Blog Birding #70

I often like perusing the blogs of bird artists, particularly those who attempt to explain alittle bit of their craft.  Take, for instance, John Muir Law's post on how to color a Dark-eyed Junco:

I have received  a lot of requests for more step by step illustration demonstrations. In this one I have emphasized the pencil technique that gives the bird texture. Note the direction of the pencil strokes. I stroke each feather group separately, indicating the direction the the feathers lay. I cross hatch these strokes with lines that show the edges of the rows of feathers. If you are going to see the pencil strokes, have a reason behind the lines.

The American Kestrel is ABA's Bird of the Year for one more month.  Before we move on to the next year's bird, take a look at a great post from The Nemesis Bird looking at where and why that little falcon may be declining in Pennsylvania:

American Kestrels have experienced some pretty severe declines in parts of their range. This was most recently brought to my attention while reading Clay Sutton's article 'Killy Killy No More' in the November 2011 edition of Birding. This article was perhaps inspired by the fact that American Kestrel was the 2011 ABA Bird of the Year. More locally, there was a recent discussion in the PA Birders Facebook group on the declines that the American Kestrel is experiencing in our region. I find this an interesting topic and decided to look at some of the different data that was available.

There are multiple monitoring schemes across Pennsylvania that allow us to track different trends throughout the year, hopefully providing a more complete story on the plight of the American Kestrel in our state.

Connecticut birder Nick Bonomo at the Shorebirder site, considers that crucial question for the modern age, should birders with cameras shoot first, and ID later?

But there is a healthy debate that is growing in the birding community. Some (many?) birder-photographers have adopted a 'shoot first, ask questions later' philosophy in the field. I have personally seen birders, without even trying to identify the bird with optics, immediately pull up their cameras and fire away as many shots as they can, with apparently little interest in watching the bird! This occurs most often with flybys, in which case the birder may never actually get a good look at the bird and would rather rely on photo analysis to make the identification. The question is...is this a good thing or a bad thing?

A nice piece by Birdchick at her blog on what are the best eyepieces to use for digiscoping:

I’ve always been a fan of the zooms, because they can make a real difference in ID when that bird is far away (I got a great look at my lifer saker falcon thanks to my scope’s ability to go to 60 power when I was in Israel.  I don’t digiscope when I zoom in to 60 unless I really, really need to document something because the photo will be crap.  You lose clarity and brightness when you zoom in and the photos aren’t worth it unless you are documenting your state’s first record of a hooded crane.  When digiscoping, I always keep it on the lowest magnification.

Stuart of sitta canadensis has an eye on a Greater White-fronted Goose, and heads out on a Mild Goose Chase:

I had a choice; west to Burlington Bay to try for the juvenile King Eider (most recently photographed by the seemingly omnipresent Jean Iron) or east to Whitby Harbour for the Greater White-fronted/ Cackling Goose combo. Objectively, it seems like no choice at all; a bird I've seen further away versus two new birds closer by, but the White-fronted had not been reported consistently and Cackling has been a nemesis bird for a long, long time. I headed east anyway.