Bird Education

Last year I posted the story of my "Hook Bird" which changed my life  forever, developing a love of birds that has continued to grow since I was a 10 year old boy.

A couple of years after my hook bird incident we had some neighbors a couple of blocks from us that up and left in the middle of the night one night. Their boys were keeping pigeons in a chicken coop that was behind the small old house they were renting. We were all afraid to go near that home, it had a reputation of being the haunted house in our neighborhood.

The neighbor that lived across the street from the old house knew they had pigeons back there and was concerned that after a week they might be starving so he went over and opened the door to the chicken coop. Pigeons were now flying around the neighborhood but of course being pigeons they always went home to the chicken coop. My brother and I went over and caught several of the birds and took them home. We pleaded with my dad to let us keep them and he reluctantly agreed. He helped us build a small pigeon loft and so began one of the most fun, interesting and educating hobbies I ever had. To this day I keep telling myself now that my kids are grown that I want to get some pigeons again but so far just haven't found the time to get started, some day I hope to once again enjoy the hobby of my youth.

Some of the kids in the neighborhood teased me because I would spend hours sitting with and observing my pigeons. I learned a lot of things about their behavior. I watched their courting displays and learned how to tell a male from a female just by their behavior. I thought it was very interesting how attentive the male pigeons were tho their mates how they would strut and dance around the females dragging their tails and then how they would kiss, the male regurgitating food into the crop of his mate, then go off and gather nest material. I observed how both parents took turns setting the eggs and the young after they hatched, how they both fed and took care of the babies. The pigeons were loyal and devoted to their mates. It was all very educational to a young 11 year old boy. I really loved that hobby and we kept it up until my second year of high school when we both became so involved in other activities we just didn't have time for the pigeons any more.

When I started drawing birds to make my bird list I practiced by drawing pictures of the pigeons we raised as kids. I never did get any photos of them so these pictures I drew are all I have of them besides the fond memories. Here are pictures I drew of some of my beloved pigeons:

Recovered Treasures

When I first started birding I thought I would like to keep my life list with pictures of the birds as I added them to my life list. I had just bought our families first computer, a Sony Viao . I did not have a nice camera since my first Nikon was accidentally baptized in the ocean by immersion while we were living in the Philippines in the mid 80's. I started drawing the birds using the Paint program on Windows. 

Our old Sony had long ago bit the dust and had been sitting on a shelf in the basement for years until a few months ago when I hauled it off to be recycled. I was quite sad because I had a lot of important files on that computer I thought were lost for good including all my bird drawings. 

The night before I took it to the recycling I called my son Spencer the computer genius and asked if there was anyway to salvage the files from the hard drive of the old computer. He came over and took it out and a few days later brought in a flash drive and loaded my old files including my long lost pictures on to my Mac. These drawing were very important to me in the early days of being a naturalist at Farmington Bay and I used them to teach bird ID classes as well as scout merit badge and conservation classes. I drew the pictures in a way that accentuated their field marks. Some of them I drew slow and carefully others I popped out in a few hours. I am going to share some of those pictures here.

Black-headed Grosbeak

This one dates me, the Spotted Towhee was still known as the Rufous-sided Towhee at that time

Clarks Grebe

This is the picture I am most proud of because I took the time to detail the feather markings. This picture took well over a month to draw. The Great Horned Owl

American Avocet

Black-necked Stilt

Great Blue Heron

Killdeer

Great Egret

Snowy Egret

Belted Kingfisher

Marbled Godwit

American White Pelican, I drew this picture in just a few minutes because I was asked to have one in a presentation I was giving to some school teachers and they wanted pictures of the birds that give the Great Salt Lake the designation as a Western Hemisphere Shorebird preserve, and I didn't have a picture of a pelican at that time so I quickly drew this.

Wilson's Phalarope

I never did finish this picture of the Downy Woodpecker

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Pinyon Jay

I eventually got more and more busy and found less time and patients to draw birds on my computer so I never completed the male Northern Harrier so instead I took what I had and spliced it into the picture I had already drawn of the female.

These are just a few of pictures I drew on my old computer using Paint and a mouse only. I will post more later on.

August Bird of the Month Yellow-headed Blackbird

Its brilliant yellow head, together with its loud, rusty-hinge call, make the Yellow-headed Blackbird a conspicuous presence in Great Salt Lake wetlands. It breeds in loose colonies and places its nest over water, attached to cattails and reeds.

One of the first birds identified as I guide groups of young scouts at Farmington Bay, the Yellow-headed Blackbird will allow the boys to approach them much closer that any other bird which is a real treat for the kids and it makes them one of the easiest birds to photograph. 

Even though they are very common, most of the first time visitors to Farmington Bay have never seen a Yellow-headed black bird before.

Male Description

Head, neck, and breast bright yellow. Body black. Black stripe in front of eye to bill. White patches in wing may be visible while perched, or hidden; conspicuous in flight.

Female Description

Body dull black and brown. Breast and throat pale yellow. Yellow on neck, face, and above eye. White streaking extending from yellow into brown lower chest.

Immature Description

Juvenile buffy with dark flecks, dark wings and tail, and two large white wingbars; seen only on breeding grounds. Young quickly become similar to adult female. Immature male has more extensive yellow and a thin white patch in the wing.

Range 

The Yellow-headed Blackbird nests in the Central and Western United States and winters in Southwestern U.S. and Mexico

The Yellow-headed Blackbird often nests in the same marsh as the Red-winged Blackbird. The larger Yellow-headed Blackbird is dominant to the Red-winged Blackbird, and displaces the smaller blackbird from the prime nesting spots. The Yellow-headed Blackbird is strongly aggressive toward Marsh Wrens too, probably because of the egg-destroying habits of the wrens. When the Yellow-headed Blackbird finishes breeding and leaves the marsh, Marsh Wrens expand into former blackbird territories.

The male Yellow-headed Blackbird defends a small territory of prime nesting reeds. He may attract up to eight females to nest within his area. The male helps feed nestlings, but usually only in the first nest established in his territory. The other females have to feed their young all by themselves.

The Black-billed Magpie

A couple of months ago I wrote a post about California Gulls the State Bird of Utah and a bird that is often maligned as a garbage bird and pest. Hopefully I helped bring out the positive attributes that gulls have. As I stated in my post the Gull was the first bird I remember interacting with as a child. The Black-billed Magpie would have to be the second. I remember as a kid watching some teenagers trying to catch a magpie that kept just enough distance not to be caught, but teased the would be captures by coming in close stealing the food they were using as bait then taking off siting in a tree and it seemed to me laughing at the boys. My brother and I tried many times unsuccessfully to catch magpies in our back yard. I knew two things about these birds from a young age, one they were one of the most beautiful birds I had ever seen and two it was obvious they are incredibly intelligent.

Magpies belong to the Corvidae family of birds:

Corvidae is a cosmopolitan family of oscine passerine birds that contains the crows, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, jays, magpies, treepies, choughs and nutcrackers.[1][2] The common English names used are corvids (more technically) or the crow family (more informally), and there are over 120 species. The genus Corvus, including the jackdaws,crows and ravens, makes up over a third of the entire family.

Black-billed Magpies are omnivores but feed most often on insects. During post-breeding dispersal, they eat a number of conifer seeds. They eat berries, nuts, and seeds during winter. Black-billed Magpies also eat carrion. Magpies are intelligent and resourceful opportunists. They form large, noisy roosts in winter, sometimes numbering over 700 birds. They flip items over to look for food, follow predators, and sometimes steal food from other birds. They also take ticks from the backs of large mammals, and pick at open sores on those animals' bodies. They can even use scent to find food--an unusual trait for birds, which generally have very little sense of smell. They are often very bold, but in areas where they have been harassed, they become quite wary. Black-billed Magpies traditionally followed Native Americans and lived off the refuse of their bison hunts. Black-billed Magpies now frequent farms and ranches and roadsides, and have been known to rob trap-lines, take poultry eggs, and raid orchards. They are often seen on the side of roads eating road kill

They were considered vermin, and many Black-billed Magpies were killed as pests in the early 20th Century. They are still considered pests by some. Despite this, they remain common and widespread. They are protected in the United States, but not in Canada where they are still killed in some areas. Pesticides are of concern, especially those used on livestock, since magpies often perch on livestock and eat those pests that are being poisoned. 

Perhaps the magpie behavior that is most annoying to farmers and ranchers is the picking of wound sites on the backs of healthy horses and livestock under certain conditions. However, this is not a common occurrence, except possibly during severe winters when food for magpies is scarce.

Magpies do have some redeeming qualities besides their beauty;  Magpies help control pest insects such as grasshoppers and tent caterpillars, and also “clean up” dead animals and garbage scattered by other animals. Other species of birds and mammals often use unoccupied magpie nests. 

Although magpies prey on songbirds and their young, research suggests that they do not ordinarily have a significant impact on songbird populations. However, because magpies are intelligent, opportunistic, and at times congregate in large numbers in close proximity to humans, conflicts can occur.

Magpies seem to be jacks of all trades - scavengers, predators and pest-destroyers, their challenging, almost arrogant attitude has won them few friends. With its noisy chattering, black-and-white plumage and long tail, there is nothing else quite like the magpie. When seen close-up its black plumage takes on an altogether more colorful hue with a purplish-blue iridescent sheen to the wing feathers, and a green gloss to the tail.

Though hated by many I still love Magpies and enjoy watching them.