New River 2011 People pix

So it's begun...the New River Bird and Nature Festival.  It's only day one, so we don't have a bounty of hilarious stories and photos yet.

It's been a long day, so for tonight I'm going to just show some people photos, so you all can see who's here:
(I don't have photos of everyone yet....and some of the ones I do will get me in trouble)

Laura:





Dawn:





Nina and Lynne:
(I don't remember what was going on. But I bet it was hilarious)



Sigh....Mary Ann and Debra.



First night together....a toast to the Flock and to nature blogs!


More to come....much, much more.  We haven't even STARTED.......

Meet me in New Jersey

Back in the fall of 2007, I agreed to go meet some fellow bird bloggers in Cape May, New Jersey.  The lineup was originally much larger, but in the end only four of us were there to meet on that beautiful shore.



Delia
Susan Merchant
Laura
and moi

I remember it being so strange, so awkward, to meet these people that I had only known through my computer screen up until then.  I had flown all the way to New Jersey to go birding with strangers??


 From that first meeting, from jokingly calling ourselves "The Flock", a wave...a movement...a thing has occurred.  Now numbering in the teens, we are a group...a passel...a force.
From all over the country, we gather to laugh, to love, to bird, to cherish. To giggle uncontrollably.  To be shushed by trip leaders.  To ingest very large amounts of wine.  To get glared at by other, more responsible birders.

To quote Delia in a comment about our last Cape May Weekend:
"I don't know why we all don't just admit that, with the exception of KatDoc, we all went to Cape May to see each other and be rowdy! Were there even any birds there?"


I cherish these women (and one man) so much more than I ever thought possible.
In a little over 24 hours, I will be packing the car and heading to Cape May once again, to frolic in the waves,
to cry at the peregrines and osprey overhead, to get frustrated over shorebirds, and to once again wrap my arms around my Flock.

Their house blew away and all we got was a T-shirt

As you may have read on this post, some of us here Bloggers have been telling Debby Kaspari's story and letting everyone know how they can help.

Well, we have another way you can support the cause: T-shirts.

Murr over at Murrmurrs (a shoot-a-drink-out-of-your-nose-funny blog) designed this shirt for Team Kaspari on the Zazzle website and you should head over there and get yourself one.

You can choose from an assortment of colors and styles, and ALL of the profit goes to Debby and Mike's rebuilding efforts.
And I'll tell you why I love the shirt so much...the meaning behind it. Two forlorn scissor-tailed flycatchers surrounded by a *Flock* of birds of other species who are bringing in nesting material. Murr's a genius.

Just go and do it. You'll be glad you did.
Nest in peace.

When it's all gone, what do you do?

Last month, a grim and deadly parade of tornadoes blew away homes across Oklahoma. I always feel something for the people caught in the path of one of nature's most powerful forces.
I remember the panic and feeling of utter helplessness of being a breakable human as a tornado has roared nearby. I've been close to tornadoes twice in my life, and that is twice too many for my comfort.
When updates started popping up on Facebook from Tim and Julie regarding their friend Debby Kaspari, who was right at tornado Ground Zero I waited with trepidation.
When it was all over, Debby, her husband Mike and their cat Gizmo had survived the F4 tornado inside a shelter built into their garage floor. But they could see light shining in the gaps around the shelter. That wasn't right. They emerged from the shelter, and this is what they saw:

(Photo by Debby Kaspari)

Their house, their cars, their stately oak trees. Smashed or gone.
Take a moment to live in their shoes. Your house is now a pile of rubble. Your cars have large trees on top of them. Your clothes have blown away. Precious photos are shredded.
And if you are an artist like Debby, the paintings that have poured from your heart...are they still in one piece?


As the days wore on, Debby and Mike were able to collect some of their belongings, but the task is ongoing. Since they are in an unincorporated section of Little Ax, the rubble has to be removed by the homeowners. They even found some things that didn't belong to them:

This is a pickup truck that was carried from the gas station down the road...a MILE down the road. And the gas pump nozzle was laying next to it.
(Photo by Debby Kaspari)

It sounds like an insurmountable task, picking your life from the destruction. Both physically and mentally.
We build our lives cocooned in our homes, and when that home is gone, how does that feel?

The blogging community, a gathering I am proud to be a part of, is sending Debby's story out into the world and asking our readers to go to the link at the top of my blog on the right and donate to the cause through PayPal.

But you gotta have friends.....

"I get by with a little help from my friends..."
~Joe Cocker

"Friends are God's way of apologizing for our families."
~Unknown

I've always been grateful for the friends of high quality I have picked up over the years. My best friend, who I somehow get to see about twice a year, knows everything there is to know about me and she still loves me.
My friends of the Flock are the newest addition to my stable of blessings. From right up the road to all over the country, I can count on help when I need it, and they know that they can get the same from me.
As I said in this post, I am effectively camera-less. When Mary heard of this, she made the hugely generous gesture of offering her spare camera for me to borrow until I could get a replacement.

I was floored. We nature lovers/birders know how much our cameras mean to us, so this was a big deal.

It arrived today, and since it arrived in the afternoon, I didn't have a lot of time to going birding or anything. So I took random photos of random things, you know...just to kick the tires so to speak:

Hazard light button (macro from about a centimeter away):


A dumpster at the United Dairy Farmers from really far away..the zoom on this thing is FABULOUS, and when it comes to nature photography (and dumpster photography for that matter) zoom is very important:


Magnolia bud that somehow avoided freezing last night (macro):



Hooper (from about 25 feet away):




And also at the UDF, Kathi striking a pose:


There are lots and lots of little functions to learn...and I can't wait to master them all.
Tomorrow I'm taking it to RAPTOR to see how it makes my birds look!
THANK YOU MARY !!!!!!

It's not really about the birds all the time...

On a bird walk at the Cincinnati Nature Center this weekend, it was less about the birds and more about plants and things underfoot.

I am so thankful for Nina. Not just because she is a sweet, wonderful person, but also for her brain, chock-a-bock full of nature info. She was able to point out new plants for me:

Dogbane


Agrimony...I will always remember the name of this plant, because it rhymes with "alimony" and I started calling it the "Give it all away plant".

I found a nice big skull in the underbrush, so we puzzled away at who the previous owner might have been.

It even had teeth marks from mice just trying to get their RDA of calcium.


(Brain case)
"Must....have...braaaaaiinnnnsss........."

At the end of the walk, Kathi squirreled it away and weaseled the answer out of one of the naturalists, I guess. It was a raccoon.

Ultimately, as you have read on this blog and others, it's really about the people you bird with:

Nina


Kathi (pointing out the yellow-throated vireo that I barely saw) and waaayyy in the back is Mary Ann, of Facebook fame. Mary Ann doesn't have a blog, the poor dope.

(I feel that half of my life is on the blog and the other, juicier half is on Facebook. If you aren't on Facebook, go try it.)
Mid-to-late summer isn't the best time to go bag a lot of birds, but who cares? A morning spent with the Cincinnati members of the Flock and a poor dope without a blog (but she's fun and nice, anyway!) is an excellent time to catch up, laugh until we fall down and scare off what few birds there are to see.

Pass me that bottle, Wine Hag

One of our favorite Flock members happens to work part-time at a winery. Kathi brought...oh, 37 bottles...of wine to the New River Bird and Nature Festival a few months ago, and we are still reeling.

Harmony Hill Winery was open for business on this day of Independence, so we met there to taste some wine and join in some general frivolity.

*By the way, I think this is one of my favorite holidays. As a tiny English colony, we were sick and tired of taking crap from The Man, so we did something about it. Rock on, America.*






I like these people.



Here's Kathi the Wine Hag, doing her thing:

She knows I detest dry wine, so she found me some uber-yummy peach stuff.

It was goood.


And since it's all about the blog, I had to take pictures of everything....

And there's Donald! Glad he showed up...added some testosterone to our girly giggling.


Kathi provided the wine, I provided the cheese and crackers:

Helped to soak up the wine I ingested...about half a glass too much.
Burp.


It rained the whole time...I said to Kathi, "Feels like we are back in West Virginia."
The umbrella had a leak. I am soggy.

Kathi brought one of her sweet dogs....Holly. We love Kathi's dogs...they have manners.
(Don't tell Kathi...but every time she got up to get something, I slipped some cheese and pepperoni to Holly. But Kathi will find out anyway, when Holly barfs it all up on the carpet tonight.)


"Mama. Give me cheese?"

If you noticed Kathi's necklace...that's one of the gifts lovingly packed and shipped all the way from Peru to the Flock in West Virginia by another blogger....Mel.
Hi, Mel! We love you!

Now, I'm not a wine-drinker, really. Give me a beer, or if I am feeling saucy, an Amaretto Sour. But knowing Kathi has opened up new experiences for me. I spent a lovely, wet afternoon sipping wine and laughing with friends.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE BLOG. The Blog is powerful. The Blog is good.

Altitude Sickness. Yep, that's what we will blame it on.

We were way above sea level. It obviously had an adverse affect on us....


Just random things from the Trip that make me giggle out loud, still...two weeks later:

Beth:
Beth is like a Tickle-Me-Elmo. Except you don't have to tickle her to get her to dissolve into tearful laughter. Just look at her. That's all it takes.
I got to go out with her on our last day in the field...and she got me into trouble more than once with the Big, Bad, Scary Trip Leaders. I would just glance her way, and away we would go.
And she has a wicked sense of humor. We get each other, and that alone makes her a priceless friend.

A new saying popped up at the Farmhouse, and I wonder if we can make it a national thing?:
Riding on the van, back from Cranberry Glade (and praying aloud for Geoff Heeter not to drive the van over the side of the mountain), or was it sitting at the kitchen table? I can't remember...
I told a story about a boyfriend who asked me who the "Black Sheep" was in my family. I thought and thought about it, and couldn't come up with anyone...then I realized that the Black Sheep of my family was me. After finishing the story, Jane smiled at me, and said,
"Susan, you need to embrace your Inner Sheep."

We used that all week.


An interlude that I alluded to in some comments a few days ago:
I had too much to drink one night...and I needed to pee. Instead of walking alllll the way to the bathroom inside, I instead asked Lynne and Beth to spot for me as I ambled off into the bushes.
Just as I dropped trou, a car's headlights illuminated me. Lynne and Beth called out, "Car!"
I tried to get farther behind the bush, but with my jeans around my knees, all I could do was stumble further into the RASPBERRY CANES I was trying to pee behind.
(In case you don't know, raspberry canes have like....thorns)
I start yelling "OW! I'm in raspberry canes! OW!!!", peeing all over the place, yelling some more, "OWWWW! OWWWW!", then fell down into the canes "OWWWW!!!!" ...looked around the bush and Lynne and Beth are bent over in the road, hysterical.
Yeah. Thanks guys.

Saturday night, jamming to the Swinging Orangutangs, I heard Mary say that she didn't know how to "shake her shimmy" (i.e. jiggle the "girls", if you know what I'm sayin').
I was feeling loose enough to show her, bending over a bit and "shaking my shimmy"...
not realizing that I was "shaking my shimmy" right in the face of Jeff Gordon's MOM. (She's a lovely woman, by the way)...
I finally realized what I was doing, and I bent down to apologize to her. She said, "Oh, that's okay. I've seen worse."

In case you are thinking about migrating with The Flock next year to the wild, beautiful Heaven that is West Virginia, I warn you...
You will have the time of your life.
You will wet your pants with laughter.
You will see birds everywhere you turn.
You will be treated like family.
You will cry when you have to leave.
You will want to come every year thereafter.















(Photographing the Stone Chicken)

Paco, the Cabana Boy and other people we messed up for Life with our hyena-like yelping.

Opossum Creek Retreat has a very special employee. Whether you need cookies, or toilet paper, or an ice water while soaking in the hot tub...there's just one man to call.

Paco. The Cabana Boy.

When the gals at the Farmhouse ran out of TP, Paco ran out to Wal-Mart and got us some.
A TWENTY-FOUR pack of TP. Thank you, Paco.

When we needed more washcloths, Paco brought a stack of them high enough to make a bed out of. Thank you, Paco.

When Kathi and Kathie were relaxing their Warbler Necks away in the hot tub, Paco was good enough to drape a towel over his arm and hand-deliver some nice, cold bottled water. Thank you, Paco.


We even asked him for foot rubs and to put bubble bath in the hot tub, but I guess everyone has a limit.
Poor man...I wonder if the sight of EIGHT tipsy, giggly female birders begging for massages has scarred him for life? He did sprint to his truck when he left.

Geoff Heeter, give that man a raise.


We were loud and boisterous on this trip.
That's an understatement.
It would start as a simple, innocent statement between say, Mary and Lynne...then someone's exhausted brain would interpret it as something else, and the giggles would begin. Then they would just glance at each other and the van would start rocking back and forth with hyena-like howling and wiping of tears and wheezing for breath.
We got 'shooshed' by the trip leaders more than once. :)~

While driving back from My Perfect Day, Lynne was quiet...and I couldn't shut up.
We rounded a bend near the Farmhouse, and saw a man on a horse, with some dogs standing around. I said to Lynne, and I quote: "Oh, look Lynne! There's a man on a horse!".
And Lynne FREAKIN' LOST IT. I nearly had to carry her in the house, she was so out of her mind with helpless laughter.

Now, WE know that we had the time of our lives. And most people at the festival enjoyed us enjoying ourselves. More than once, people would come up to us at dinner and say, "None of you were on our trip today, and it was SOOOOO BORING! We were with a bunch of Sticks In The Mud!"
I only heard of ONE couple who didn't think too much of us. They didn't like "Those Blogger People". Snort.


Quickie video of Paco and Kathi, out at the hot tub:

Things I learned in West Virginia

Beth did a post here about some things she learned on our jaunt to West Virginia. Got me thinking about what I learned:



1. (I knew this already, but the festival really brought it home for me)
All birders are NOT stodgy, buttoned-up geeks.












(Tim plays the cowbell with the Swinging Orangutangs)












(Mary gets her freak on)



2. Some people can't read.



3. Some birders like to drink. A lot.



Let me add: This was not all of the wine, only about half. This photo was taken in the middle of the week...we had burned through about 27 bottles already.


4. Birders are eco-friendly, and can be trusted to recycle.

Coke, wine and bottled water. Breakfast of Champions.



5. After a long week of heavy birding, some birders can't take it anymore and they snap.

More COWBELL ! ! !

The last night of the festival, we rocked out with the Swinging Orangutangs. Basically unheard of for a birding festival, we were treated to wonderful, loud music, and we reciprocated by getting on our feet and letting our hair down.
The big surprise for us was when Tim was asked to come on up and play the cowbell for a sizzling rendition of "Low Rider"....
I apologize for the low light, but you can make out details when the zillion Flock cameras are going off.
(The hyena-like yelps are the Flock, whooping and hollering for our "Cock of the Flock!")
(I also apologize for the bouncy videography. I think I had four too many beers.)
(In fact, this video is no good. So just sit back and enjoy the COWBELL!)

Introducing Tim, Cowbell-er Deluxe!



Moral to this post...Birders and rock music MIX very WELL!

Give me something I can groove to.....

I found my people at New River...and I want them back.

Bird Banding

Bird banding has a long history. The first person to attempt to mark a bird was Quintus Fabius Pictor, somewhere around 200 b.c. This Roman officer was sent a swallow from a besieged garrison and used thread on its leg to send back a message.
Falconers in the Middle Ages would affix plates to their falcons with seals of their owners.

Banding (or "ringing" if you're British) for scientific purposes began in 1899 with Christian Mortensen, a Danish schoolteacher, using zinc rings on European starlings, hawks, storks, etc.

Banding comes in many forms: leg bands, neck collars, radio transmitters, dyeing of feathers and wing tags.
Aside from banding the bird, measurements like weight, toe pad length, wingspan, etc. are collected.

From the USGS:
The first records of banding in North America are those of John James Audubon, the famous American naturalist and painter. In 1803 he tied silver cords to the legs of a brood of phoebes near Philadelphia and was able to identify two of the nestlings when they returned to the neighborhood the following year.

Today, the program stretches from the Canadian Arctic to the tropics of Latin America, from Newfoundland to the far Pacific islands, and beyond to places like Siberia, Greenland, and Antarctica. Wherever North American birds go, bird banding is there.

Virtually all species are, or have been, banded. Currently, 1,200,000 birds are banded, and 85,000 recovered, each year. More than 63,000,000 birds have been banded since the beginning of the program, and 3,500,000 have been recovered and reported to the banding offices. Millions more have been recaptured or resighted by banders.

These banders include federal and state conservation agencies; university associates; avocational ornithologists; bird observatories; environmental centers; nongovernmental organizations; environmental consulting firms, and other private sector businesses. Currently, more than 6,100 banders are operating in US and Canada.

If you are a birder, you know the value of bird banding. The sheer physical abilities of the birds, the distances they travel, their life spans, trends in migration and a species status among a changing environment...all are known thanks to banding.

Some fun wild bird banding stats:
Gray catbird banded in Florida was found in Pennsylvania 13 years later.
Atlantic puffin....lived for 31 years, 11 months.
Great Horned Owl...lived for 28 years.
Red-tailed hawk: 28 years, 10 months.

I have a favorite saying, and I wish I knew who coined it. Here it is:
We conserve only what we love.
We love only what we understand.
We understand only what we are taught.
Non-birders or those who have not had the opportunity of this knowledge might have some opinions about banding birds. Maybe they think we are "harassing" wildlife, that we are dooming a bird to die by placing a metal or plastic band to its leg. I'd like to help erase those opinions now.
Bird bands are very light. They are sized appropriately for the species that will wear it. A hummingbird's band weighs less than one-hundredth of a gram! By comparison, a hummingbird wearing a band is the equivalent to a human wearing a wrist watch.
We can't give a bird our phone number so they can call us to report on its whereabouts or how it's doing. A recovered band is invaluable.
Banding is done with the utmost respect given to the bird, and a bird is kept in hand no longer than absolutely necessary.
If there are those who still have doubts about banding, remember this:
We have been banding for 100 years in this country. It's working.

Now, onto some photos from a great horned owl banding:

The one chick in the nest is banded....


...then gently lowered to the ground to let wildlife photographers get photos of this bundle of grit and attitude that they have been obsessively watching for weeks:



As luck would have it, an orphaned owlet needed another nest, and she was brought out to compare with Owlet #1:


Meet your new sister:


They are approximately the same age, and feeding two babies is more than manageable for the parents. (Great Horned Owls can't count, anyway!)

Owlet #2 looks up at her new home.
The youngin's were placed in the nest, and given a free meal. Reports from a certain Owl Sitter say that both chicks are still in the nest and the parents are preening and feeding both owlets.



This little event brought out some weird but friendly people:

Nina, in a strangely familiar pose....

Also my mother, kids and Kathi, aka KatDoc:



I made everyone strike a pose that seems to have become a tradition...Everybody POINT!!!

Julie blows into town, packing books and Bacon

Last night, Julie was in town, so I went to listen to her lecture (and see The Bacon, of course).


The crowd was diverse...some young, facially-pierced University students, some bloggers and a large amount of older birder/nature-oriented types.
The talk was good, as it always is with Julie.
Afterward, Nina and I and a few women whose names I didn't catch, went for an official Audience with Chet Baker.
When I know Chet is going to accompany Julie on her trips, I come fully armed with dog treats and a toy.

It took Chet maybe 5 minutes to kill it and dismember it.



Poor toy. We lined up some of the pieces and marveled at their resemblance to rib bones...



Chet and his Southwestern Ohio Harem:

One to call my own

I must have whined enough. I must have looked pitiful enough when everyone else used theirs.

Lynne, possibly the sweetest person I have ever met, got herself a new iPod recently. And her old one, complete with birdJam, (Hi, Jay!) needed a home.
She might be embarrassed by this post..she's the type to do something wonderful for someone and then flap her hands and say "Oh, no no no..." when they show their appreciation.


It arrived today...
I was expecting a little iPod with a tiny black and white screen. What I got was a big iPod with a big color screen.



And an iMainGo speaker carry-case thingy.
Now I won't be the dummy in the group who doesn't know any calls except for owls, hawks and falcons.
I have a month to learn some warbler calls so I can impress Kathi, our By-Ear-Birderess, on our trip to West Virginia.
And speaking of West Virginia, Lynne should plan on relaxing on the porch of the Farmhouse as I massage away all the aches and pains in her feet from hiking and birding. And when she grows weary of all that walking, I will be carrying her on my back.





Now I can go outside, blast barred owl calls and annoy my neighbors.






Love ya, Lynne. Thank you.