Sounds of the times

As we move from winter to spring and summer, the trees and bushes start up their photosynthesis machinery again. While great at providing shade for the tired birder, leaves are also super at hiding everything we want to see! At our recent Birding101 outings and Field Trips, we’ve been talking about the benefits of birding by ear.

Red-eyed Vireo mid-song.

RBAS Spring Challenge 2015!

All right! It's time for another RBAS Challenge! What we want to do with this challenge is encourage birding right in your backyard and report your sightings to Ebird.

In case you don't know, Ebird.org is a citizen science data entry platform that aggregates bird sightings from all over the world and makes them available to anyone and everyone that's interested in learning about bird distribution, recent sightings in a particular place, or historical trends. All of this data allows researchers at Ebird make a Migration Forecast- a resource that combines our submissions to Ebird with weather forecasts to predict which species will be where, when they'll be there, and if there's going to be bad flying (good birding) conditions.

They can also compile all of this sightings data and make some really awesome migration maps! Here's one for the Indigo Bunting. Very cool!

To better attract birds to your backyard, we've set up a resource for you. Some of the basics of backyard feeders and yard set up are discussed, as well as the benefits for planting native plants. We've linked out to a lot of other resources as there is a lot of information available on this topic!


The Challenge

Our Spring 2015 Challenge is to submit at least 10 Ebird lists from your backyard before 01May2015. This gives you 6 weeks to get 10 lists! Easy! If you don't have a backyard, pick a favorite park or neighborhood spot and see what you can find.

For everyone that completes the Challenge, your name will be entered into a raffle to be held at the 13May RBAS Meeting. Prizes will include guide books, bird feeders, and whatever other items we can conjure up. We're expecting to have around 20 prizes, so lots of people will walk out of there with something!

Once you've gotten your 10 Ebird lists in, REGISTER for the drawing!


Ebird

For a quick how-to-Ebird, I've made an instructional video covering the basics for setting up an account and submitting a list. Ebird.org a free site- no cost you the citizen scientists- it is sponsored by National Audubon and Cornell Lab of Ornithology! So get reporting!

The Big Day!

Every year in late January or early February, the country pauses to take in a spectacle like no other: Months of preparation, training, late nights and early mornings, tough competition, and a singular focus to survive. That’s right, it’s:

SUPERB OWL 2015!

Now the Superb Owl celebrations were originally a way for t.v. comedian Stephen Colbert to avoid the legal ire of the NFL by talking about the “big game” without permission last year (relevant part starts about 2min in). Now in good fun, National Audubon’s CEO David Yarnold got in on it to talk about some of the issues with the Barred Owl/Spotted Owl management in California.

Who manages you? Who manages you all!?

2014 RBAS Year in Review

As we look forward to the new year, let’s take a quick minute to look back at Rio Brazos Audubon’s 2014. We ended the November Challenge (well, we ended with the Christmas Bird Count, but I was sick so I can’t tell you about it!). And it’s well overdue to post the winners to the group! 

We had a very good response in for sketches and photo submissions… and a good response from the voters!

To calculate the winners, each vote was weighted (1^st pace vote got 5 points, 5^th place vote got 1 point) and total scores were tabulated.

Our grand prize winner of a field guide and a bird feeder was:

Gus Cothran and his Chipping Sparrow!

Chipping Sparrow by Gus Cothran

CBC! CBC! CBC!

In the coming weeks, people around the world will venture out into their backyards, city parks, fields, ponds, lakes, and nearby forests to count the number of birds flying around participating in Audubon's Christmas Bird Count. 115+ years ago, people would relax after the Christmas festivities by shooting as many birds as they could. Big, small, colorful, drab, good to eat or just something in your backyard- didn’t matter. Shoot 'em and count 'em!

In 1900, ornithologist Frank Chapman proposed that people should go out and count the birds instead of shoot them! An idea that came too late to stem the decline of species such as the Passenger Pigeon or Carolina Parakeet, but one that started the longest running citizen science project in the U.S.

Savannah Sparrow from TXCS CBC 2012

November Challenge

The simple act of seeing and recognizing a bird in your backyard carries with it a long- and somewhat unappreciated- history of natural observation. What do you notice when you see a Northern Cardinal? How do you recognize it? Is it the ornamental red of the males? Or the claxon orange beak contrasted against the soft brown of the females? Maybe it’s not with your eyes but your ears… the dawn song of these ubiquitous backyard companions is comfortingly familiar to backyards across the eastern US.

Signs of the season

Season changes, weather changes, local avifauna changes.

We’ve been watching the departure of summer birds- the yellows and reds and blues- and welcoming in our winter visitors… with all of their browns and tans and light browns. Of course, with the winter arrivals, we’re changing where we look for the birds. No more warbler neck!, but confounded by little brown jobs in the bushes.

 

You'll miss me when I'm gone!