Impressions of Cape Cod in Winter

I don't travel to Cape Cod all that much, even though it's one of New England's most popular summer destinations.  But last month, I found myself in Dennis, in the wintertime, in the ice and snow.  And it was a very unique experience.

I got a Lifer!  Which is to say, I got to add the Surf Scoter to my Life List, the big list of all the birds a birdwatcher has encountered and/or observed their whole life (or, really, since they started keeping track).   I love beautiful ducks and this fellow is a stunner!

Can I recommend visiting the Cape in winter?  Well, not much is open after Labor Day and won't be open again until Memorial Day.  It's eerie, but the birdwatching and beachcombing was terrific.  Common Eiders, Black Brants, gulls of all sorts, and even a wintering Common Loon were among the other birds I got to see and sketch over the weekend. 

As a bonus, here's a scan of a whole Sketchbook page! I just like to share ~*~The Process~*~ sometimes, you know?

The Birds of Easter

Had a lovely Easter Dinner with my Aunt and Uncle, who live near a forest and have a bird feeder up all season.  I had the good sense to bring my little Zen Art Sketchbook mentioned in the last post and basically filled the last few pages.  Behold!

The Birds of 2014

A little while ago, I mentioned that I had been listing all the birds I'd seen in one year for the first time ever.  Since I kept my list in the (reasonably good) Peterson Field Guide iPhone application, it's easy to post the final list as a series of screenshots.

And so here they are, every bird I saw in 2014, from the Song Sparrow to the Brant:

My Moderately-Sized Year

It was New Year's Day when it occurred to me, looking at my friend's bird feeder and the birds visiting it, that I'd never maintained a list of all the birds I've seen in one year.

And that, simply enough, is how I started what I came to half-jokingly refer to as my Moderately-Sized (as opposed to Big) Year.  I happened to have an App on my phone that allowed me to make a checklist of birds and I just started right there, over breakfast.  First bird of the year was a Song Sparrow.  I just recently hit bird number 151, an Eastern Wood-Peewee, so I feel like I ought to write something about all this.

First, here are my rules:

1) The bird must be listed in the Peterson Birds Pocket Edition iPhone App.

2) The bird must be alive. 

Corollary to Rule 2: This means captive birds are fair game. Somebody call the ABA police.

If I check off the name of a stuffed specimen, it best be an extinct/nearly extinct species (some of which are listed in the PBPE because why not?  If you're wondering, this hasn't come up yet.)

3) I must either see the bird or hear it. 

Corollary to Rule 3:  The "Red-Eyed Vireo Corollary".  I am allowed to check an unseen-but-heard bird off my list as long as I or a companion can I.D. the call with reasonable accuracy.

I picked a heck of a year to start doing this.  I've been traveling quite a lot, mostly for family events.  This has, as you may have noticed, kept me off the Internet but has kept me in nature.  The world is more alive when you pay especial attention to the birds.

Now, a few thoughts on the Peterson Birds Pocket Edition App: It's... okay.  At this point I'm using it as a checklist mostly.  It's convenient more than anything else, and is not at all a replacement for a good dead tree edition field guide, especially if you're a beginner.  Being able to listen to recordings of the birds is kind of nice, but the Audubon Nature Guide apps are far better in that respect, as they have a wider variety of sounds.

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Sketch of the Unspecific Length of Time! I'm going to go ahead and say that this Bald Eagle was a highlight.

Pemaquid Point and Eastern Egg Rock Studies

We spent a few days on the Maine Midcoast recently, and I carved out some time to do these landscapes and sketches. All of these are watercolor on recycled watercolor Sketchbook paper. Head over to Flickr to see the bigger versions.



Pemaquid Point Lighthouse



I feel like, with it's lighthouse overlooking a sea as angry as an old man trying to send back soup in a diner, it's "locals only" art gallery and quirky-as-all-get-out gift shop, Pemaquid Point is Maine as imagined by people who do not live in it.



Still, I'm also a sucker for an iconic rocky coast dotted with little islands, like this one in nearby New Harbor.



I was also taken by the surreal world just underneath the piers.

But seabirds are what we came to see. So here are the residents of Eastern Egg Rock including the iconic Puffins and a swimming Bald Eagle:





I'd highly recommend Hardy Boat Cruises' Puffin Safari.  The sea is rough, but the journey to and from the island is quick and the field biologist hosts, many of whom were directly involved in the ongoing Puffin and Arctic Tern conservation project, are informative and entertaining.

In Which We Have a Truly Massive Garden Update, and Dunkin Donuts Goes America on Everyone's A**

I cannot guarantee that the first half of this post will make any sense to those of you readers outside the New England area. I am also going to suggest (mild spoiler) not reading this half during breakfast. But I think we can all agree that Paramount dropped the ball when they chose not to release the Captain America movie on Independence Day weekend, even though it doesn't seem to be hurting the film much.

Fortunately, their unusual promotional partner, Dunkin Donuts, did no such thing, releasing their tie-in specials just in time for July fourth. Now, I've recently been weaning myself off coffee and it's partially because my local Dunkie's has done something wimpy to their brews (in my day, we didn't need flavor shots!) I'd had my Obligatory Coffee Coolatta back at Comicon and would have been done for the summer season... until this ad, starring a dog with a punny name who wants to kill all humans, started running:



As you may know, if there's anything I can't pass up, it's campy patriotism. So I was pretty determined to get my hands on a Dunkin Donuts cup with Captain America's shield on it. But something far more spectacular awaited me inside.



A TRIPLE red white and blue Coolatta.



Now, it wasn't until I had the drink in front of me that I realized it isn't a physics-defying triple-blend of some kind. The three flavors (raspberry, vanilla, cherry) are each separated in their own little compartments. (In hindsight I have no idea how I thought the alternative was supposed to work.) The taste is basically straight-up sugar with some recognizable flavor and loads and loads of food coloring. Same goes for the matching donuts.

Which is to say, shortly after I hit the bottom of this thing, I may have thrown lots of red dye and patriotism up into the lake. That'd be a sincere thumbs-down on the triple-Coolatta then. At least the cup is cool.

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So what of the Gardens?



I apologize for the blurry picture, but I've been seeing the Oriole and his lady-friend quite often lately.

I also met a couple of cuties at a garden center:



These two fledglings were flopping around one of the center's greenhouses and being cute but cacophonic. I never got a good look at their parents, so if anyone has any idea what species they are, let me know in the comments (best guess is some kind of Icterid). Here's a better look:



And this might be my favorite photograph of a bird I've ever taken. It's a reminder of just how light they really are!



Over in the Victory Garden, we've got flowers everywhere! These are on the summer squash.



The peas are also in flower and they've grown quite tall. I think I spot a pod or two in there!



And lastly, I finally got to do this:



That leaf is fresh from the garden.  I just realized that this kind of thing is only okay to brag about because they are plants.

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Sketch of the Day!
I should do more of these...



Next week, oh-ho-ho, I have quite the book to review. Until then, enjoy this wonderful essay on the legacy of Harry Potter and this very funny Rifftrax montage:

Feederwatch Season Begins!

Once again, it is time to set up our bird feeders and fill them with delicious treats for our favorite winged theropods. It's time to switch our weather alerts to Celsius. It's time to participate in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Project Feederwatch.

Data on the migratory and feeding patterns of backyard birds is very valuable, and Feederwatch is probably the easiest of Cornell's citizen science projects to participate in. It couldn't be simpler:

1) Choose two consecutive days per week. Weekends are fine.

2) Keep an eye on your backyard during these days. It doesn't matter if it's all day or a few minutes.

3) Keep a log of (a) the weather and (b) how many birds of each species you see at a time.

This last part is often confusing for some people. If you look out the window on Saturday and see twenty House Sparrows (as an aside, it's okay to estimate if the birds arrive in big flocks), write that down. If you look out on Sunday and see fifty sparrows, scratch out your "twenty" count and write that down. This is because of part 4:

4) At the end of your second day, go to the Cornell Data Entry website and record the LARGEST number for each species you have seen over your two days.

And that's basically it. Really, all the information you need is at the Cornell website.

There are a few readers last year who were curious as to what birdseed I use. As you can see in the picture above, I use a blend. If you're making your own blend, start with sunflower seeds. Note that Black-Oil Sunflower seeds are easiest for birds to consume. I remember years ago being able to purchase bulk bags of Striped Sunflower seeds, but it seems as though those seeds are being relegated to being human food. You can experiment with Striped if you can find some that haven't been roasted, flavored, salted, or what-have-you.

Add some unsalted, unflavored, un-messed-around-with peanuts. You can experiment with other nuts (especially tree nuts), and small dried fruits like raisins and "craisins" are usually a big hit too, especially in winter. Avoid trail mixes as these often contain chocolate (as bad for birds as it is for dogs, poor things), yogurt, and other weird foods. The very patient among us can start collecting fruit seeds, like I have with the pumpkins (argh but not with the record number of Gala apples I consumed this autumn.)

Speaking of fruit, overripe fruit can go over well with wild animals. But, and I cannot emphasize this enough, DO NOT BE CHEAP AND TOSS STALE BREAD OUT THERE BREAD IS BASICALLY THE WORST THING YOU COULD FEED A BIRD!!!!! Read this Tetrapod Zoology post for more - much more; more than you could ever possibly want to know - about this. Aside from fruit, there are also... let's call them more exotic options. (For the record, this is a line I will not cross.)

So I usually get one big bag of sunflower seeds and a little bag of mixed seeds (this covers the "little stuff"), a jar of shelled peanuts, and a big box of raisins. And I can usually get all of this for a decent price at Ocean State Job Lot. (I have a future post in me arguing against expensive bird seed -- but keep in mind that the primary consumers of my seeds are house sparrows. Your mileage may vary.) I mix everything together in --this is very important-- a big plastic tub with a lid that closes very tightly. I even go further and keep my tub well off the ground and weigh the lid down. You want the critters to stay in the yard, not venture into the basement.

And speaking of critters...



Tolerance of mammals at your bird feeder is another "mileage may vary" issue. Some people are totally cool with the occasional squirrel. I am too -- as long as they are scarfing up whatever has fallen out of the feeder and aren't raiding the feeder itself.

To that end, I can't recommend a squirrel-proof feeder highly enough. The one I use is a hopper feeder that has a counterweight design; there's a little door above the opening that snaps shut if something that weighs a lot more than a bird sits on the perch. (It's not this model, but it looks very similar.) It has the added advantage of making sure huge crowds of house sparrows can't empty the feeder in one sitting (which, unfortunately, they absolutely will).

There are other designs, including the spectacular Yankee Flipper (here's a video of this thing in action, with a perfect soundtrack, and I get the sense that Droll Yankee invented it just for the LOLs.) If you don't have access to these feeders, a "baffle" works pretty well, and you could always try greasing your feeder pole. Best thing to do, really, is resign yourself to the fact that, if a squirrel could smell birdseed on Mars, he'd find some way to get at it.

I set my feeder in an area that's relatively hidden from the street, not too close to the hedges where the sparrows hang out and where predators could lurk, and in kind of an open spot among the lilacs (not to close to the trees that squirrels could jump from them to the feeder, but close enough for the birds to feel they could dive in them for safety if the neighbors' cat comes to investigate.) And, of course, it's in full view of my biggest window, without being anywhere near the window. Having birds flying around near a big window is just inevitably going to end in tragedy. On a similar note, keep your cats and dogs inside during the mid-morning and afternoon, as those tend to be the peak feeding times.



While we are on the subject of Carnivore Confusion, I tolerate hawks. The very few I have seen always go after the house sparrows. If you do not enjoy the sight of a Sharpie PWNING a sparrow in your own backyard, then what kind of birdwatcher ARE you?

I'll write more about bird feeding once I actually get my feeder up, as there are a lot of issues yet to cover. For those of you starting your counts early, good luck! Here's to a great season!

It's Hummingbird Migration Time!

A few days ago, I had a teeny tiny flight-capable maniraptor with a beak sized and shaped very like an embroidery needle who subsists on a diet of straight-up sugar water hovering and feeding just a few inches from my squishy, easily-injured big clumsy primate eyeballs.
It looked like this:



(I apologize for the blurriness, but it's a wonder I got this photograph at all. If you look close, you can see the very beginnings of the namesake sparkly red throat feathers, meaning this little guy is a young male.)
Yes, the Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds are showing up en mass at my feeders. I had just one up during much of the summer, but I now have three, of varying sizes and shapes. They're all the standard kind you can get for under ten bucks at Evil Big Box Store, but honestly they work quite well. They seem to enjoy the little feeder that looks similar to this design best (mine has many more feeding ports). But the Opus Oriole Feeder (which the Orioles have staunchly ignored, go figure) is gaining in popularity, especially after I made smaller hummer-friendly perches with garden wires as seen here:



I never know what the consensus is on store-bought nectar mixes. Every spring it seems as though we get a warning not to use red dyed food, even though I've never heard any circumstantial reports that such food is dangerous. But I stopped using store-bought food last summer just in case -- and also because homebrew nectar mix is so ridiculously easy. Here's what you do:

1) Put three and a half to four cups of water in a teapot (the less water you use, the sweeter the mixture will be; my hummers seem to like the 3.5 cups best). Bring this to a boil.
2) Put one cup of sugar in a heatproof container. A large-ish saucepan works well, just as long as it can contain the water you are currently boiling.
3) When the water is boiled, remove it from the heat, then pour it in with the sugar and mix it together. Set it aside to cool and fully dissolve for a while, then refrigerate it in a pitcher or repurposed iced tea bottle. And you're done!

Some notes: No, it isn't dangerous for humans if they accidentally drink this; it's just sugar water. Yes, you must use sugar, not honey and certainly not fake sugar/Splenda/Sweet-N-Low/whatever. Nor shall you use brown sugar, confectioners sugar, or powdered sugar. Just ordinary table sugar will do. My rule of thumb: if I wouldn't put it in my coffee, I wouldn't make the Hummingbirds drink it either.

Wikkid Important Edit: Sheri Williamson of the lovely "Life, Birds, and Everything" blog commends my use of homemade sugar water because the dyes and preservatives used in store-bought nectar mixes are linked "with DNA damage (oh God, WHAT?), abnormal behavior, abnormal sperm, reduced reproductive success, reduced body and brain weight, and... increased hyperactivity symptoms." The idea of a hummingbird suffering from increased hyperactivity is going to be tonight's nightmare fuel.



And please brew some nectar and set up a feeder. It's been an unusually dry summer and these little guys have a hell of a lousy trip ahead of them.

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Sketch of the Day!

You haven't had enough of Hummingbirds have you?



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There's a new teaser trailer for "Tangled" "Rapunzel" out and...



I've said before that if you go back and watch old trailers for the Disney classics, NONE of them inspire confidence. But this... this is like a "Scott Pilgrim" level of boneheaded advertising (and I say this because if "Rapunzel" bombs, it'll be for the same reason "Pilgrim" did: the wildly misaimed and utterly baffling marketing campaign.) Between this and the loathed "BLAM!!!" -uh- things, this is why you can't have nice things, Disney.

2010 Great Backyard Bird Count Live-Blogging part the second!

Sunday, 2/14/10
9:19 AM - Happy Valiumtime's Day! I got up early enough to see the woodpecker "couple" again. Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww........
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2:30 PM - Well, I get to record one new species so far today. There's a fluffy Mourning Dove who's been chilling out in the pile of grass clippings, probably enjoying the heat.
The Nuthatches are starting to do this again:

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Monday, 2/15/10
1:00 PM - Went out to breakfast with my family. I can add thirty Starlings and six Herring Gulls to the big list. Man, I am going to forget that today is also a Feederwatch count day.

12:04 AM - Been a long, weird day. But I got to go into Boston a little and here's the final tally for the weekend:

Habitat(s):
deciduous woods
suburban
urban
freshwater
salt water

Species Count
Canada Goose 10
Herring Gull 25
Great Black-backed Gull 2
Rock Pigeon 15
Mourning Dove 1
Downy Woodpecker 2
Blue Jay 2
American Crow 18
Black-capped Chickadee 3
White-breasted Nuthatch 2
European Starling 18
Northern Cardinal 1
House Sparrow 25

2010 Great Backyard Bird Count Live-Blogging part the first!

The Great Backyard Bird Count is here! The (second or third) most wonderful time of the year! There's still time to join in (hence the really early post). I will pop in every so often this weekend to make note of what I've seen, maybe share some field sketches.
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Friday, 2/12/10 - Feederwatch Friday First:
Downy Woodpecker 1
American Crow 3
Black-capped Chickadee 2
White-breasted Nuthatch 1
European Starling 1
House Sparrow 15

Now for watching the feeders on Friday. Hopefully this isn't too confusing.

11:17 AM - Three Chickadees and a small flock of House Sparrows. I'm going to set up near the window that overlooks the feeders and finish some Photoshoppery today, so you will get to enjoy my lacking the ability to type understandably on a laptop when I come and check in.

1:42 PM - Set up near the window. Counted twenty sparrows, two nuthatches, two woodpeckers, and two pigeons. Heard a flock of crows but didn't see them; will count when they come home to roost.

3:00 PM - Haven't seen many birds since the last update, but I painted a baby dragon:

Awww...

4:00 PM - About to take a mental health break from painting. Starting to get dark out. No new birds. Painted another dragon though.

In the new adaptation of Michael Ende's "The Neverending Story", the part of Falkor will be played by Jeff Bridges. :)

6:00 PM - Final tally for today:
Three Black-capped Chickadees
Twenty House Sparrows
Two White-breasted Nuthatches
Two Downy Woodpeckers
Two Domestic Rock Doves (Pigeons, whatever)
Eighteen Crows! (Big flock that, as predicted, flew home to roost.)
Not bad biodiversity for just from my window. It's now dusk, so I'll pick this up tomorrow. There is still time to participate!
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2/13/10 - Saturday
11:25 AM - I can add two Blue Jays to my tally. Also, I saw the male and female woodpeckers feeding together at the suet. Awww...

1:45 PM - I might have spotted a Sharp-Shinned Hawk a minute ago but, sadly, it flew too fast for me to verify. Here's that Fairy Dragon all finished. Had some fun with different brushes.


7:00 PM - So the only new species I can record today are:
Two Blue Jays
One Cardinal
Aside from them, the same birds from yesterday showed up again. But in the meantime, look what I made (finally):

As this post is getting a little unreasonably long, I will start a new one for Sunday-Monday.

In which Trish whines like an old lady about annoying trends at the Book Store.

So I was in a book store the other day and I brought my camera along. I went ahead and recorded some of the irksome things I've been noticing lately:



Now I know you've all run into these "Whatever-Ology" books recently. (SO much Flash in that website. All I wanted to do was learn who the illustrators were. They're Wayne Anderson and Douglas Carrel.) The art is nice for the most part, but the main thing that gets me all chagrined is that they're full of stuff. Maybe I'm being an old lady about this thinking that an illustrated book should stand on the merits of it's artwork and not on how much glitter they can package in, how many jewels can be embedded in the pages, and how many books-within-books they contain. One last thing:



People inventing creatures to inhabit alternate universe versions of Australia, please stop doing this. (Yes, that's a kangaroo-dragon and a koala-dragon. Because no matter what kind of animal you are, living in Australia will make you evolve into a marsupial.)



Manga, manga, manga. Now you know I like Anime. But it's also sadly impossible to discuss the "let's learn how to draw by drawing in this one style" trend without sounding Old (I wonder if earlier illustrators had the same problem criticizing the Draw Fifty Whatever books?) A gateway drug is a gateway drug (there's got to be a better analogy for "a thing that gets you into whatever your passion is"), but it just seems like every "learn how to draw" book out there is in this same one style. Wait a second...



A. WTF?

B. Hmmmmm?

For a while, it looked like I was safe from the 3-effin'-D trend in the bookstore... until I saw this:


(Note: I couldn't find the credits for the illustrators for either this or the Manga books. Go figure.)

This series of oversized books might be the most annoying thing I saw at the book store. Again, maybe I'm an old lady but I thought the point of an illustrated book about dinosaurs was to -call me crazy- illustrate the dinosaurs, showing what they looked like.



Can you even identify this? Did the person who drew (or badly rendered, from the look of it) this picture even know what this animal looks like? (HINT: Draw a cross between a weird emu and a weird ground sloth. Add fluffy feathers. Add Wolverine's claws.)

A less recent trend in Books that Do Things Books Don't Normally Do is the Book That Makes Noise. These were wildly popular about fifteen years ago, and I recall thinking to myself the first time I saw one, "man, why don't they do a Guide to Bird Calls in this format?" (They eventually did, a decade later. Which is kind of hilarious.)

You don't see publishers making these very often anymore. The most recent variation I found was this, which hurts my inner child:



Why, why, why?

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Hey, take a look at this thing, which exists:
Now, why do I not think strapping a hummingbird feeder to your face is a good idea?

Project Feederwatch -and- A Very Richard Williams Christmas Carol

Project Feederwatch begins this weekend!!! Oh frabjous day! Instructions here! Please join this year; they need your data!.

These three books were how I got into the world of amateur ornithology (I am not a Birdwatcher; I don't gotta catch 'em all). Truthfully, the battered copy of How to Know the Birds (you can't even believe how out of print this one is) was the real gateway drug. I found it in a pile of very old, hilariously outdated science books that were just going to be thrown away from a school library. I found it, read it, stuffed it in my purse and carried it around with me (most of my field guides shared that fate; I was twelve), colored the pictures in, wrote notes in the margin, and basically loved the book to death - though it's still holding together and still readable.
As far as other amusing bird feeding things I saw over the past year...

I spotted this on the back of an older bag of bird seed. Let's face it, a lot of people think bird feeding is the most square hobby ever (in other news, normal people think that placating flight-capable mutated Velociraptors is square.) This isn't helping.

I saw this in a Big Box store and I *almost* saw myself buying it. Then I remembered that I had long ago dedicated myself to standing up for unpopular animals (I had helped launch this trope for crying out loud) and above all else did not want to give people who advocate only feeding the pretty birds my ten dollars. Even for the sake of an experiment. (How would this even work anyway? Blackbirds eat anything!)

After doing some research and comparing prices online, I came to realize that you can't beat Ocean State Job Lot. I stocked up last week and scored 100 pounds in total for about fifty dollars. (The aforementioned eight pound "I Only Want to Feed the Pretty Birds" mix retails for $14.00.) I keep my seed in two big storage tubs.
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"Fantastic Mr. Fox" opens soon and it'll be interesting to see how this does against "A Christmas Carol". Speaking of, I've a special treat for those of you who dislike the idea of a 3D film based upon a Charles Dickens book.*
This 1971 animated short film adaptation was produced by Chuck Jones and directed by Richard Williams. It is the only film version of the story thus far to ever win an Oscar, and deservedly so as it is not only accurate to the letter of Dickens' book but also perfectly captures the eerie mood. (Tellingly, this is the one version of A Christmas Carol that is barely ever shown on television.) Hit the Fullscreen option to get the most out of this:

* - And aside from the linked CHUD review, I also like FARK poster Steve Zodiac's comment:
"I don't think I want Zemeckis anywhere near anything animated, especially Roger Rabbit. Hollywood has decided that:
1) Only 3D (I think he means CGI here) is worthwhile.
2) Capture Motion or whatever they are calling roto-scoping these days is good because it's cheaper.
3) We don't consider animated movies to be real movies anyway.
4) Only well-known actors should be used as voices. Has-beens are ok.
5) Is RIGHT OUT. (It took me a minute to get this one too; think Monty Python)
6) People who have never directed a successful animation feature are not only ok for the project, they are almost required.
7) Plot? Continuity? A good reason to make the Film beyond the fact that even a crummy sequel makes money? This is Hollywood! We don't have those things for real movies either!"
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Have I got any readers in the Pittsburgh, PA area? If so, the oddly-named IlluXCon is starting today and a large number of awesome artists are attending.

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And I hope it isn't too late to share my "Sesame Street" tribute. Click for large.