Slaty-tailed Trogon

Ack! I have a slight fear of getting on a birding tour full of x-treme Listers & Twitchers likes those Brit guys.  I doubt that will happen this trip, but that video got me cracking the old Birds of Northern South America.  

Now back to posting a little more Costa Rica while I study for Guyana.  A pair of Slaty-tailed Trogons were hollowing out a termite nest near the cabanas at Villa Lapas. 

Another digiscoping effort. 

I have a decent camera now.  Hopefully my photos in Guyana will be a trifle better.  I'm still a birder first though; meaning I will be looking with my binoculars before attempting to grab a photo.

It's The Adventure

Birding friend Bob L emailed this video series around to some of us local birders.  There are 5 parts.  Each is 8-10 minutes and sometimes hard to understand.  These are British Twitchers.

Bob said he had to flinch a couple of times.  Ha.  (Bob is a very nice person, a mega birder and not the least bit selfish in sharing his vast amount of birding wisdom and experience). 

As I said a couple posts ago, I'm not a much of a Lister/Twitcher.  I can't imagine doing a Big Year, and my yearly list is just sort of something I do to renew the interest in seeing basically the same bunch of local birds every year. (There IS more benefit than that as one can compare data from year to year, etc.)  Fact is, I'm just not terribly competitive.  That's the key factor in Listing/Twitching vs Birding as a Hobby.  I like to find new birds and bird in new places.  

I admit, however, that I have 'chased' several vagrants in the past and look forward to doing it many times in future.  I have been known to drive 1000 kms to see a rare species (Hi Brenda & Harvey, thanks for the Rustic Bunting about a year ago!).  And since I am retired with nothing much to do, I can and will set off to chase a bird at a moment's notice. 

For me, it is absolutely the adventure.

So if you are interested, view the vid to see the insaneness of the X-treme Twitcher

 Part I, and Part II can be viewed as well.  I'll post the next lot separately.

It Isn't Snowing in Costa Rica

In an attempt to yank my mind away from the snow currently falling..... 

I went to Costa Rica in March of 2008 (I did a lot of travelling in 2008).  It was my second trip to the country.  The first was a general nature trip (and I will dig up some photos of that trip soon).  This trip was specifically for birding. 

A wet trail at Carara Nat'l Park.  Carara is one of the jewels of the country. 

Boat-billed Heron (Cochlearius cochlearius) - peculiar looking bird, isn't it.  Also at Carara

A huge tree limb covered in bromeliads and 5-6 White Ibis, at Villa Lapas near Carara.  We stopped in to Villa Lapas for lunch on my first trip and I swore I would return and stay at this place.  So I did.

A digiscoped close-up of one of the White Ibis (Eudocimus albus) in the tree.   To give some sort of scale to the size of this tree limb, ibis are about 2 feet tall. 

As always, click on the high-lighted links to read more about the places and birds.  Click on the photos to enlarge, if you want to.

Birding Guilt

It has begun - my pre-trip anxiety.  I don't sleep particularly well at the best of times anymore, but when I have a big trip looming, my insomnia is 100% in effect.

I can get all sorts of scenarios and guilt trips going on around 3:45 a.m.  This morning it was all Birding Guilt. 

The Christmas Bird Count (CBC) season has begun - and I could not care less.  GUILT!  How can I call myself a birder if I am not super enthusiastic about this very, very birdy time of year?  Well, it is Winter, for one thing.  Winter in Saskatchewan.  We've had a lot of snow.  It's cold.  My area count doesn't happen until January 3 or 4 and by then, I really won't care at all. 

The non-caring will be due to my leaving for Guyana on January 6th. 

MORE GUILT.  I haven't been very astute at studying my Guyana birds.  I need to get focused.  Plus I like to read up about the country before I get there; haven't done that yet either.  I haven't got my clothes and things sorted out....

Oh yeah, it's Christmas time as well.  This year I have flatly refused to go anywhere. 

Yes, I have plenty of time for everything and I really do love to go on birding trips, but believe me, at 3:45 a.m. in the grip of a serious anxiety attack, all seems a little bleak. 

I'll get my morning coffee made now and starting making lists - that always calms me down a little.  I guess I AM a Lister - just not so much in the bird-watching sense.**

 ** A Life List and a sketchy year list is about all I can manage to keep going.  One of my year-end rituals is reading over the year's list and checking off things I saw somewhere but neglected to mark down.  I'm doing reasonably well with the Winter List here, only one bird not yet listed.  I should do that now...

It Must Be Four O'Clock

The EC Doves collect for late afternoon feeding at 4:00 p.m.  One can almost set a watch by their arrival.  There are always some around throughout the day, but late afternoon, most of the local bunch come.  Sometimes 35-40 of them.

Wild Horses

I had a few left-over wild horse photos.  I like horses; I like watching horses; I like taking pictures of horses

North Dakota, Part III

As I mentioned, my route through the state was plotted to visit as many of the National Wildlife Reserves as possible.  There are 63, some of which are simply fields of ground cover or sloughs.   I think I probably hit about 7 of the major areas this trip. 

Here's a White-tailed Deer fawn taken at Arrowwood NWR, near Jamestown

A Thirteen-lined Ground Squirrel (Ictidomys tridecemlineatus) with whom I shared a granola bar and a bag of trail mix, at a regional park campground outside of Jamestown.  It and I were the only ones there. 

A 'prairie pothole' near Cayuga; the Tewaukon NWR is just down the road

A young Red-tailed Hawk with very shiny black legs and feet.  

But, it wasn't all birding and tromping around wildlife areas.  Occasionally I stopped into towns - especially ones I remember hearing on the US radio and television stations while I was growing up.  Local stations, with their locally-made advertisements.  The only one I didn't get to was Beluha, make that Beulah (I guess spell checker doesn't know all the names of little towns and neither do I) as there was road-resurfacing from every possible direction.

I stopped into a small place called Hankinson.  I needed groceries.  This is the building across the street from the food mart.

I love small towns 

I also stopped at Rugby, which is not exactly the geographic center of the continent.  I looked up the town on-line last night.  Apparently, they are no longer flying the Mexican flag.  Is that due to current anti-Mexican sentiment, or a sudden realization that the real center of the continent, which does include Mexico and Central America is likely somewhere in South Dakota or whatever state is south of that, I don't know.  Here's what the monument looked like when I visited. 

I liked the three flags flying.

End of Trip - or at least end of my trip photos

North Dakota, Part II

All right, still over on the western side of NoDak, next up is Theodore Roosevelt National Park, South Unit.  Medora is the resort hub of the park.  It's got a western, cowboy theme going on.  There's a big country musical there every year - not my sort of thing, so I've never been to it.

The badlands are quite spectacular.  Also extremely hot in mid-July.  It was sweltering the day I took this photo of a huge bull bison.

A Black-tailed Prairie Dog  (Cynomys ludovicianus)

Did I say it was hot that day

On to the Cross Ranch by the Missouri River, some 30 miles north of Mandan. 

The Nature Conservancy has secured a portion of the ranch along the western side of the river, plus there's a state park.  Nice quiet place to stay.  Good fishing I think.  Spotted Towhees and Lazuli Buntings had nests in the shrubs around my isolated campsite.  Field Sparrows sang all day long.

This is on the Lewis & Clark Trail (click on photo to enlarge).

There's interesting information about TRNP at these links: 
http://www.nps.gov/thro/index.htm
http://www.realnd.com/badlandsindex.htm
The geology of the park:
http://theodoreroosevelt.areaparks.com/parkinfo.html?pid=26955
About the Lewis & Clark Expedition
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/lewisandclark/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_and_Clark_Expedition

North Dakota, Part I

Yesterday I dreamed up the idea I should go to Minot, ND today.  Minot is approximately 150 kms or 90 miles away to the SE of my location.  However, when the morning dawned and I became aware that the outside temperature was hovering at -23C with a windchill making things feel like -32C, it hit me there really isn't anything anywhere that I needed to see, do or buy.  At least not today, a chilly Saturday before Christmas.  What WAS I thinking?

Like Saskatchewan, North Dakota is one of those places most people just drive through in order to get somewhere else.  I realized I hadn't seen much of it myself, so in July 2008, I toddled off in my RV to visit as many NWRs as I could in 10 days.

These photos were taken along Hwy #22 south through the Fort Berthold Indian Rez down to Killdeer.  This is a designated scenic route (and it is a lovely stretch of road); also part of the Lewis & Clark trail too, I think.       

Scrub prairie, east of the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt Nat'l Park

Some wild horses on a hill

This could be Cherry Creek - or something else

It's a land created by erosion into buttes, gullies and plains.

More to come.   (click on photos to enlarge, if you want to)

Wildflowers

I am fighting the Winter Blahs a bit this morning.  Here  are some photos I took of prairie flowers sometime in the Fall.  This is along the south shore of Rafferty reservoir, out among the lichen-covered boulders

 grass and buckbrush

some fall asters

yellow coneflowers and wild rose hips

and a Northern Leopard Frog in the grass

I will fill in the species names when I find my wild flower book, which has mysteriously gone missing.  Hmmmm???