On this episode I got to reminisce with Josh Covill about our Colombia Santa Marta trip, to learn about his guide business in Montana and how he becamne so proficient with the birds of the neotropics. Josh is both an outstanding birder, but also a funny, humble and all-around nice guy. I was so happy to talk with Holly Garrod, whom I learned about from Josh while on the Colombia trip, and she was such a terrific guest on episode #170.
Josh was right on in his assessment of the group on our trip. We all seemed to have fun together, and there were no real difficult individuals. For anyone interested you can read about our trip on my eBird trip list here. Here is a link to an article about the new antpita species we got to see at El Dorado. For some of my photos of the trip here is a Flickr album link.
You can find Josh’s website for Montana birding tours here, or his page on the Hillstar Nature site here.
Category: Blog
The Bird Banter Podcast #171 with Courtney Ellis Additional Info.
Courtney was a joy to talk with, and helped me gain perspective into the experiences of birders who became interested in birding during the pandemic when birding was arguably the perfect passtime. Getting outdoors, either alone or with friends, was just about the description of how to have fun without significant exposure to infection.
Be sure to check out, and ideally buy, Courtney’s soon to be released book.
Click on the image above to go to Courtney’s website for a link to buy the book.
Courtney also has her own birding podcast, The Thing with Feathers that you may want to check out.
Some of my fondest birding memories are from the Orange County area of California, where Kay and I took the kids many times, and Kay visited for longer visits in her last couple of years. I strongly recommend scheduling some time for birding if you visit the area.
Thanks for listening. Until next time, good birding and good day!
The Bird Banter Podcast #170 with Holly Garrod Additional Info.
I first heard about Holly Garrod from the guide on my Hillstar Nature Tours guide, Joshua Covill. Holly Garrod is the bird banding coordinator for Birds Caribbean, creator and leader of the Caribbean Bird Banding Network, as well as Outreach Manager and an Avian Ecologist at the University of Montana Bird Ecology Lab. I so enjoyed talking with Holly. Her energy and passion is wonderful to experience, and I learned a lot from our discussion.
We talk about bird banding, as well as about the Motus bird tracking system. I love that we can now learn so much about the movements of even small birds and other migratory creatures like butterflies using tiny transmitters that can be attached to even very small creatures and a network of recievers. Every time a transmission is detected by a receiver the information is sent to the Motus data network. In this way movements of tagged animals (birds, fish, butterflies, etc.) can be followed. Holly and others are helping involve the Caribbean Islands in the network of receiving for Motus.
For understanding the migration of many of our North American neotropic migrants this is key. Check out the range maps of these birds for example.
As you can see these two species and lots more pass over or through the Caribbean Islands.
A part of the Birds Caribbean work is developing the Caribbean Birding Trail, with local hotspots, guides and more. There is now a dedicated website to the Caribbean Birding Trail resources.
Stay tuned for future episodes with Josh Covill.
The Bird Banter Podcast #169: Ed’s Winter Trip Additional Info.
It’s good to be home, and good to add the latest episode to the podcast. This winter’s trip away from the rainy Pacific Northwest started in Florida. About 10 minutes before my planned 3 AM alarm to dash off to SEATAC for a 6 AM flight to Orlando, my brother Bill called to let me know he had just tested positive for Covid, and that I shouldn’t visit. That made for 5-6 days of improvization necessary before Marian and I could arrive at the Big Pine Key home that a family friend of Marian was letting us use. We had tentatively planned to visit Epcot Center from Bill’s place in The Villages, and so decided to start our trip in that direction. First though I convinced Marian that trying to see the American Flamingos that had been blown north from their Rio Lagartos stronghold. Four birds had been being seen consistently at the Merritt Island NWR–Haulover Canal Area most days, and so on our first night in Florida Marian and I drove to Cocoa, FL for a night, then headed to the NWR early the next AM. On arrival at the hotspot, it was easy to spot, but hard to really see with binoculars the four flamingos, maybe a mile offshore near a small reef-island.
In addition to the flamingos we enjoyed nearby Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphins, Ruddy Turnstones and plenty of waders.
We had a nice day exploring the island and refuge. We planned to stay until evening to watch a Space-X manned missle launch, but it was postponed, so heaed back for another night in Cocoa before heading for Disney World the next morning.
Epcot Center seemed much more worn-down and commercial than I had remembered from years ago, but we had a nice day walking around and easily avoiding buying Disney themed junk.
Marian in front of the Epcot entrance.[/caption]
After a night in Orlando, we decided to take a couple of days to drive south toward Miami. A nice stop was at the Loxahatchee NWR where we took a midday walk on the March Trail. A pair of Sandhill Cranes were on the dike trail, and essentially refused to move aside, so we quietly walked past them with these iPhone photos unavoidable.
From here we decided to spend a couple of days at Miami Beach, and ate well, checked out the beach, and generally played tourist.
Lesser Black-backed Gull
Miami Beach
From here we headed for the beach house on Big Pine Key where we enjoyed the weather, views and quiet time. Birding was very slow, but some of the Florida specialties obliged.
American Aligator at the Blue Hole.
White Morph of the Great Blue Heron.
Key Deer are a very small subspecies of White-tailed Deer. They are protected, very tame and abundant on Big Pine Key.
After a nice vacation at Big Pine Key, we drove back to Miami where Marian headed on to visit family in Georgia, and I waited to pick up Bruce LaBar at the airport that evening. During the wait I chased and ticked my second ABA lifer of the trip, a Yellow-headed Caracara that had been visiting the Pelican Pavillion at Oleta River State Park at the end of the afternoon most days.
Yellow-headed Caracara[/caption]
After picking up Bruce, the next morning we met Mariah Hrynovich and her husband Luis for a day to try for as many of the Miami area target lifers as possible for Bruce. Too many photos to include most, but the Biltmore Hotel grounds were very cool with lots of parakeets and parrots, along with the historic hotel where many famous guests and movies have been filmed.
Our trip was with Joshua Covill of Hillstar Nature Tours, and was an overall fabulous trip. There were too many photos to put many here. Check out my Flickr album for lots of pics, and the eBird trip report for details.
After the Colombia trip I headed on for a nice visit with Jean and Alan in Costa Rica. This was in large part a family trip. Here are a few photos.
This King Vulture flew right over Jean and Alan’s home and landed in a tree quite close.
Check out Jean’s Regenerate Your Reality website.
Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for more episodes with guests.
Good Birding.
The Bird Banter Podcast #168 with Liam Hutcheson Additional Info.
On this episode I talk with Liam Hutcheson, who just finished his record breaking Washington State big year. We talk about his big year, highlights, misses and people. Also about his birding story. The prior WA record holder for most species seen in a calandar year was Will Brooks, and we talk about his big year on Episode #121. While talking with Liam I marveled at how interconnected our birding community is, and how helpful birders are to each other. Pervious guests on the show who helped in one way or another with Liam’s birding and his big year include:
Bill Tweit episode #8 Bill is such an icon in Washington State birding that I felt so proud and happy to have him as one of my early guests. He is also just a really nice guy.
Shep Thorpe episode #9 In the next episode I continued my streak of both extraordinary WA birders, but also really nice people with Shep.
Ryan Rodriguez episode #47 Ryan has been my youngest guest on the podcast, at age 12 when we met and did the recording.
Ken Brown #2, Bruce LaBar #3 and I were with Liam on a trip in early 2023 with Jacob Miller to the southeast corner of WA to see winter specialties.
For more details check out the BirdBanter.com blog post about this episode.
Until next time, good birding!
The Bird Banter Podcast #167 with Marco Valtriani Additional Info.
I visited Italy over a decade ago with my wife Kay, who was also a birder, and we were pretty surprised at how few birds we were able to see. I learned while talking with Marco Valtriani, my guest on this episode that it was likely because we looked in all the wrong places for the season we visited, I believe in early October. I learned lots more and really enjoyed talking with Marco. He is a lead guide for Birding in Italy, a bird guide group who specialized in Italy, and especially taking visiting birders whose primary reason for visiting Italy may be other tourist activities, but who want to get in a day or more of birding and use the time optimally.
I learned that Italy has a lot of national park land set aside, but than much of it has been used for human activities over the centuries prior to being set aside. I also was pleased to learn that the practice of killing songbirds for food has been markedly curtailed and is a minimal issue today.
I also talk about this being the Christmas Bird Count Season, and my experiences and enjoyment from participating in CBCs. Consider joining a count near you, find one here.
You can read the Audubon summary report of last year’s CBCs here. For more granular data on any particular count here is a link.
Thanks for listening. Until next time, good birding.
The Bird Banter Podcast #166 with Steve Hampton Additional Info.
On this episode Steve Hampton and I talk about a wide variety of topics. Maybe the most timely and of widespread interest was his experiences ad a member of the AOU Ad Hoc committee charged with the task “to develop a process that will allow the [AOS] to change harmful and exclusionary English bird names in a thoughtful and proactive way for species within AOS’s purview.” I enjoyed hearing Steve’s perspectives and experiences on the committee’s work. You can read the recommendation in full, and I recommend you do if the topic interests you here.
Steve is retired from his prior job in California, and retired in the Port Townsend area. He recently wrote a very thourough and informative post on his The Cottonwood Post blog about gull ID in the area. He also writes on issues of indigenoous peoples of the U.S. area on Memories of the People. You can contact Steve, and get links to both of his blogs and all three of the Facebook groups he helps administer at his personal/professional website Stephen-Carr-Hapmton.com.
Steve talks about the eBird trends section, and here is a link to that feature.
I mention a prior episode about the mouse eradication on the Farralone Islands, so here is a link to the episode with Tim Larson about that topic.
Thanks for listening. Until next time, good birding and good day!
The Bird Banter Podcast #165 with Rachel Hudson Additional Info.
On this episode Rachel and I talk about her years birding and growing up in East Texas, her move to Washington after high school, her interests in art, photography, birding and more.
Every time I’ve met Rachel in the field I’ve been impressed that she was an extremely quiet and almost shy but very competent birder. It was fun to get to see her one-on-one for the podcast episode. She is highly energetic, a good story teller, and was a lot of fun to feel like I now know her a little bit at least.
We talked briefly about her birding and friendship with Dalton Spencer, who was a prior guest on the podcast, and recently broke the Montana Big Year record.
The Vaux’s Swift project, Vaux Happening, has helped understand the movements both spring and fall of this migratory species in the western U.S. for over a decade. You can learn about it and volunteer to help at their website .
You can best reach out to Rachel by email lighteningdash09-at-yahoo-dot-com
The Bird Banter Podcast #164 with Dorian Anderson Additional Info.
Catching up with Dorian Anderson for another podcast episode was really fun, as it seems is pretty much any time I get to spend with Dorian. He is a likable, high-energy, funny and really smart person, and I was really happy that we got to talk again.
Buy Dorian’s bookhere.
Here is a link to the Tropical Birding business where Dorian guides both birding and photography tours.
I talk about Dorian’s posts about birding New Zealand and here is a link to his blog posts about that topic.
I had never heard about the Pop Tech conference, and think it looks pretty cool. Check it out here.
I’d love to see comments from listeners after you read Dorian’s book. Give me feedback and maybe I can mention your review on a future blog post.
Until next time, good birding and good day!
The Bird Banter Podcast #163 with Michael Hobbs Additional Info.
On this episode Michael Hobbs is my guest. Michael is a longtime WA birder who has done a survey of the birds of Marymoor Park in Redmond, WA weekly for almost 30 years! This is one of the top eBird hotspots in King County, WA, and Michael has documented the weekly occurance of birds there in great detail. This is a fabulous database of birds at a fairly typical varied Puget Sound low elvation park, and has to be unique in its detailed documentation. You can contact Michael by the email on the site if you want to join the survey some Thursday.
Michael is also an avid WA county birder, with >150 species in each of the 39 WA counties. We talk a bit about county birding on the episode. You can see all about county birding and more on the Washington Birder website. Here is an example of the great content on the site, the 2022 year-end report of county birding for the year.
I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.
Until next time, good birding!