Top 7 Tips When You Get Started on Bird Watching

April 9, 2019 by CarolPatterson Leave a Comment

This month I welcome a guest blogger, Steve Wells. With a passion for the outdoors, Steve blogs at Binocularsguru.com and loves traveling and bird watching. Bird watching has been shown to make you healthier and more mindful. If you’re wondering how to get started, Steve’s column has plenty of helpful suggestions.
~Carol

Top 7 Tips When You Get Started on Bird Watching

By Steve Wells

Are you someone who gets excited seeing a bird on your porch? Do you sit there and stare at the bird until it flies away? Well, you may be a bird lover and would love the experience of bird watching. To develop and nurture this into a hobby could be intimidating for some. You may feel lost, thinking about where to start. Well, don’t get discouraged. Here are a few tips for you to get started as a bird watcher:

Start from your backyard

Begin your bird watching journey from your backyard. Place a bird feeder with some bird food and water. You will be amazed to see the number of birds perching in your backyard. Watch them and study their behavior, features, what they eat, and their sounds. Once you know the birds in your backyard, you can step out to watch the birds in the field, nearby jungle trails, lakes, and bird sanctuaries.

Do Note: avoid going into a forest or terrain where you’re not allowed. It’s important to stay safe and have fun watching birds.

Invest in a good bird guide

A bird guide will give you quite a lot of information about different species of birds. You can learn about the different species, their size, sounds, colors, and features. Don’t feel intimidated by the amount of information you see in the guide. Take it slow and read about one bird at a time or begin with learning about the birds you see in your porch or backyard. As you get comfortable knowing about the birds in your local area, you will be eager to know more. You can then move on to reading about other birds.

Binoculars

A pair of binoculars would be an advantageous piece of equipment to pursue this hobby. As a beginner, you don’t need expensive binoculars. A simple binocular with which you can get a good view of the birds soaring high would be all you need. You can check the best binoculars under 200 here. You can go for an 8x to 10x magnification one. Once you are at an advanced stage of bird watching, you will find, there are a variety of high-end binoculars and telescopes in the market. You can then definitely invest in an expensive one.

Camera

As a beginner, you will often be in a situation where you will find it difficult to identify a bird. You can click pictures and later learn about them from your bird guide or online. Clicking pictures with clarity may be challenging as a beginner. Since birds are quite swift and you may not get enough time to click a picture. However, if the picture is enough to identify the bird and learn about its features, it will serve the purpose. The pictures or images will always be a good collection of records.

Join the birders community

You can learn valuable lessons from a community of birders. It’s good to hear stories of their adventures of birding, the kind of birds they have watched, and information on where to find different species of birds. The information they have will be quite beneficial for a beginner. Once you’re in a community, don’t miss out on joining them on their birding adventures. If an enthusiast is ready to teach you birding, then jump on the opportunity to learn from them. There are groups on social media sites, join the online communities, and you can learn about the birding events going on near you.

Maintain a record

Maintain a record book of all the birds you have seen and their pictures. You will be delighted to revisit and appreciate the number of birds you have watched. It will always be an encouragement to go out in the field and look out for more adventures with the birds and feel one with nature.

Have fun

Lastly, it’s essential to have fun. Don’t get competitive with anyone. It will defeat the whole experience of bird watching. It’s a hobby you should enjoy and cherish each time you watch a bird.

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Golfers not the only roadrunners in Palm Springs

February 25, 2017 by CarolPatterson Leave a Comment

I’ve always thought Palm Springs was just for golfers or old people zipping to happy hours in their golf carts. On a recent trip, I discovered that Palm Springs is a fabulous place for hiking and bird watching. Did you know Palm Springs is a great place to bird watch?Click to Tweet

I joined up with a group of birders at Coachella Valley Preserve and loved poking around several oasis for desert birds but one of my best bird encounters was on the patio of my VRBO rental in Palm Desert.

What I first thought was the soft coo of a dove turned out to be the call of a male roadrunner trying to attract females and set boundaries with other males.

Roadrunners often got the best of Wile E. Coyote in Warner Brothers’ cartoons. They can also get the best of rattlesnakes – they aren’t affected by the snake venom – and sometimes work in pairs to kill the snakes. Like many birds they suffer from habitat loss so it was a real treat to spot a roadrunner living a roadrunner’s life in Palm Desert, California.

Did you know roadrunners are impervious to snake venom?

The roadrunner in this video was very approachable as I turned my camera on his courtship display. At one point he even ran towards me, perhaps thinking a female was hiding on our VRBO patio.

Video of Roadrunner and hummingbirds

Palm Springs has many great places for bird watching. My favorites are:

Coachella Valley Preserve Guided hikes most mornings at 7:30 a.m. from October to March.

Coachella Valley Preserve is popular with birders

Living Desert Museum Annual memberships are $99 but let you hike/bird every morning at 7am before the facility opens to the public.

This wild Black-crowned night heron visits captive birds at Living Desert Museum

Joshua Tree National Park Hidden Valley hiking trail (1.6 kilometers) didn’t have a lot of birds the day I visited (maybe it was too windy) but it was fun looking in the boulder-strewn landscapes.

Hidden Valley trail at Joshua Tree National Park

Other recommendations by bird-loving friends include:

Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge

Big Morongo Canyon Preserve

If you’ve visited Palm Springs what are your favourite places to hike or bird watch?

The world’s best nature festival

May 25, 2016 by CarolPatterson Leave a Comment

Okay, I’m biased. I have no formal criteria, no judging panel, and no independent auditors. Just my own crazy fun time in the mountains have me declaring British Columbia’s Wings Over The Rockies annual wildlife love-in as the best nature festival on the continent and perhaps the world. Fresh off its twentieth (!!) year of operation, this grassroots celebration of all things bird and nature related in the Columbia Valley offers 120 events over seven days. Do you know how much work it is to arrange a single event? Scattered over an area 130 kilometers long, setting up over 100 events is a huge job but there is no huge staff behind this well-organized festival. Jami Scheffer is the glue that keeps everything together but Columbia Valley volunteers also do lots of work.
I learned about the geology of the Rocky Mountain Trench from geologist Sid Leggett, watched John Zehnder and his dog herd sheep on hay fields left long for long-billed curlews, followed Brian Wesley through burnt forests in search of warblers, and dabbled in eco-psychology with Natalie Forrest. It was obvious that each of these leaders put considerable time and energy into organizing their event and sharing their love of nature. They started on time, were considerate of participant’s skill and energy levels, and let you know if they were going to run past the ending time. Everyone ran late but no one minded. People were so busy searching the sky for white-throated swifts or paddling through rock flower blue water, the only thing that got them back to their cars was the promise of the next event. “I’m here for the whole week”, “I’m doing two or three events everyday” were phrases I heard again and again as I gathered with a new group of nature enthusiasts for each event.

Some of the events offered access to nature areas not available any other way. Michelle Porteous of BC Rockies Adventures made sure I and three other bird watchers could paddle our kayaks then led us down the Columbia River to a grove of trees sheltering Lewis Woodpeckers. These red-bellied, red-necked birds are red-listed in B.C. That means they are extremely rare and a sighting is a lifetime event for a birdwatcher. I told Michelle it was the best kayak trip ever because I got the chance to watch these birds demonstrate their fly catching skills and didn’t have to swim down the river to do it (there is no overland access to these birds).

Baiba Morrow of Wildsight – a Columbia Valley and Rocky Mountain conservation group – sponsored a hike around Lake Enid, a popular place for people to go crazy with off-road vehicles. I would have been deeply depressed if I had visited this overused area on a weekend on my own. “Is there free camping?” queried one person in our group as we walked by a group of tents. “More like free-for-all camping on weekends,” quipped Baiba, explaining how people ignore fences and signs to drive wherever they want. Forest management experts Phil Burke and Peter Holmes who pointed out where steps had been taken to mitigate done by the most invasive of species – Homo sapiens, led our hike. Some of these activities were successful – a recent installation of a wooden boardwalk and alternate quading path stopping the mud bogging in loon and grebe habitat. Others were unsuccessful. “We destroyed that road and put in rocks to keep people from driving over there,” Phil said, pointing to a sensitive grasslands, “people came in with heavy equipment and rebuilt the road.”

I think what I love most about Wings Over the Rockies is the chance to lift the curtain and see what was going on in the forests and wetlands of the Columbia Valley. Those things that you don’t notice when you are rushing to Home Hardware. I was amazed at the dedication and effort put into preserving one of North America’s longest intact wetlands by a relatively small population (approximately 10,000 people call the valley home). So yes, this tiny of festival for wildlife and wilderness lovers gets a gold prize for its best efforts. I can’t wait for next year and the chance to judge it all again.

If you go:

Register for events online at www.wingsovertherockies.org. Sign up as soon as registration opens (early April) as events sell out quickly. Remember events may be 130 kilometers apart and allow enough time to make it from one event to the next.

Sample events at both ends of the valley to see the tremendous diversity of habitat. Columbia Wetlands Adventures offers the chance to paddle the braided channels of the Columbia River on the northern boundaries of the festival www.wetlandsadventures.com Climb the hoodoos south of Fairmont to experience the dry landscapes at the southern reaches of the festival.

Enjoy the food at local merchants. Some of my favorites are:

Fresh fish tacos at Leo Burrito in Radium http://leoburrito.com
Pizza at Peppi’s Italian Fuel in Invermere http://peppisitalianfuel.com
Tony’s Greek Grill in Fairmont Hot Springs http://columbiavalley.com/tonys-greek-grill/

Getting to the valley – The valley is a 90 minute drive from Banff or three hours from Calgary. You can fly to Cranbrook and rent a car for a sixty-minute drive from the south.

Shorebirds: Tofino’s understated tourists

April 22, 2016 by CarolPatterson Leave a Comment

Drive to the western edge of Vancouver Island and you’ll find the surf-mad village of Tofino. Toque-wearing surfers cycle by, their surfboards clipped to a small trailer, the money saved on petrol buying them more time in this rainforest paradise. Motorhomes that were popular in the 70’s – and worn-out in the 90’s – limp along highway 4 as surfers coax more life from them; neoprene wetsuits dry on car mirrors as shaggy haired guys heat soup and discuss surf conditions.

Weaving around the world’s hardiest surfers – waters are bone-chilling cold even in July – are other travelers who stroll the Pacific Rim National Park beaches. Some of them chow down on crab and mac cheese at Long Beach Lodge Resort, or hop a boat for a tour of Clayoquot Sound. Others are pecking the sand for their lunch, their trip to town accomplished by wing flapping. These are the shorebirds that fly thousands of kilometers from South and Central America to their breeding grounds in the north. They are the tourists not counted by visitor bureaus but Tofino is very popular with traveling birds.

Plovers are one species of shorebird seen in Tofino

Behind the hotels and spas that pamper human visitors are the Tofino mudflats, gooey coastal wetlands that at low-tide serve up a nutrient buffet for sandpipers, whimbrels, and plovers. Shorebirds fly long distances, sometimes half-asleep with one eye open and one eye closed (similar to a red-eye economy flight for humans). In addition to being some of the world’s longest migrators shorebirds are also some of its biggest eaters. They consume about a third of their body weight each day as they prepare for migration and eat so much they poop every two minutes!

In late April, Tofino boasts impressive numbers of shorebirds. “Our most prevalent shorebird is the western sandpiper,” said Andy Murray, Tofino Sea Kayaking guide and naturalist, “150,000 Western sandpipers can pass through here in three weeks!”

The beach in front of Long Beach Lodge Resort is a comfortable place to look for shorebirds — The beach at Long Beach Lodge Resort is a comfortable place to look for shorebirds

The town celebrates these understated tourists by holding the Tofino Shorebird Festival each year. From April 29- May 1, 2016 you can take a kayak tour with Murray, learn to photograph birds, hop on the M.V. Lady Selkirk to look for Tufted Puffins and Rhinoceros Auklet, or if you’re really adventurous, journey to the offshore Continental shelf break to see pelagic birds.

If you decide to go:

Reserve your hotel in advance. Hotel sponsors with great birding onsite are:

Long Beach Lodge Resort http://www.longbeachlodgeresort.com
The Wickaninnish Inn http://www.wickinn.com
Jamie’s Rainforest Inn http://www.tofinorainforestinn.com

Look for shorebirds at the end of Sharp Road (the turn-off is by the Dolphin Motel). Best viewing is mid-tide rising.

Warm up after birding with a Forest Sour cocktail at the Great Room. http://www.longbeachlodgeresort.com/site/cuisine/great-room.html

Reinventing Bird Populations

June 10, 2014 by CarolPatterson Leave a Comment

Even if they are not birdwatchers, most North Americans can recognize Greater Canada Geese. These honking emblems of the wilderness are commonly seen strolling parkways or golf courses. On a recent trip to Point Pelee National Park, I learned these geese once faced extinction from overhunting and a local, Jack Miner, had been instrumental in saving them.
In 1935, concerned over the significant decline in geese, governments made it illegal to hunt using live decoys – wild geese that had been trapped and made flightless. By then it was almost too late – there was few Canada Geese left in the wild. The live decoys – no longer of use to hunters – were released into marshes. Most died, defenseless against predators, but some lived long enough to breed or grow back their wing feathers. Canada Geese populations grew so slowly that in many areas of North America they were classified as extirpated or nearing extinction. In the 1960s, conservation efforts were stepped up and captive-raised birds were reintroduced to the wild. The program was a phenomenal success with populations doubling every three to seven years.

Now, many communities struggle with an abundance of geese, but Jack Miner, who died in 1944, would be happy to know his efforts were not in vain. Nor only did he help establish Point Pelee National Park, he helped prevent the extermination of Canada Geese. A new generation will decide what to do with an abundance of Canada Geese, but I’m encouraged to know that when people care enough about the future of a species, great change is possible!

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Reinventing Bird Populations via @Reinventure. Click to Tweet.

Did you know the Greater Canada Geese once faced extinction? Learn more: Click to Tweet.

These birds were almost extinct until conservation efforts were stepped up. Find out which birds these are: Click to Tweet.