End-of-year memories

Yes, as a matter of fact I DID start this post on New Year's Eve and didn't finish and publish it 'til today so I back-dated it. Why do you ask?

It's been a topsy-turvy year for this birder. I've had some great highs--birding in Cape May with the Flock and meeting new Flockers Lynne and Katdoc, birding the marsh with Susan and Laura, seeing some great lifers like my first wood duck (finally)--and some crushing lows. All in all, it's been a year of evolution, of spreading my wings and taking risks.

For this last post of 2008, I went through my archives and found some moments that I thought you might enjoy reliving with me:

January--birding and observing the locals in the Big Valley of Central Pennsylvania

February--in an especially lucky convergence, a raptor lands right outside the window at work AND I have my camera with me

March--an April post covering my March 30th marsh birding trip with visitors Susan Gets Native and Laura from New Jersey, including an episode of CSI: Bird Dorks

April--in which I discover a new place to bird that yields some great sights

May--a tie between this big birding day afield and the next big birding day on the marsh, both featuring a lot of photos

June--my first-ever owl heard in the wild!

July--we all go camping and fishing, featuring lots of photos including a pretty decent one of an Eastern Towhee

August--in a non-bird-related post, we meet Dr. Matty McMatterson, best friend and confidante of the beginning birder, the Watson to my Holmes (only I'm not addicted to drugs)

September--I get my first-ever photos of an accommodating bald eagle

October--my crazy-ass trip to Cape May to meet the Flock during the Autumn Migration weekend

November--in which the vegetarian beginning birder ponders the Thanksgiving turkey tradition

December--the beginning birder finds out she's going to need a field guide for Western birds. . .

It's been a long year, and a long winter (and it's only just started!), but 2009 promises to be a much warmer and more bird-filled year. Not to mention the fact that we're getting a new president! I wonder if Barack Obama is a birder? I bet Michelle Obama likes birds. She's probably cool like that.

David Attenborough's The Life of Birds

If you haven't seen at least a few parts of David Attenborough's BBC series The Life of Birds, you're really missing something. I realize this series is years old, but you may have missed it.

Through the magic of Netflix, I've been slowly watching the DVDs of the series. So far I've seen the first two discs, which included chapters like "Fishing for a Living," "The Meat Eaters," "The Mastery of Flight," and my favorite so far, "Signals and Songs." Attenborough's fact-filled narration alone is brilliant and insightful, to say nothing of the endearingly hilarious sound of his accented voice saying, "THE Life... of Buhds." LOVE IT. I love him!

He is always sure to identify every bird he shows us (though not necessarily by specific type; for instance, he'll talk about "grebes in North America" without telling us that they're Western Grebes. But this is an anal-retentive birder's complaint). He travels through tropical rainforests in his cute little jungle khaki outfits and roams the icy coasts in sturdy outerwear, sits on the windy tundra getting his hair blown all over the place, gets attacked by a VERY territorial bird who knocks him over at one point, feeds bunches of hummers with a hand-held feeder, lies on a darkened beach watching shorebirds eat--you name it. For an older guy, he's in great shape and he hikes and climbs and crouches with the dexterity (and dirt-under-his-fingernails abandon) of a much younger man. He's like a hipper and soothing-voiced version of Marlin Perkins of Wild Kingdom fame (though I have to credit Perkins and of course Jim Fowler for kindling my absolutely psychotic love of nature and nature shows).

The birds themselves are spectacular: the lyrebird that can mimic a camera shutter sound complete with motordrive, the cock-of-the-rock and its spectacular plumage, sunbitterns and their crazy wings-out threat display, fieldfares who dive-bomb a raven and try to cover him with their poop (which could ground him and get him killed, BTW) to get him to leave their area. Attenborough covers the evolution of birds, mating, raising young, flight, eating, behavior--in short, everything you want to know about birds in general as well as specifics about a huge number of birds the world over.

If you haven't seen this series, WATCH IT. Especially if you've always dreamed of going to Peru or Costa Rica or Africa but couldn't afford it.

WARNING: the following is only for extreme bird-nerds and avian-kooks like me; You know who you are. I have to confess that I've been watching the episodes while holding my Birds of the World and both my eastern and my brand-new western Peterson's field guides; each time Attenborough mentions a new bird, I look it up, figure out specifically what type it is, note its geographical range, and read more details about it. (I warned you.)

Best yet, I checked it out on Amazon and it's only $34! Add to cart, baby. Add! to! cart!

I leave you with a completely unrelated photo: I saw these beautiful clouds while I was out this afternoon and couldn't resist. They almost look like lenticular clouds that form over mountaintops.

Note: More New River potential lifers posts coming up. Been kinda distracted of late, and my mind's just not fully on the birds.

Cool clouds on a sunny day

The temperature warmed up yesterday to a balmy 45 degrees, though it's a little cooler today. I didn't go birding, but I did find some cool clouds:

A fine example of melting butter clouds. In this next photo, I'm hoping you can see that it kinda looked like a bunch of little scoops of clouds, little swirls. My phone's camera didn't do too good a job of capturing it, but try to use your imagination and click for huger:

On this same road today at lunchtime, I saw a pretty red female American Kestrel. I loves me some kestrels.