On The Bird Banter Podcast #130 Bill Young and I talk about his life experiences birding, his passion for and inimiate knowledge of his home patch, Moticello Park in Alexandria, Virginia, and the web site he has co-created MPNature.com where you can find incredibly detailed information about the park and its fauna and flora. I especially enjoyed his reasoning and attention to the seasonal occurrence of many of the neotropic migrants found in the park. He is so right about a few days making all the difference in the chances of seeing a particular bird. Here are a couple of the examples from the website:


Note that on these two dates, only a week apart, the list of migrants that have been recorded are very different. On May 12th only Yellow-rumped Warbler has been recorded, but on May 5th 12 different species of warblers have been seen.
Here is an example of one of Bill’s YouTube Videos, the one he mentions about the Mississippi Kites that nested nearby.

Here are the eBird sites for Bombay Hook NWR, Forsythe NWR (formerly Brigantine NWR), Monticello Park, and Los Cusingos in Costa Rica, the place we talk about that Dr. Alexander Skutch lived and worked.
Here is a link to Bill’s book The Fascination of Birds.
I could not find much information on Optical Brighteners and their U.V. spectrum residue that may be easily seen by birds, so if any readers find good information, please use the contact page to let me know. – Thanks to Bill, he sent me this link to information used by the U.S. military on optical brighteners. Bill also copies a short segment from Jon Young’s book where he talks about what birds see. It is worth the read IMO. Funny and informative. Read here.
Thanks for following and listening. Until next time. Good birding.