Blue Lizard Birding Blog

A Big Day for a Small Bird

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 08:34:47 -0400

The Red Knot bracelet is the sign of a concerned birder. Concerned for the welfare of the horseshoe crab. Concerned about habitat. Yes, the birder that wears this bracelet has given of his hard earned cash to support the purchase of prime horseshoe crab habitat.
How can you become a bracelet wearing birder? By donating to the Delmarva Ornithology Society’s Birdathon. All money collected goes directly to buying habitat that will be donated to Prime Hook Wildlife Refuge. Many shorebirds depend upon the horseshoe crabs eggs to feed them on their migration to the breeding grounds. Red Knots are the poster bird for the lot of shorebirds that feed on the eggs.

If you use the PayPal option and put (Red Knot) in parenthesis the same field after your name you will receive a red Knot bracelet. Here is the link to learn more about this Birdathon.

http://www.dosbirds.org/bird-a-thon/
Help buy habitat for the Red Knot and other shorebirds.

Turkeys in the Jungle

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 21:04:58 -0400

Antigua

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:13:21 -0400

Antigua Guatemala is a colonial city at the foot of several volcanos. The streets are narrow, cobbled only open to one lane of traffic. Along the edges of theses streets are thick plaster walls and double doors. The most beautiful doors, some fancy, some plain.
When I walk through the streets of Antigua my imagination is overworked, curious as to what treasures lie behind those doors. I have been behind a few. The ones I have been through are enchanting. The double doors open into beautifully tiled driveways to park your car. Beyond that you are lead into quaint hotels with fantastic courtyards full of hummingbirds and butterflies. The bigger hotels will have giant trees that overhang the tops of the roofs and hold Baltimore Orioles or Summer Tanagers holding court till they have to leave paradise and go north to breed.
Modern mayan girls eating ice cream.

We were there as the town was preparing for Semana Santa--Holy Week. Brilliant blazes of royal purple cloth were draped around the town in expectation of the grand celebration when the streets are lined with multicolored flower petals in intricate decorative carpets to mark the way. Easter is huge in latin America.
I’m glad and sad to miss this week in Antigua. The city itself is a delight for the senses. Take the street signs.
They appear to be regular signs. But a closer look reveals...

They are made from painted tiles. A lovely touch.

We found a lovely courtyard with a fantastic little cafe, where Jeff could not resist feeding the female great tailed grackle that came in to mine the crumbs form the tourists. she then would come and sit on this fishes mouth to drink. I tried to get a photo of that. No luck but the fountain sat very still for me. The Grackle is in the background with a bit of bread in her beak

After Jeff and I got haircuts and massages we met Lisa and Julie in the Main Square to get on with our birding trip. It was nice to get a bit of culture mixed in. We especially loved the fountain Thanks goodness for the internet because I found the history behind the design.

Designed in 1739 by Miguel Porras, one of the city's renowned colonial architects, the Fuente de las Sirenas (Fountain of the Sirens) is one of many gracing Antigua's principal plazas and courtyards. These fountains were more than just ornamental. Although piped water reached important buildings and dwellings in the seventeenth century, fountains served as water supplies for humble dwellings, even into the present century.

Amazing city in the midst of volcanos and fantastic birds like the bushy-creasted jay.
You’ll have to go yourself to see one! Book your flight now!

New Book

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:20:51 -0400

I my self have not seen it except on Amazon! But I am excited to get a copy in my hands. I am a big fan of birding the Rio Grande Valley and I am curious to read the stories by Kenn Kaufman and Jimmy Carter about places I am familiar with. I am very happy and excited to read the story of the Green Breasted Mango by my dearest girlfriend Marci Fuller of BirdBound.com--she is the pack light queen of birding. I’m wondering who else has stories in the book.
I think I’ll go order it now.

Guatemala --Land of Color

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:02:44 -0400

The most amazing thing about Guatemala is the color. The color of the costumes of the people the color of the birds and the flowers. Coffee is a color that adds to the economy of the nation. Like water the color flows in the streets on the backs of the Guatemalan people going to and from market.
I was in this gorgeous land 15 years ago and have since praised it as one of the best places on earth to visit. The colors of the textiles in the markets. The cloths in which the babies are carried vibrant blues, purples, reds and greens. Travis was a baby a baby then and I carried him in such a cloth. Rainbows that is what this land is made of.
It is in the birds--parrots, toucans, even the turkeys. I can only imagine what the Mayan palaces looked like all colored in orange red and ochre.
For the first three days Jeff and I stayed stayed at a lodge, Los Tarrales along with our dear friends Lisa White and Julie Zickefoose. Our hosts Andy and Monica make this lodge especially delightful. Los Tarrales has been managed and loved by Andy’s family for three generations and it shows in the people that work and live on the land. Los Tarrales not only is a fantastic eco-tourist birding lodge but is a working shade grown coffee plantation as well as a supplier of floral greenery and ornamental houseplants.
Checkout their website and then book your trip to a little piece of paradise on earth. See the color of Guatemala for yourself. Don’t wait because you will want to go again and again once you’ve been there once.

Florida Scrub Jays 2

Fri, 1 Feb 2008 12:34:35 -0500

If you stood there long enough.....

It’s all about the peanuts. They researchers feed them peanuts a few times a year so they can see the leg bands. Space Coast Birding Festival is what the researchers call a scrub jay holiday. Santa Peanut?

Florida Scrub Jays

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 10:45:14 -0500

This had to be the whackiest field trip ever. But quite fun all the same. Jeff was scheduled to be a leader. When the bus arrived at the spot the people were told to be back in two hours. The head leader handed out peanuts and whoosh--People scattered. That left me with Jeff. It was lovely. We walked down the path and like everyone else held out our hands.

to be continued....

Lake Apopka/Zellwood

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 08:55:24 -0500

Thursday a week ago we piled on a bus with Wes Biggs and Andy Wraithmel and headed to Lake Apopka. Where our first stop was a foggy field where we tried to look for...anything. We heard Cedar waxwings and several other birds but the fog obliterated all. So we piled back into the bus and headed to our next stop. Now one of the things that makes this festival great(and you all know my heart is with the Rio Grande Valley Festival) is the amount of conservation that goes into it. Almost everywhere you go has a story of what is being done to help the environment. Lake Apopka was surrounded by marsh land that had been drained for farm fields that the farmers would occasionally flood to kill nemotodes and then wash the contaminated water back into the lake. The lake basically died. So Florida bought out the farmers and started cleaning up the lake and the surrounding fields. Toxaphene is the big problem. At one time the lake was full of pelicans and they started dying. This is when they found out how big of a problem they had. The water is constantly being turned over and mixed with alum to fix the toxaphene to particulate matter this has helped. there are birds on the lake and more and more of the fields are being flooded and revegetated all the time. It is a nice success story. We saw many black bellied whistling ducks and fulvous ducks there. I got to see a sora rail, it was too sneaky to show the group. Common moorhens were posing as purple gallinules. Tricky creatures. Upon finishing the trail we got back into the bus and went back to the foggy spot and saw the Say’s phoebe gorgeous. We did some more duck viewing and had a picnic lunch. Then we tried for a barn owl. It was there inside a pump building. It looked to be to be in prison from where I was viewing.

We had to drag the bus driver away from the owl. One of the things i love seeing happen at festivals like this is how heavily many of the bus drivers get into birding. Our bus driver had his own binoculars. He was very curious in find out about an upgrade on his WWII binoculars. The day before our trip he pointed out 2 bitterns. I found it cute when he told Jeff “No...that is not a red tailed hawk. It’s too small.” Gotta love the spirit.

Have you seen similar interest from bus drivers at festivals?

Space Coast Birding Festival

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:58:41 -0500

We arrived in Titusville on the 22 of January to a lovely hotel with almost no internet! I had very good intentions of keeping up with all the bird action minute by minute. Well that wasn’t gonna happen cause I was having too much fun! So I will blame the internet connection.
We started out at the Dixie Crossroads Restaurant which is owned by Laurilee the Festival organizer and probably the most famous birding restaurant in the country.
We had the meet and greet with the other leaders and speakers. Then we were off to our wireless internet hotel. To get some rest for our first field trip and workshop with Alvaro Jaramillo on gulls. The gull talk was great. Alvaro helped everyone all figure out the placement of the primaries and secondaries by using a chicken bone as a guide. Yep...that is what it takesto learn gulls. Chicken wings! The talk was great the room was freezing! I had never had a full on gull workshop I think it may have helped.
So here is the tricky part driving to the field trip at the dump to see gazillions of gulls in a convertible! Now that is living dangerously! When I say gazillions I mean gazillions.

One of the most amazing thing to me was all the gorgeous ibises eating the garbage. There were tons of woodstorks and bald eagles also.

The workers thought we were cracked...If only they knew how cool their gulls were...two glaucous gulls and an iceland gull. Plus on Saturday Alvaro found a California gull. Go Alvaro and all that after a great night of merriment!

A couple of other things amazed me...they guys sitting pretty under the umbrella..it was not a pretty smelling place to bird. The other thing was this truck labelled GEL Recycling?

All in all birding at the dump was a pretty amazing experience.

Space Coast

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 11:10:05 -0500

Jeff and I are on our way to Florida for the Space Coast Birding Festival. Lots of people want to know why is there a Space Ghost Festival. Well he was a really cool super hero. But now there is no Space Ghost Festival. Teh Space Coast Festival is a birding festival along the Coast where Cape Canaveral is. The most lightening strikes in the US occur here. Jeannie lived with Major Nelson near here. The Dixie Crossroads Restaurant is here. Plus tons of birds as close as you can get anywhere! It is a fantastic place for a birding festival.
Anything else I’m forgetting...or don’t know about?

A warm thought

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 10:44:10 -0500

I took this picture in the warm south Texas climes of San Benito in November during the birding festival. I miss banana trees. I used the leaves in my cooking. Hummingbirds love to feed at the flowers. It is so cool to eat bananas grown on your own tree.
Any warmer?