the easier ones. The only commitment they want is for you to watch birds for a least 15 minutes between the dates of Feb. 15-18. and then report those findings to them. For a complete breakdown of how it works just follow this link http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/howto.html and you can get all the info.

This year, I decided to become a GBBC ambassador to help spread the word. Last year, Portland recorded 125 checklists and 85 species. I know that we, as a fairly decent sized birding community, can do a lot better than that! You can submit any amount of checklists that you want to. If you only want to submit one for you backyard, that's great. If you went to Sauvie's Island or Mt. tabor or where ever, you can submit checklists for those as well. Whatever you feel capable of doing, helps.

I know it's cliche but, Every Checklist Matters. It really does. So please, if you are interested, go to the above link or email me with any questions you might have. My door is always open (more cliche). Even if you don't have the time or inclination to enter the checklist yourself, email me your results and I will enter them on your behalf. Just let me know where you were, for how long were there and what you saw. If you have a little story or photo, send those along, too!

Portland (or Oregon for that matter) wasn't even in the top ten for checklists submitted. Oregon was #7 for total species reported (203) and that's awesome, but I still think we can do better. Oregon submitted 1,141 checklists. Michigan was 10th and submitted 2,437 checklist. I would love it for us to make it into the top ten! I have my work cut out for me but, fear not, I am prepared!

Good Birding and please help spread the word about the GBBC! Thank you.