A Long Distance Traveler

It's been a while since I've posted but I had a neat piece of news recently that I want to share. Mark (my banding buddy) got a note from the Bird Banding Lab that one of our banded birds had been reported. Now, I'm not sure if everyone can appreciate how big a deal this is but to have someone else find one of our birds is something to celebrate. It turns out that a hatch year, female junco that we banded at Ritter Farm Park (Lakeville,MN) in October of 2005 was recovered on December 22, 2007 in Stillwater, Oklahoma. This means that the bird had migrated south in 2005, north in the spring of 2006, south again in the fall of 2006, north in the spring of 2007 and south again in the fall of 2007. My assumption is that the bird was on it's wintering grounds when it died.

This was one well traveled bird.

The Coming Storm

Last night's Birds and Beers was well attended and the conversation covered a whole range of subjects. Top of the list was the movement of finches from up north. People are seeing lots of species like Pine Siskins (Carduelis pinus) and Red-breasted Nuthatches (Sitta canadensis). The weather service is predicting a significant storm for Saturday across much of Minnesota, so it will be interesting to see what species are driven to feeders. If you feed birds, make sure your feeders are full tonight.

Many of us will miss watching the snow come down since tomorrow is the annual Minnesota Ornithologists Union paper session at the Bell Museum on the campus of the University of Minnesota. We'll get there but getting home might be a different story.

Two new books that got good reviews from last night's group are Carroll Henderson's latest book called "Oology: Ralph's Talking Eggs" and "Of a Feather" by Scott Wiedensaul which is a history of birdwatching in North America. Good holiday gifts for the birder in your life.

Go find the snow shovel.