Saturday, December 22, 2012

Tule Lake Snowgeese Flying

http://youtu.be/w734sz3-mB0



While I was doing Tundra Swans clip, Snow Geese were flying overhead, and I thought to try for clip...didn't think camera would focus, but it did very well...watched Geese a long while...rainsnow hereabout today...yeseterday, shuttled over to the Village, and on return paddled out to Bobcat Meadow...quiet...while on Chapel Bridge, wondering where Kingfisher might be, Hawk, Redshoulder, Cedar, flew across the Merced to the Alders on the Chapel side...looked down to set up the tripod, and take lens cap off, and...Hawk gone!...hurts a bit when this happens!...followed to where I thought Hawk might of gone, across the Meadow, to the Cottonwoods, along the River out to Coops Meadow, and there I sighted Hawk, Redtail, Zeke...and Yesterdays clip...very cool...did hear Kingfisher, and Flicker, sighted Song Sparrow at Last Chance, and Ouzel at Ozone Beach...DownyOrHairy Woodpecker call...Blue Jay, Raven, Acorn Woodpecker...media did a bit on the Xmas Bird count...lemesee if I can link that...brb....
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The count began in 1900 as a National Audubon Society protest of holiday hunts that left piles of bird and animal carcasses littered across the country. It now helps scientists understand how birds react to short-term weather events and may provide clues as to how they will adapt as temperatures rise and climate changes.
http://www.wric.com/story/20409699/annual-bird-counts-give-scientists-climate-clues
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didn't know that bit about the holiday hunts...brb...

quote

Prior to the turn of the century, people engaged in a holiday tradition known as the Christmas "Side Hunt": They would choose sides and go afield with their guns; whoever brought in the biggest pile of feathered (and furred) quarry won.
Conservation was in its beginning stages around the turn of the 20th century, and many observers and scientists were becoming concerned about declining bird populations. Beginning on Christmas Day 1900, ornithologist Frank Chapman, an early officer in the then budding Audubon Society, proposed a new holiday tradition-a "Christmas Bird Census"-that would count birds in the holidays rather than hunt them.
http://birds.audubon.org/history-christmas-bird-count

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