Photos from ASYV's Umuganda featured in documentary

This is worth watching. The video is in Japanese, so I do not know what is being said. I still enjoyed seeing the images of Umuganda and generally from around Rwanda: http://youtu.be/nTmKJHRB4v0. The director asked to use my photos from Rwanda on the Wing, and they are in there, starting around 8:20. What an interconnected world we live in- photos from a North American featured in a Japanese documentary about something awesome in Rwanda.

Whistling bobwhite: the birds of To Kill A Mockingbird

Northern Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird is a tale of growing up and encountering the world, told through the eyes of Scout, or Jean-Louise Finch, a young girl in Alabama. Birds are mostly part of the background setting during Scout’s account, but birds are also critical to the metaphor that gives the book its title.

It was only fitting to open with an image of a mockingbird, as the title introduces the species, but we will get to mockingbirds in a bit. The first bird species we actually encounter in the book is the Purple Martin.

"In summertime, twilights are long and peaceful. Often as not, Miss Maudie and I would sit silently on her porch, watching the sky go from yellow to pink as the sun went down, watching flights of martins sweep low over the neighborhood and disappear behind the schoolhouse rooftops." (chapter 5)

Purple Martins, male

A year in Central Park

December 15, 2013: View from the Great Hill on the 2013 Christmas Bird Count
in Central Park, looking south over the park toward lower Manhattan

I noticed a bird and quietly announced to a couple friends, the closest birders to me in the group, “There’s a titmouse.” This is not a particularly odd phrase, as Tufted Titmice are common North American birds, even in some urban parks. It didn’t even strike us as odd at the time, but it was the first individual titmouse of the day. We did think it a little strange that it was the only one we noted over a few hours at the end of our route. It became much more peculiar when all groups reporting at the round-up of the 114th annual Christmas Bird Count noted that it was in fact the only tufted titmouse that had been spotted or even heard during the event where over 100 people were scouring the park to document every bird species present.

The southern three-fourths of Central Park. The Lake is the water body
in the center of picture, with the Ramble just above it in the picture,
filling in the 90 degree angle. The Reservoir is the much larger water body
in the far left and it extends to around 97th St.

NYC Waters: Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge

One of my favorite things about living in NYC is this:

What other place in the country (in the world?) can you take public transit to a 9,000 acre wildlife refuge?

It surprises me how few people who live in NYC have been to Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge; many people I talk to don't even know about it!

Flowers of Rwanda

Other than a couple local names recorded in field notes, I don't know the names of most of these flowering plants or anything about their ecology. All were photographed from 2010-2011 at Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village on a single hillside in central-eastern Rwanda.

Lark Sparrow in Central Park!

For readers from the Midwest or Western USA, a Lark Sparrow is no big deal. But for New York, and especially Manhattan, a Lark Sparrow is a pretty unusual bird. Lark Sparrows don't breed in New York, as evidenced by NYS Breeding Bird Surveys of 1980-1985 and 2000-2005 (they don't breed along the East Coast at all!). Ebird only has one record of a Lark Sparrow in Manhattan, from 2011 (granted Ebird is a newer resource, but it has been pretty heavily used over the last several years).

As such, one should always make notes on such an unusual bird. These notes are on the Lark Sparrow, from 10-10-2013, 10:20 a.m. - 12:45 p.m. at the Great Hill in Central Park, just east of the 103rd St and Central Park West entrance, looking down from a paved path over the grassy area (the pool was directly south as the crow flies):

Seen well by both myself and Tomas Lundquist. We saw it fly off and come back twice, noticing the white on the outer tail feathers and very tips of the other tail feathers. This bird was larger than the Chipping Sparrows it was among on the ground, as close as fifteen feet from us. It had a dark central spot on an otherwise plain breast. The black marks on its throat were very clear. Above those black throat marks, there were bright white patches, and above a light chestnut brown cheek patch; a black line seemed to touch the throat marks, encircle the white and cheek patch, touch the back of the head and go back through the eye. Its head stripes were also this light chestnut brown, divided by a white line directly over the top of the head. We last saw the bird around 11:20 a.m. I was at the site for another 1.5 hours and joined by another birder, but did not refind the bird.

For my full checklist from the morning, visit http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S15369461.

I read that a few people later relocated a Lark Sparrow on the Great Hill, presumably the same bird. Fun stuff!!

Works Consulted:
New York State Breeding Bird Atlas 2000 [Internet]. 2000 - 2005. Release 1.0. Albany (New York): New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. [updated 2007 Jun 11; cited 2013 Oct 10]. Available from: http://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/7312.html.

New York State Breeding Bird Atlas [Internet]. 1980 - 1985. Release 1.0. Albany (New York): New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. [updated 2007 Jun 6; cited 2013 Oct 10]. Available from: http://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/7312.html.

Equal viewing for equal birds!

We are the united female birds of America,
and we demand to be seen!
(Black-throated Blue Warbler)

We are half of our respective species and
want your admiration too!
(Wood Duck)

Avi-feminism:
the radical notion that female birds
are equally beautiful
(Dickcissel)