Why I can't be an Ornithologist

Savannah Sparrow, Playa Del Rey

I came across a news article on Wired today  discussing a new research finding that the neural pathway for songbirds hearing birdsong is very similar to that of humans enjoying music.

Delighted, I sought and found the original article by researchers from Emory University. The abstract reads:

Since the time of Darwin, biologists have wondered whether birdsong and music may serve similar purposes or have the same evolutionary precursors. Most attempts to compare song with music have focused on the qualities of the sounds themselves, such as melody and rhythm. Song is a signal, however, and as such its meaning is tied inextricably to the response of the receiver. Imaging studies in humans have revealed that hearing music induces neural responses in the mesolimbic reward pathway. In this study, we tested whether the homologous pathway responds in songbirds exposed to conspecific song. We played male song to laboratory-housed white-throated sparrows, and immunolabeled the immediate early gene product Egr-1 in each region of the reward pathway that has a clear or putative homologue in humans. We found that the responses, and how well they mirrored those of humans listening to music, depended on sex and endocrine state. In females with breeding-typical plasma levels of estradiol, all of the regions of the mesolimbic reward pathway that respond to music in humans responded to song.  In males, we saw responses in the amygdala but not the nucleus accumbens – similar to the pattern reported in humans listening to unpleasant music. The shared responses in the evolutionarily ancient mesolimbic reward system suggest that birdsong and music engage the same neuroaffective mechanisms in the intended listeners.

So, specifically, they've found that the reaction to male birdsong differs by gender. The females find it musical, while the males find it cacophonous.

I was interested in more details. I started reading the full text of the paper... until I came across this sentence, describing the methodology of the experiments:

"Sixty min following the onset of the stimulus presentation, birds were deeply anaesthetized with isoflurane and decapitated."

Evolving Security

Image taken from the LA Times Article

According to an article in the LA Times today, Australian scientists have made a fascinating finding, that the Superb Fairy-Wren has evolved a security counter-measure to foil brood parasites: while still inside the eggs, they learn from their mother a secret catch-phrase (unique to each nest!) that they can use to request food. The mother only feeds in response to this particular vocalization.

The original article appears in Current Biology.

Iridescence of a Hummingbird

Costa's Hummingbird, taken at Indian Wells today, Oct 28, 2012

I have never seen this species of hummingbird before. I chanced upon it in the grounds of the hotel where I was staying this weekend. It is a desert bird, named after a French ornithologist. Like all hummingbirds, the male has a spectacular metallic sheen to the feathers in its head and gorget. 

Why do they look so cool? 

The following is taken from asknature.org: 

"To summarize, hummingbird iridescence is due to interference colors produced by a stack of about three films whose optical thickness is one-half the peak wave length. Each film is a mosaic of platelets of elliptical form. Each platelet is about 2.5 microns long and one micron wide. The platelets are not homogeneous and consist of air bubbles encased in a matrix of refractive index about two." (Greenewalt et al. 1960:253)

Greenewalt CH; Brandt W; Friel DD. 1960. The iridescent colors of hummingbird feathers. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 104: 249-253. 

Seeking for that bird

(Say's Phoebe at Madrona Marsh, Oct 14, 2012)

I came across these beautiful lines in an essay by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Lantern Bearers:

"There is one fable that touches very near the quick of life: the fable of the monk who passed into the woods, heard a bird break into song, hearkened for a trill or two, and found himself on his return a stranger at his convent gates; for he had been absent fifty years, and of all his comrades there survived but one to recognise him. It is not only in the woods that this enchanter carols, though perhaps he is native there. He sings in the most doleful places. The miser hears him and chuckles, and the days are moments... All life that is not merely mechanical is spun out of two strands: seeking for that bird and hearing him. And it is just this that makes life so hard to value, and the delight of each so incommunicable."

Urban owl

Exciting night! I was just about to sleep when I heard a western screech owl just outside the bedroom window! Much to the amazement of the bird expert who alerted me to it, it had been recently spotted in our neighborhood just this past month by another birder.

What makes this is so unusual is that these owls normally live only in the woods up in the mountains in L.A., away from people and urban areas. You can see this clearly in the map of reported sightings that I captured from ebird.org; my report from last night is the lonely one in orange near Beverly Hills. Blue reports are older; the one closest to it in blue dates back to 1949! The expert had said "I suppose it is a dispersing hatch-year bird looking for a place to settle in."

I didn't get a good look at the bird, but got to see it fly out of the tree it was in (outside my immediate neighbor's backdoor). Having never seen one before, I was surprised to see it was quite small, only about 8 inches or so.

Oh, and I could record its soft calls that are comprised of a rapid series of "bouncing ball" whistles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aoXS_C5SbA&feature=plcp

Mottled wit

On this warm september saturday, we were sitting on the sand, by the lagoon, eyeing this elegant bird methodically probing and digging with its long pointed beak. I told my nine-year-old its name. He responded, quick as a fox, sharp as a needle,  "Ah, a Marbled God-I-had-it-wit-you!" 

This bird is featured in a lovely song by the folk band The Bowerbirds in their album "Hymns for a Dark Horse", which I mean to listen to more of:

Just as I suspected...

Was Hafiz a birder too?

A little wren

Among the dwellings framed by birds
In field or forest with nice care,
Is none that with the little Wren's
In snugness may compare.

   --- from A Wren's Nest by William Wordsworth


This little House Wren has made our backyard its home. It flits from bush to bush, and makes a variety of sounds from singing in beautifully bubbly bursts to a harsh scolding chatter. 

I am thrilled to see this musical bird just outside our backdoor, but then.. I see this article about them: http://www.sialis.org/wrens.htm

It warns, ominously: 

They have been known to destroy bluebird and other cavity nester's eggs by piercing them (holes of 3 mm or less, or a large ragged hole in the middle), and then often removing them from the nest. They can remove an entire chickadee nest in a matter of hours. In one study in eastern MA, 20% of Black-capped Chickadee nests were destroyed by House Wrens. Althea Sherman reported that House Wrens destroyed eggs of 29 different birds. House Wrens may even displace the uncommon Bewick's Wren.

Then again, we don't have other cavity nesting birds around here that I know of...

Swift Impressions

Common Swift (click to see individual images)

Common swifts are the fastest recorded birds in level flight, known to reach speeds close to 70mph flying horizontally, even upwards. They can eat, sleep, even mate on the wing, flying more than 500 miles each day.  

I was thrilled to see and hear them at close range in Rome and had the chance to take a few pics. I like how they appear in duo-tone; someone called these images "bird calligraphy."

Gassing Geese

I was startled and rather disturbed to read an article today about the ongoing annual goose slaughter in New York City, aimed at reducing aircraft accidents such as the widely-reported "Miracle on the Hudson" incident.

I can somewhat understand the fears and concerns about human safety that have driven the city to adopt this approach, but should it not at least strike us as sad that such is the world we must live in? No, sir.  Instead, this article from CBS News instructs us on how we should perceive this state of affairs: "The initiative seems to be a success, with government officials reporting the lowest total of geese killed this summer of any year since the roundups started."  What a grand victory for humans versus nature! Worth celebrating indeed. 

An article by Mary Lou Simms from earlier this month in the Birmingham news titled "Geese roundups around airports are for profit, not safety," offers a balancing viewpoint.

I am left rather dumb-struck by this revelation in her article:

"Wildlife Services -- the agency responsible -- is the USDA's dirty little secret... taxpayers are subsidizing a $126.5 million program that exterminates more than 5 million wild animals annually, including thousands of community geese... More than half of the agency's overall budget comes from "killing" contracts, such as the $100,000 highly controversial New York City roundups every summer."

Are there really a few million wild animals inconveniencing us each year? 

Another article by Mary Lou Simms from last year discusses a related issue. Even if we must "manage" populations of wild birds, can this not be done in a more humane fashion rather than gassing them en masse? I am encouraged to find that there is an effort along these lines called GeesePeace , which advocates a much more ethically-grounded approach to reducing Geese populations, using well-thought-out protocols that include "coating eggs with corn oil, egg replacement and strategic nest destruction."

***

Resources for Additional Information

• This "case study" provides an accounting of the explosive growth of Canada Goose populations adapted to human environments, their adverse economic impact on some business including Golf courses, and some of the legal issues surrounding their management.
• Canadageese.org is an informational site maintained by an advocacy group aiming to "prevent the destruction of Canada Geese".

The cowbird situation

I came across an interesting sight at the Ballona Freshwater Marsh. The bird on the right was going around following and begging the little bird on the left for food. And that bird on the left, a male Common Yellowthroat, was dashing frantically all over, finding morsels to put in its mouth. Now, it should be obvious from the size mismatch that they are completely different species! Turns out the brown bird is an immature brown-headed cowbird (see also the second picture below), one of the most notorious brood parasites. It has grown up in the Yellowthroat's nest this year, where its mother dropped off the egg (while getting rid of one of the host's original eggs). It's not good to anthropomorphize birds too much perhaps, but I found the close relationship between these two sad and sweet at the same time.

An article titled "Brown-headed Cowbirds in California: Historical Perspectives and Management Opportunities in Riparian Habitats", by S. A. Laymon documents the steady increase of brown-headed cowbirds in California over the past century, and their devastating impact on host populations of small birds; As a remedy, it advocates trapping and killing them, a possibly necessary act of intervention, but one that I nevertheless find rather troubling. This growth in cowbirds has been linked to human activities such as deforestation.

There is also some interesting information about this at the Griffith Wildlife Biology's page about Cowbird control:   "when a cowbird parasitizes a small species like the vireo, flycatcher, or gnatcatcher, these smaller hosts are able to raise only the cowbird and none of their own young – a short route to extinction." Sigh.

Bird Book Review

I am mesmerized by these beautiful words in a review of birding books, by Laura Jacob, in the Wall Street Journal:

It is wonder that brings young people into birding and wonder that holds older people there. All levels of passion have a place. There are, for instance, backyard birders watching the feeder through the window over the sink; there are compulsive birders, collectors who drop everything to drive or fly to the next new bird for their list; and there are cowboy birders, young men who can identify teeny warblers in silhouette at dawn, all based on a bird's flight call or tail length. They're doing calculus while the rest of us are doing basic math, listening every spring to tapes of warbler song, poring endlessly over the imperceptible differences of Empids—those difficult little flycatchers. 

The pursuit of such mastery must eventually make room for what Keats called "negative capability," an aptitude for "being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact." The cyclical nature of birding, its concentration on the horizon and the sky, its unanswered questions about migration, speak to unknowns, to the unthinkables in life: time and loss and life span. Birds bring us these complex questions of existence, but quietly, dressed in feathers and flight. 

"A good ornithologist," writes Gilbert White, the author of the 18th-century classic "The Natural History of Selbourne," "should be able to distinguish birds by their air." Such is the transcendence that birders work toward, the moment when experience becomes instinct. Deep beneath the social, competitive, aesthetic and poetic attractions of birding is a longing, not for Eden, where nothing was yet named and knowledge was unnecessary, but for a role in nature's mystery play, where to tell a hawk from a handsaw is a matter of life and death. 

Images of flight

There is something utterly pure about birds in flight. As they take off, flap, soar, wheel, turn, stretch, rise, dive, hover, land, there is an inexpressible grace to each motion. It is delightful to be able to freeze time and capture them in their moments of perfection, suspended between heaven and earth. 

I am starting an album of photos taken of different kinds of birds flying. So far, all the photos posted are of L.A. birds taken over the past couple of months (mostly water-birds: gulls, terns, pelicans, cormorants, and a few others, notably swallows). This will hopefully grow to include many more kinds of birds, from more places.

Phoebe update

From about May 3 to May 10, the two baby black phoebes left the nest outside our door and were observed hopping about the branches of trees in our backyard, which turned into a combo nursery/flight school. The daddy would feed them periodically. Now they seem to have left our backyard and moved on. 

And the female is back at her nest hatching a second brood. Yesterday, we discovered that there are 4 eggs in the nest.  More to come!

The two babies on the bottom right; Dad on the top left.

Father feeding one of the little ones

Little one hopping on the ground

(Photos by Zhen Nie Krishnamachari)

Early Birds

A pair of California Quails painted by J.R. Prevost, one of the illustrators on the
La Pérouse expedition. This is the "small grey crested partridge" mentioned in the text. 

Browsing the shelves at the library this afternoon, quite at random, I pulled out a book titled "Life in a California Mission" (Heyday Books, 1989).

On September 14, 1786, a French expedition lead by Jean François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse landed in Monterey, California. Their mission was exploration and scientific discovery. The two ships, Astrolabe and Boussole, had on board a remarkable group, including an astronomer, a geologist, a botanist, illustrators, and even an ornithologist. (It is said that a young Corsican by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte applied to join the expedition but was not accepted.)

The book I had picked up was a translation of the Journals of de La Pérouse containing an account of his visit to the Monterey and its vicinity, including the Spanish mission at Carmel.

I found interesting the accounts of birds in his writings. They may well be the earliest known written descriptions of California birds.

On discovering land by sighting birds:

"At noon our longitude was 124 deg 52 min. I could see no land, but at four o' clock we were enveloped in fog. We could not be far from shore, for several land birds flew around us, and we caught a gyrfalcon."

On encountering what I presume were brown pelicans based on the further description below "grey and white ... with yellow tufts":

"The sea was covered with pelicans. It appears that these birds never fly more than five or six leagues from the land, and navigators who encounter them during a  fog may be certain of being no further distant from it. We saw them for the first time in Bay, and I have since been informed that they are common over the whole coast of California. The Spaniards call them alcatraz."

(Interestingly, it turns out the English albatross also comes from the same root.)

On how the natives hunt birds:

"These Indians are extremely skillful with the bow and killed before us the smallest birds. Their patience in approaching them is inexpressible. They conceal themselves and slide in a manner after their game, seldom shooting until within fifteen paces."

The following passage describes the birds they encountered in more detail:

"The coppices and plains are covered with small grey crested partridges, which live in society like those of Europe but in coveys of three or four hundred. They are fat and of excellent taste.

The trees are inhabited by the most charming birds. Our ornithologist stuffed several varieties of sparrows, blue jays, titmice, speckled woodpeckers, and troupiales. Among the birds of prey, we observed the white-headed eagle, the large and small falcon, the goshawk, the sparrow hawk, the black vulture, the large owl, and the raven.

In  the ponds and on the seacoast are found the duck, the grey and white pelican with yellow tufts, different species of gulls, cormorants, curlews, ring plovers, small water hens, and herons. Lastly, we killed and stuffed a bee-eater, which ornithologists have supposed to be peculiar to the old continent."

A California Thrasher, also drawn by
 J.R. Prevost during this expedition.

It is fun to speculate on what birds are being described. I am not sure about the gyrfalcon described in the first quote; the blue jay is of course a western scrub jay; the speckled woodpecker might have been a northern flicker; the troupiales appear to refer to orioles; the white-headed eagle is obviously a bald eagle; the small falcon must have been a kestrel; the goshawk might have been the red-tailed or red-shouldered hawk; the black vulture the turkey vulture; the ring plover might have been killdeer; the water-hen must have been coots. My guess for the bee-eater would be a Cassin's or western kingbird. Any other guesses?

Sadly, the expedition was lost at sea about two years later. Fortunately, much material including the above accounts and drawings that had been dispatched during stops made by the expedition made their way back to France, and were published as Voyage de La Pérouse autour du Monde in 1797.

Years later, in 1826, Peter Dillon, an Irish merchant, found remains of La Pérouse's ships among the Santa Cruz Islands, east of the Solomons, in the South Sea.

Protected Ravens

An interesting story about Ravens in the LA Times today: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-court-ravens-20120507,0,5188828.story

I was glad to hear of this: "A 94-year-old statute, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, makes harming native birds or their nests a crime punishable by up to six months in prison and a fine of $15,000."

Tree Swallows

Took these pics of majestic tree swallows at Ballona Wetlands near Playa Del Rey this day.

The folded wings remind me of the 1989 Batmobile's cocoon armor

There was a pair of them using this nesting box. One of them seems to be feeding young.

taking off.

Bird count-y

Map of LA County, from http://www.chooselacounty.com

I set myself the ambitious goal of seeing 200 birds in Los Angeles this year. A couple of days ago I saw a  pair of blue-winged teal, which was, in fact, my 200th species of the year. And it's not even May yet... I feel fortunate to live in America's birdiest county.

***

Since 2006, LA county won the "America's Birdiest County" competition every single year till 2011. Presumably because the results were so consistent, the competition has now been discontinued. However, to keep the tradition alive, birders all over Los Angeles have been compiling a list of all birds seen this weekend (friday to sunday). This evening, my wife and my son saw the blue-winged teal near the same spot again, helping to add this bird to the count (I had just stepped away for a minute to get a scope from the car).

It's been exciting to watch the list of observed birds grow on the mailing list. As of now, about 243 birds have been counted (and there's all of tomorrow to go). Will LA beat its previous record of 277 birds set last year?

***
Update: the final count this year was 262. So the 2011 record stands.

A bird by any other name

Avibase entry for the Black Phoebe

Avibase is a website that gives the names of birds in multiple languages, and has a host of other useful information including bird lists for various regions.

Baby!

Yesterday, my wife discovered this broken egg shell below the Black Phoebe nest and also heard the cries of a little one coming from the nest.

(photos by Zhen Krishnamachari)

Look how small it is: the diameter of the egg is less than that of a penny!

***
Update (April 26): We have a photo of the baby in the nest! Look for the yellow y-shaped beak on the top-right of the image.

The parents, in the meantime, continue to guard the nest fiercely, and are both active in feeding the little one. Here's a picture of one of them in action.

Crime's in the air, too, this spring

At the Ballona Freshwater Marsh in Playa Vista last weekend, we saw something interesting but puzzling, a red-winged blackbird attacking a crow in flight.

This morning, a pair of crows came and sat on the tree outside our house, driving the pair of black phoebes guarding their nest berserk. They protested loudly and tried their best to scare them off, but the crows cawed loudly back and refused to budge.

I suddenly remembered a story told to me also earlier this weekend by fellow birders. Some years back they had been delighted to see a pair of nesting White-tailed Kites raising their young. But one day, they said, a pack of crows showed up and raided their nest, picking up and dropping their young to the ground.

Putting two and two together, I realized the first two events were related. The red-winged blackbird was driving the crow away because of its propensity for nest-raiding, and the black phoebe were likewise right to be worried about the crows. Now I confess I'm no objective scientist when it comes to these beautiful birds that have made their home near mine. So I dashed out and flailed my arms and tossed a stick at the crows to drive them away. But they came right back in a bit. After four more attempts by my son and me (in a couple of which he surprised me by delightfully imitating a red-shouldered hawk!)  to drive them away this morning, it seemed finally to get quieter. But now I'm worried...

***

Another news I heard over the weekend has shocked me much more. This note was posted to the LA County Birding email list by a birder on Sunday:

Today I decided to celebrate Easter at the Sepulveda Basin and unfortunately, at 9:30 am, as I was entering the tunnel under Burbank Blvd (going south), a man riding on a bicycle paused briefly to wish me a Happy Easter and a few minutes later this same man pulled a knife on a man at the other end of the tunnel, held the knife to his throat, punched him in the face several times, and took his wallet and backpack. Although there were many people at the basin today...birding, walking/jogging and picnicking, this violence still occurred, and the mugger has not been caught. We all know that the area is not the best, so I am taking this opportunity to again state to be please be careful when in the basin and especially if you are birding alone.

The Sepulveda  Basin Wildlife Reserve is one of the best spots for birdwatching in LA (this is where I saw the belted kingfisher, downy woodpecker, cliff swallow,  Bullock's oriole, western kingbird, and Hutton's vireo all for the first time). Just a week before I took my eight year old with me through that very tunnel, and I recall how much we had enjoyed hearing our echoes in it. It's chilling to hear that something like this could happen there in broad daylight.

morning song

It is around 5.40 in the morning here, before dawn, and the Black Phoebe male is up, singing its heart out. "Pity?-Pitrew", he repeats over and over again, each cycle lasting about 3-6 seconds (first-phrase/pause/second-phrase/pause). The cycle is not perfectly regular. Occasionally he will repeat the first-phrase once or twice, or take a longer pause, and utter a series of weaker "seeuw's", which sound like a weak and truncated version of the second-phrase. Over one one-minute period I counted 10 double-phrases, and 5 repetitions of the first phrase. He is the only bird to be heard at this time. He started around 5.35, and as of now (5:56) is still going.

The Parents-to-be

This is the father-to-be, who sits on the tree just outside our house, all day, watching protectively over the female and the nest. 

And here is a better quality photo of the female in her nest, sitting on the eggs. I want to know how many eggs there are, but haven't dared to try and look inside the nest for fear the parents will abandon it if I get too close...

Phoebe 2.0

I think in my opening entry on this blog, I mentioned that a Black Phoebe resides near my house. Well, in the past few weeks, we have observed a couple patch up an old nest up on a sill on the porch just outside our front door. The nest is admirably located in such a way that it is not visible from the house, or even from the outside except from a fairly narrow viewing angle, because of a cypress tree that obscures the porch from one side, and the covering provided by the sides of the porch roof.

For the past week or so, we have been observing one of them that I believe is the female, sitting in the nest at nearly all times, apparently incubating the eggs. The male has been impressively protective of her and the nest, perched on a branch close to the nest and chasing away warblers and finches that dared to approach nearby, and even raising his wings to threaten a crow.  When humans pass by on the sidewalk, they generally ignore them, unless they get too close or loud. But otherwise, they are quite sensitive to any disturbance, and will both flit away if a human stands or sits even 25 feet away, but in sight of the nest, as I tried to do one day.

To accommodate the nervous parents,  we've taken to using a back door instead as much as possible (though the newspaper and mail deliveries impose two somewhat predictable disturbances each day). And I've installed a web cam to look at the nest. Nervous about scaring them away, I set up the web cam a bit far. For now it suffices to let us know when the female is in the nest. Here are two screen shots:

They were taken at day and night respectively yesterday. Though not very clear, you can just make out the tail of the bird sticking out of the nest in different directions in the two images (to the left and to the right, respectively).

From investigations on the web, it appears that a Black Phoebe typically lays 1-6 eggs and that the incubation period is 15-17 days. Though I don't recall the exact day we noticed that the female had started sitting, I think we should be only a week or so from hatching. I'm quite excited at the prospect.

I also found online a paper containing an account of a family of Black Phoebes written by a Professor at UC Berkeley back in 1937 or so. I hope to find some time to post some excerpts of it one of these days.

Applying cosmetics

Yesterday at Malibu Lagoon, we saw a group of Pelicans preening themselves. We saw saw of them rubbing heir heads on their backs. This turns out to be an instance of cosmetic coloration in birds. During mating season, they make their heads yellower by applying oil from the uropygial gland. This article I found discusses cosmetic coloration at length: http://orn.mpg.de/documents/kempenaers/Kemp_66.pdf

Here are a couple of beautiful close-up shots of Pelicans engaging in this activity taken by Vivek Vatsyayan:

Strange mockingbird

Sometimes even familiar birds can fool you. This is a picture taken just outside my house a month ago. I suspect most birdwatchers would do a double-take when they see this bird for the first time. The beak is just not right. After struggling with it for a day, I figured out that it was just an immature northern mockingbird with a funny overgrown bill, and confirmed it with an expert. They are usually shorter with a slight downwards curve (see, for example, the Wikipedia picture ). 

It also made me ponder whether one is more likely to see variations among the very young of a species. Mutations that are not well-suited to their lifestyle or the environment are likely to result in earlier deaths, making significant mutations as a whole less likely to be observed in grown-up birds. 

Owl in the daylight

My eight-year-old and I chanced across this beautiful Burrowing Owl at the Rio Hondo Spreading Grounds where we also saw more than 400 wintering Canada Geese. Notice how its two pupils are dilated in inverse proportion to the amount of light hitting them.

We were surprised to see an owl up and about in the day. While they are nocturnal like most owls, apparently they are sometimes active in the daytime, especially when building their burrows. You can see this bird's burrow just behind it, to the right. 

A shy and hidden bird

In the swamp, in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.

Solitary, the thrush,
The hermit, withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
Sings by himself a song.

- Walt Whitman, in When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d (Leaves of Grass)

Because my first and only other sighting of it some weeks back had been rather brief, I was thrilled to have a long and close look at the aptly-named Hermit Thrush today at the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve.

I had no idea how famous it is in American poetry. Besides the above quote, consider the following:

• A Hermit Thrush is the title of a beautiful poem by Amy Clampitt. (This link provides both the text and a recording where you can hear her read it herself).
  
  
• It is also the title of a poem by Henry Van Dyke, which I must confess is too treacly for my taste.
  
  
• It finds mention in T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land.
  
  
• The Hermit Thrush is the name of a collection of poems by Kathleen Millay, Edna's lesser-known youngest sister.

in with the new...

I wrote a long post for this blog after the new year and my screen froze, so it was all wiped out. Sigh.

Anyway, the short version is that I was reporting on a few birding trips:

* A new year's eve trip to Antelope Valley, a trip lead by Louis Tucker, focused on identifying Raptors. I got to sit in a car with experienced birders (with 20 and 30 years of birding experience each, respectively) and listen with rapt attention as they talked about their passion. I got to see all kinds of raptors (including Northern Harrier, Rough-legged Hawk) and other interesting birds including the Greater Roadrunner and California Quail. Another highlight of this trip was meeting a 9 year old who has seen close to 200 species already over the past six months that he has been birding. This made me resolve to involve my little ones more in  bird-watching this year...

* On Jan 2, I participated for the first time in the annual Christmas Bird Count organized by the Audubon Society, at Hahn Park, joining Eric and Ann Brooks, local experts. New sightings for me included the Peregrine Falcon, House Wren and Bewick's Wren.

* These are pictures of Rose-ringed parakeets we found at the Del Rey Lagoon. Seeing them felt somehow magical, because I re-connected to something forgotten from my childhood. These are birds I grew up with more than two decades ago in India. I remembered that they used to eat up nearly all the fruits in the Guava tree behind my house, before they could ripen, much to our frustration. And I remembered how their loud but not entirely unpleasant squawking filled the evening air as they roosted in large numbers.

   

(Photos by Zhen Krishnamachari)

***

I came across a nice birding blog today, by the poly-lingual Tom Miko, titled the "The Pro-Nuclear Birder":
http://radioactivebirdwatcher.blogspot.com/

This made me plan to compile a list of blogs by birders...