International Bird Rescue Research Center

International Bird Rescue Research Center Adopt-a-Bird Program

Dawn Saves Wildlife: I don't trade in brand loyalty, most of the time. I've used Crest since I was a kid, and I don't switch because of inertia, mostly. I drink a fair amount of Starbucks coffee, but there's better elsewhere. I like my Honda a lot, but if Mini came out with an electric model that was readily available where I live, I would buy one in a heartbeat. I seek out and use Dawn, though, and here's why: it does a reasonably good job on the dishes, but they donate Dawn to the IBRRC to help clean oiled birds and they have promotions like this, where they donate a certain amount per bottle purchased (you have to activate the donation online, which is a little bit weird, but whatever).

Notice to corporations: if you do something to become part of the solution, you have a much better chance of winning my dollars.

Baby duck in gloved hand (not very expertly) doodled from a photo on the IBRRC site.

Aquila chrysaetos: Golden Eagle

A portrait of the Golden Eagle, the bird we saw on our drive through the Gorge (at least we think that's what it was... giant... eagle-like... eating something that was formerly alive...)


Doodled from a photo on the Wikipedia entry for the Golden Eagle.

Columbia River Gorge

We took a quick trip to Portland (drove there day 1, spent day 2 with family, drove home day 3). Spokane to Portland is about six hours, if you're pretty efficient, which is about an hour longer than I like to spend in a car, but it was good to see family for a little bit.

One of the best things about the drive any time of year is the hawks and other birds of prey that hang out on lamp posts, signs and fences along the freeway. While the weather was perfect for the trip down (really, best I've ever seen it in December), it was icy and windy driving back to Spokane, so the birds were hunched down and fluffed out.


Imagine our surprise, when just outside of Hood River, we saw a very large moving form on the ground. It was the biggest bird Dana or I have ever seen in the wild. (The biggest anywhere was Vidor the Andean Condor, but that's another story.) It was hunched over a carcass and it looked like it was schooling a much smaller bird in the fine art of noshing on dead things.


We think it was a Golden Eagle... it was giant. Huge. Amazingly large.

Wow.

Doodled from memory from yesterday's drive.

Amazing Christmas Present

Bird, by Andrew Zuckerman.

Incredible photos. Beautiful book. Yay!

On the first day of Christmas...

... a partridge, but not in a pear tree.


Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and all that.

Doodled from the entry for red-legged partridge at Wikipedia.

Modern Game Chicken

A good source of entertainment when I'm feeling down: Extraordinary Chickens, by Stephen Green-Armytage. Makes me laugh every time.


Not that I'm depressed. I'm not... today I was looking for "3 French Hens," and Extraordinary Chickens seemed like a good place to start...

Doodled from a photo in Extraordinary Chickens.

Accipter Striatus: Sharp-shinned Hawk

In honor of the hawk that visited our yard yesterday... though we're not sure if it was a large female Sharp-shinned or a male Cooper's. Here's a link to the post (with photos!) from my other blog.

Doodled from Birds of Prey, by Floyd Sholz.

Cochlearius cochlearius: Boat-billed Heron

I love the way these birds look - I would say that they're weirdly beautiful.

They live in Central America, they're nocturnal, and in many photos you can't see the crest.


Doodled from a photo in Gerald Carter's flickr photostream.

And because this is one of those birds that's "so nice they named it twice," here's a photo from a different angle so you can get a real sense of what the bill looks like.

Photo from the Wikipedia page for the Boat-billed Heron.

Sialia sialis: Eastern Bluebird

I finally figured out a holiday card... would have been a Christmas card, but guess who just couldn't get her act together until now? So New Year's it is... hey, the New Year is still a holiday.

It's an Eastern Bluebird, or in my world, the bluebird of happiness (notice the smile).

Whee!

Charley Harper (1922-2007)

Joie de vivre... Charley Harper's work has it in spades. Harper was a modernist artist from Cincinnati, known primarily for his stylized versions of wildlife.

Of his own work, he said, "When I look at a wildlife or nature subject, I don’t see the feathers in the wings, I just count the wings. I see exciting shapes, color combinations, patterns, textures, fascinating behavior and endless possibilities for making interesting pictures. I regard the picture as an ecosystem in which all the elements are interrelated, interdependent, perfectly balanced, without trimming or unutilized parts; and herein lies the lure of painting; in a world of chaos, the picture is one small rectangle in which the artist can create an ordered universe."

These scans are from greeting cards I bought a couple of years ago.

Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher

Western Tanager

Black and White Warbler

Books that feature Charley Harper's work:
Charley Harper: An Illustrated Life
Charley Harper's Birds and Words
Beguiled by the Wild: The Art of Charley Harper

Sisso the Swift

It looks like it could be a Christmas ornament, but it's not. It's Sisso, the injured swift. His caretakers rigged a harness for him and attached it to the ceiling so he can build up his strength to fly again.


Doodled from a photo with the story in the Daily Mail. (What a great story!)

Corvus Corax: Common Raven

I enjoy watching most birds, but I would like to meet a raven someday. Even their less smart cousins, crows, are pretty intelligent, but Ravens are supposed to be off the charts.

We have crows and magpies around here, and supposedly ravens, but I've never seen one... probably too smart to get involved in the affairs of people.

Doodled from an image on Paruula's Flickr photostream.

Sula dactylatra: Masked Booby

There was a fantastic article in The New York Times yesterday, Half a Lifetime Spent in Pursuit of Waterbirds, that profiled Theodore Cross, a birder who just released a new book.

The Times article says that Waterbirds "... is part visual encyclopedia, part memoir of a nearly half-century pursuit of birds." The photos featured with the story are breathtaking.

Cross is 85 now, and after spending the last half of his life photographing birds he says "the memories of them help me accept the brevity of the time that lies ahead.” Grace.

Doodled from one of Mr. Cross's photos featured in The New York Times article.

Lophodytes cucullatus: Hooded Merganser

Early this Fall I was walking around the pond and saw a small duck with a white patch behind its eye. Bufflehead or Merganser? I couldn't get a good look at its bill, so I thought it remain a mystery.

It was a nice day so I took another lap, and lo and behold, by the time I got around the pond again the little duck had come closer to the cattails and I got a look at the bill. It was long and thin: Merganser!


They seem to drag their tails when they swim... I wonder why.

Doodled from a photo in Rick Leche's Flickr photostream.

Picoides villosus: Hairy Woodpecker

So, I'm at the park on Friday doing a lap to get some exercise, and I stumble across a Downy Woodpecker working over a tree limb looking for bugs. As I turn to continue on my way, another bird, this one bigger, swoops over my head and chases the little Downy away.

It's this guy, a Hairy Woodpecker. These birds look identical, except the Hairy is a little bit bigger and it looks like his beak is a tiny bit longer.


According to the Wikipedia article about the Hairy Woodpecker (where I got the photo for this doodle), these birds aren't closely related, and the similarities of appearance are the result of convergent evolution (defined as "the acquisition of the same biological trait in unrelated lineages").

After I left that tree and as I was rounding the final curve in the path, I heard another woodpecker. I looked up to see where he was - directly overhead working on a pinecone.

These birds are very common, but I've never seen live specimens, until now. Very, very cool.

Bird Sketches by William D. Berry

More amazing bird sketches, this time from William D. Berry: 1954 - 1956 Alaskan Field Sketches.

I am amazed at people's ability to capture the spirit of birds on location. I have B to draw from, and she's tough, because even though I've known her for almost her whole life, that cockatoo almost never stops moving (unless she's dozing on a perch).

Enjoy these sketches.

Picoides pubescens: Downy Woodpecker

I know it's been a while, and I'm sorry for that. It's been so cold here for the last week or so that it's been all I can do to stay warm and keep the sock feeders full of thistle for our winter guests.

Today we've broken into the 20s (yay!) and there's no wind, so it's bracing instead of "holy crap if I don't get inside this minute I'll freeze to death." (OK, so maybe that's a tiny bit hyperbolic, but it has been pretty cold around here lately.) Anyway, after dawning my new pair of (faux) fur-lined boots* I took a walk up to the pond, and it was teeming with life. Whee!

There were kids playing hockey on the ice (if tweens don't count as wildlife, I don't know what does), foraging squirrels and ducks (who have a corner of the pond that hasn't frozen over - it's got running water), several robins and this guy:


A downy woodpecker, the smallest of the North American woodpeckers. I was walking by a tree when I saw a flash of red and there he was, tapping away at loose tree bark. He knew I was there and he let me observe him for several minutes... until he was chased away by what looked like his bigger brother, but was probably a Hairy Woodpecker (Picoides villosus). I'll draw him for Monday.

More birdie-liciousness today: the church hawk from downtown seems to have discovered the weather vane on the newspaper tower.

Doodled from a photo at Wikipedia.

* Spokane is the first place I've lived where there's actually a prolonged winter (as opposed to colder weather with a few isolated storms). We get snow (sometimes several feet of it), rain, ice, frigid winds, the whole nine yards... for several months of the year. As a result, I've built up a small collection of winter-only foot wear: waterproof hiking shoes for light amounts of snow, snow boots (+ gaiters) for deep snow and now a pair of (faux) fur-lined waterproof boots for when it's mostly dry but really darn cold. And about a million pairs of wool socks... because when your feet get cold or wet, it's a prescription for misery.