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By Ben, on August 30th, 2010
So I was riding my bike Saturday morning with Eric. It was hot. Hotter than last weekend, when the nice west wind and cloud cover brought a noticeable (not strong, just noticeable) coolness to one or two shady areas along the ride. This morning there was no such thing. It was hot.
Anyway, the heat reminded me that we were still in or near the dog days of summer, which I wrote about earlier, in connection with the moon. The Latin for dog days, of course, is diēs caniculārēs. (I inexplicably left that out of my post on the Dog Days [...]
By Ben, on August 25th, 2010
On last weekend’s scouting expedition to western Palm Beach County we found a new life bird for me: Upland Sandpiper. Finding a life bird is getting to be a rarer and rarer event. Now that my Florida list is over 250 species (nowhere near the “full count” of 500+ that have been documented in the state), it takes a bit of effort to get a new one. For example, I’m expecting to have to canoe the mangrove islands down in the Everglades to get Mangrove Cuckoo (unless I get lucky on Lignumvitae Key). And if I want to see a [...]
By Ben, on August 22nd, 2010
As I mentioned last week, you have to start early if you want to beat the August heat when birding the western areas of Palm Beach County. Here’s an example of how early I’m talking about: we’ve been on the road for a half-hour already, and have just made our first stop, STA-1W:
At 10 square miles, most places would probably consider STA-1W to be a giant filtration marsh, but this is Florida real estate: it’s all about location, location, location. Situated at the northwestern edge of a Truly Giant filtration marsh (the 227 square miles of northern Everglades habitat otherwise [...]
By Ben, on August 13th, 2010
Today I took a day off from work, for the first time in a long time. I needed to, because tomorrow I’m leading a field trip for the Audubon Society of the Everglades to the flooded fields of one of the larger farms in western Palm Beach County. We head out there every year around this time, because the farmers flood the fields to keep the soil from disappearing, the weeds from growing, and other bad things from happening. All this shallow water attracts lots and lots of wading birds. And so, naturally, it attracts birders as well. We’re very fortunate [...]
By Ben, on July 31st, 2010
I’m preparing a slide show for an upcoming talk on the Birds of India, and one of the most charming ones is Athene brama, the Spotted Owlet:
Tiny little birds (hence the diminutive “owlet”), they are nonetheless mobbed mercilessly if they don’t choose their daytime hiding place carefully. At the Okhla Bird Sanctuary where I snapped the above image, they roost in a giant banyan tree at the western end of a large weir, close by a house. They’re almost always there, but the trouble with finding Spotted Owlets isn’t knowing where they hang out: it’s spotting them! They are very [...]
By Ben, on July 18th, 2010
Even though the summer sun can be quite hot here in Boca, in one respect we don’t have it nearly so bad as people who live farther north. Our maximum temperature is usually quite a bit cooler than the maximum in places like Washington, D.C. or New York. We may get warm sooner, and stay warm longer, but for us a killer heat wave is the mid-90s.
As Henry, Portier, and Coyne describe it, the average annual maximum temperature in southern Florida is 5° less than “most areas east of the Mississippi River and south of the Great Lakes” (7).
That said, [...]
By Ben, on May 13th, 2010
Every spring and fall for the past five, maybe six, years, I’ve participated in the North American Migration Count for Palm Beach County. Last weekend I was responsible for two areas: Lake Ida Park and Dog Park in Delray Beach and South County Regional Park in western Boca Raton.
I began well before dawn in my driveway:
and made it to the lake well before sunup; here’s the sun rising over the lake about 20 minutes after I’d already started counting:
A few birds there were:
And many birds there weren’t. The most popular migrants in North America are the warblers, but they always [...]
By Ben, on April 9th, 2010
It’s been a little over three years now since we tore out our old landscaping, with its mostly exotic plants, and replaced it with plants native to our area: live oak, cocoplum, saw palmetto, myrsine and marlberry, bitterbush, firebush, wild coffee, coral bean and necklace pod, spicewood, buttonwood, crabwood and ironwood, stoppers of all sorts (Spanish, Simpson’s, twinberry). In all, we brought in some 85 native species of trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants, and a few noninvasive exotics like our Dutchman’s Pipe vine (complemented by the native maypop vine). The very first spring after we had the native plants installed, [...]
By Ben, on February 15th, 2010
Or, in this SoFla birder’s experience, the (yawn) ho-hum backyard bird count. The cold, cold winds on Saturday pushed down the bird count considerably, I’m sure, even though I was home to do some counting, since the lad was sick. He really does his best to help his dad’s birding, but the weather was just a bit too much for him to handle.
Saturday night brought me into much more intimate acquaintance with the lad’s illness, as the beasties bugging him took up temporary residence in my GI tract, making for a very unpleasant Sunday as well. The less said about [...]
By Ben, on February 12th, 2010
As expected, I was unable to get a shot of this morning’s waning crescent moon. The clouds from the approaching cold front were just too thick.
Try to see the moon through this!
So I’ll look forward to another opportunity to image the days I missed this go-round: 16 and 28. Not bad for my first attempt!
The Great Backyard Bird Count starts today, and runs through Monday, so I’ll be splitting time between the boy and the boids this weekend. Enjoy!
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