BIRDCHAT for Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Messages are displayed in the order they were received.  Subject  From  Time   Petition to help protect birds   Allison Wells   6:50am   Roger Tory Peterson   Bill Saur   8:17am   Re:Roger Tory Peterson   pauloboute   11:24am

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Subject: Petition to help protect birds
From: "Allison Wells" <awells(AT)nrcm.org>
Date: 16 Apr 2008 6:50am

Hi, Chatters,

 

There is a petition initiated by the Boreal Songbird Initiative and
other bird conservation groups working to protect the boreal forest
("America's bird nursery") that you may want to sign.

 

The link to the site where I signed this petition is below:

http://saveourborealbirds.org/

 

Allison Wells

Senior Director, Public Affairs 

Natural Resources Council of Maine

3 Wade Street

Augusta, ME 04330

(207) 622-3101 Ext. 280

www.nrcm.org

If you love Maine, help protect it - become a member today!

 

Help protect the nature of Maine. Become a member today!
http://www.nrcm.org/giveagift.asp

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Subject: Roger Tory Peterson
From: "Bill Saur" <bsaur(AT)earthlink.net>
Date: 16 Apr 2008 8:17am

Folks:

If you are interested, I did some research and wrote an article on Roger
Tory Peterson's self-described most exciting birding experience. It is
posted here:

http://thepassionatebirder.blogspot.com

The one he chose as his most exciting is, as you would imagine, spectacular,
but the three runners-up I thought were incredible as well. This was a fun
article to do.

Regards,
Bill Saur
DeForest, Wisconsin
USA

mailto:bsaur(AT)earthlink.net
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Subject: Re:Roger Tory Peterson
From: "pauloboute" <pauloboute(AT)uol.com.br>
Date: 16 Apr 2008 11:24am

Hello!

Well, I think it would be appropriate to share the following article from Dr.
Roger Tory Peterson:

DOGGY BAGS FOR BIRDS by Roger Tory Peterson in 
 May/June 1991, Bird Watcher’s Digest 
 
 Caracaras and black vultures eating boiled rice? 
 Rails and barbets gulping down leftover 
 spa­ghetti? If we ourselves find these items of 
 food palatable, why shouldn't they? When we are 
 feed­ing birds we are so imprinted by the 
 traditional suet, sunflower seed, and cracked com 
 formula, de­signed for woodpeckers, chick­adees, 
 cardinals and finches, that we seldom try 
 anything else. At a fish camp in the Okavango in 
 Af­rica, little black crakes and two kinds of 
 barbets came to the feed­ing tray to finish off 
 the spaghetti we had not eaten. I am sure that 
 robins would love spaghetti, so why not put it out for them? 
 
 In this short article I shall ex­pand on that 
 idea and would wel­come any far-out observations of your own for my files. 
 
 To birds, the most important thing is food; and 
 as an obsessed bird photographer I find that if 
 any bird-whether a heron, shorebird, or duck-is 
 giving all of its atten­tion to catching things, 
 I can cau­tiously approach much closer than I 
 could otherwise. If the bird is just standing 
 there, nervously aware of me sneaking up with a 
 big lens that stares at it like the huge round 
 eye of some monocular monster, off it goes. But 
 if swarms of little fish or shrimp are commanding 
 its atten­tion I can shoot a whole roll. 
 
 'Tween Waters Inn at Captiva is where I stay when 
 I am photo­graphing at my favorite birding 
 hotspot in Florida, the Ding Dar­ling National 
 Wildlife Refuge. Down by the boat dock there are 
 four herons, each one a different species, which regard the place as their own.
 
 The smallest and oldest heron is a little blue, 
 an adult, which has been around the dock for at 
 least eight years. It has never bred, and is so 
 dependent on the leftover bait that the fishermen 
 give it, often by hand, that it probably could 
 not make it on its own. A bum? Not really. Its 
 contribution is aesthetic and educational. Many 
 of the weekend tourists would otherwise never see 
 a little blue if they didn't take the loop around 
 the nearby Ding Darling. Hundreds of people have 
 taken this bird's picture, and Sir Peter Scott 
 commented when I introduced him to the little darling: "How sweet!" 
 
 Next lowest on the Ardeidae family totem pole at 
 'Tween Wa­ters is a snowy egret, nearly the size 
 of the little blue but with its plumed finery a 
 bit more of a showoff. These two little fellows 
 in turn give pride of place to an el­egant great 
 egret that strides the rails ofthe yachts, then 
 comes in to get bits and pieces after the 
 clean­ing board has been hosed down. But the real 
 action occurs while the fish are being gutted; 
 the resident great blue heron with its murderous 
 bill dominates the squabbling pel­icans. If 
 another great blue flies past it is quickly chased away by numero uno. 
 
 Up and down the coast, nearly every boat dock 
 or waterside estate has its own heron or pelican 
 that regards the place as its own. These birds 
 claim avian rights, and if they get a handout so much the better. Why refuse? 
 
 In Audubon's day, should a pel­ican come within 
 stone's throw of a pier it risked being hit by a 
 rock. Today people throw fish. I recall the 
 immature brown pelican that walked into the fish 
 market on the waterfront at Venice, Florida, and 
 stood right in front of the counter! 
 
 Is such behavior counter­productive? Will such 
 birds ever be able to take care of themselves? 
 Most of their kind will lead normal lives if we 
 do not destroy their en­vironment. On the other 
 hand, these few human-oriented indi­viduals give 
 people great pleasure and are often the first 
 introduction many people have to the natural world. 
 
 Storks can become almost as trusting as herons, 
 as I learned in Captiva. On one of the canals an 
 elderly resident, a Mr. Howell, feeds some of the 
 local wood storks. Each day as many as 20 or more 
 walk up from the water's edge and wait in the 
 garden until he appears at precisely 4:30. While 
 they gather round he tosses small fish. There is 
 a scramble and a lot of flapping for each fish. 
 While I watched, one bird even tried to walk into his living room. 
 
 At a fishing camp in the Pantanal, in southern 
 Brazil, the ja­birus, those strange storks with 
 swollen necks, sponge off the fish­ermen, who 
 toss them those fish that are too small to keep. 
 It was in the Pantanal, a horizontal land­scape 
 of swampy islands and wa­terways in southern 
 Brazil, that I witnessed the caracaras eating 
 boiled rice. I was with Victor Em­anuel and his tour group. 
 
 The caracaras were not the only . birds that 
 gorged themselves on the soggy goodies. As we 
 left the table after lunch in the open-air dining 
 room, Brazilian cardinals, gray with red 
 topknots, flew in and perched on the teacups and 
 saucers. Birds of other sorts flocked in to eat 
 the leftover rice that the cook dumped on the 
 sidewalk outside. Not only did cardinals by the 
 dozen make short work of the white stuff, but 
 also lesser finches, blackbirds, a jay or two, 
 and, surprisingly, kis­kadee flycatchers and even 
 guira cuckoos. One Muscovy duck, ap­parently a 
 wild bird, shoveled things down with its flat 
 bill, ig­noring the half dozen black vul­tures 
 that were also getting their share. But the 
 unreal thing was to see the caracaras; I counted 
 19 at one time, some so close that I could get 
 frame-filling head shots showing every wart on 
 their naked red faces. On the Kissimmee prai­rie 
 in Florida I would have been lucky to get a 
 distant shot with my 600 millimeter lens and its 1:4 ex­tender. 
 
 We know that caracaras are opportunistic 
 scavengers, but why rice? My guide, young Paulo, 
 said that until recently a great deal of poaching 
 had gone on in the Pantanal. Many caymans, the 
 crocodilian reptiles that swim among the lily 
 pads, were killed illegally for their hides. Once 
 skinned, the bloody carcasses were left for 
 scavengers. With such a dependable supply of 
 food, caracaras prospered, raising plenty of 
 young. But now that restrictions on poaching have 
 tightened and ecotourism is on the rise there are 
 very few cay­man carcasses. A good percentage of 
 the rice-eating caracaras are im­matures, 
 probably inexperienced birds hard put to make a living. 
 
 In my recent column about New Zealand I 
 reported seeing on Kapiti Island an unusual 
 feeding device­a slim carved trough about four 
 feet long and several inches deep which held 
 sweetened water. This brought in the kakas, the 
 strange endemic parrots that were formerly more 
 widespread in New Zealand. Noisy and incredibly 
 tame, they even accepted prunes from us when we offered them. 
 
 Tuis, iridescent blackish birds with a strange 
 hairdo and two white tufts dangling from the 
 throat, also took their turn at the trough. We 
 should experiment with troughs like these, with 
 sugar-laced water. I am sure orioles would 
 pa­tronize them as would tanagers and grosbeaks. 
 
 In the nearby woods at Kapiti, wekas, which are 
 flightless rails, would take bits of cheese from 
 the hand, and so would one-but only one-of the 
 saddlebacks, an en­dangered New Zealand endemic. 
 What I would suggest is that we use more 
 imagination in our efforts to attract birds. 
 Let's get beyond the white-breasted nuthatch level. 
 
BRAZIL GUIDE 
 
 To the editor: (in July/Aug 1992 Bird Watcher’s Digest) 
 
 Dr. Roger Tory Peterson sent me a copy of your 
 May/June 1991 issue, [in which he] made mention 
 of my guidance during his visit to the Pantanal. 
 As he says, I am young (28), but I decided 
 already to dedicate my life to birds. So if any 
 of your readers are coming to the Pan­tanal, I 
 will be glad to show the best places for bird 
 watching. 

Paulo Boute.

WWW.BOUTE-EXPEDITIONS.COM 
BLOG: http://brazilianpioneerbirder.wordpress.com/ 
pauloboute(AT)hotmail.com (Alternate) 
Tel.: +55 79 32231791 / + 55 65 3686 2231 

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