Blog Birding #90

Want to know what goes on at Audubon's famous Hog Island field camp?  Corey Husic, writing at Baypoll Birding Blog, has the scoop on some sound recording with none other than Lang Elliot:

Early on Monday morning, before even the earliest Song Sparrow had started singing, I and a few other birders headed out to explore Hog Island and record the early-morning birdsong. The evening before, Lang Elliot, sound recorder extraordinaire, had asked for six people who wanted to learn how to record birds using his high-tech recorders and parabolic microphones. Lots of people were excited... until they found out the group would be leaving at 4am!

Birdingdude Andrew Baksh shares a story, and some amazing photographs, of a Ruff discovery in New York City:

I had been scouting the East Pond since the end of May and I was excited. National Park Service, specifically the Jamaica Bay unit had kept their promise and had begun to lower the water earlier than normal dates and I had tested walking onto the pond. It was looking really, really good for the early date.  Heydi, I suppose  trusting my scouting came out with me on Sunday July 1st and she did not regret her decision as we found a 1st year molting male Ruff (Philomachus pugnax), in an unusual plumage - an all white head. But I am getting ahead of myself here. Let me back up to how the Ruff happened.

More good stuff from Dave Irons at Birdfellow, this time on the parental behavior of the ubiquitous Yellow Warbler:

If you spend a day in the field at this time of year, it's a virtual certainty that you will draw the ire of adult birds that are protecting newly-fledged offspring. Highly-dependent young of many species are fresh out of the nest. Although there may be no youngsters in sight, the incessant sharp chips, physical distraction displays, and the generally agitated movements of their parents inform us of what lies hidden away in the vegetation.

ABA Blog contributor Rick Wright, writing at Birding New Jersey, anxiously awaits the AOU supplement, and muses on what it may change, both taxonomically and otherwise:

As David pointed out last time around, we birders tend to be most interested in what tend to be the least ornithologically significant changes made by the committee; all our fuss and fascination tends to be concentrated on the splits and lumps and renamings–the things that most affect our holy lists–while we (I) tend to ignore the meatier questions of higher-level relationships. I can guarantee that Van Remsen’s tongue-in-cheek proposal to rename the Inca Dove has already got more attention than the revision of the erstwhile Thryothorus wrens ever will.

Sharon Stiteler, aka Birdchick, spent a day this week banding Osprey chicks:

This week it took the form of helping Mark Martell of Audubon Minnesota with banding osprey chicks. And because we have the same heatwave in Minnesota that’s gripping the rest of the nation, we had to start early and scramble like crazy to get four nests of birds banded before the heat of the day would make it too stressful to handle young birds.