Start the Year on a BirdNote

No day can have enough birds, but there's an easy way to ensure you'll see at least one more every day in 2014.

The 2014 BirdNote calendar, featuring a different bird each month, is now on sale. It contains cool photographs of species like the ruffed grouse and the great gray owl. Pictures were taken by Gerrit Vyn, a conservation photographer from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Along with ensuring you get a daily dose of birds, the calendar helps support BirdNote. For more information, click here.

If you're in need of a calendar for the coming year, give it wings.

Wild Land, Wild Life

If you build it they will come, and if you handle that relationship well, you'll be glad they did.

As encounters with wildlife increase, the lines that separate human from nature become blurrier. The rise in these encounters has also led to an increase of reported "conflicts" with wildlife. However, encounters with wildlife don't have to be negative for humans or animals. In fact, people can do a lot to make the encounters positive for all involved.

Russell Link, a biologist with the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife, has written two books that encourage positive relationships with nature. Living with Wildlife in the Pacific Northwest gives tips for interacting wildlife, and Landscaping for Wildlife in the Pacific Northwest helps people provide good habitat. To hear Link talk about the latter book, click on this podcast from BirdNote. For more information about both books, click here.

We have an opportunity to build on our relationship with the environment. If we work to improve our interactions with wildlife, we'll be proud of how we took advantage of that opportunity.

Knowing Home

Big ideas can come in small spaces.

One idea that appeals to me more and more is living a smaller life, one that requires less consumption and travel. As it turns out, Kurt Hoelting has also had that idea. In fact, he has put it into action. For a year, Hoelting stayed within a 60-mile radius of his home, never using a car or plane. Now, he has written about the experience in a book called The Circumference of Home: One Man's Yearlong Quest for a Radically Local Life.

I found out about Hoelting by listening to a recent BirdNote podcast, and his book really interested me. For one thing, the idea of cutting back helps the environment. Also, by making a conscious effort to focus on the area close to home, a person can really come to know and appreciate the details of that place.

Hoelting's idea challenges the traditional notion of bigger being better, and it gives us a new approach to living. We don't have to do things just the way he did, but we can accept the great challenge and opportunity to minimize our impact and get to know our little spot in the world better.

Class Notes

The process of learning about the environment never stops.

A recent podcast from BirdNote shows some of the new strategies teachers are using to discuss environmental issues. Jessie Soder, a teacher in Alaska, has discovered the BirdNote podcasts and employed them as teaching aids in her class.

Through the development of technology, classroom instruction is becoming more dynamic and interactive. Teachers who embrace this possibility can enhance their ability to bring the environment to life for students.

Making a List

Lists aren't just for Santa Claus. With the start of the new year, it's a great time to begin a list of the birds you see.

Yesterday's BirdNote podcast talks about a woman who kept track of the 8,400+ bird species she saw in her lifetime. Although I can't compete with her list, two years ago, I started making my own bird lists using my Apple Keynote presentation application. I make lists for each season, for where I live, and for my home state of Washington. However, I only add to the lists after I get a picture of a bird. Once I have the photo and identify the species, I add a new slide to the presentation and include information about the date of the sighting and the specific place it occurred.

I enjoy keeping my bird lists and encourage you to try. You don't have to follow my photograph rule. Create your own way of doing it.

Now, make that list and check it often.

New Feature for the New Year

When you get things the way you want them, it takes something special to make you want a change.

For 2013, my blog has a new feature, and I am very excited about it. It comes from one of my favorite sources of environmental information, and it focuses on a subject I love, birds.

Near the top on the right side of the site, you will now see a widget from BirdNote. It will update daily, and viewers of my blog can push the play button to hear the latest avian podcast. In addition, the widget contains a link to the BirdNote Web site, which I encourage you to check out because BirdNote is much more than a great podcast. The site has a lot of bird-related information.

If you would like to add the BirdNote widget to your Web site or blog, click here.

I've blogged about BirdNote before, and I love its podcasts, so when I found I could make it part of my blog, I jumped at the chance. It's a perfect addition for the new year.

Building Our Environment

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about what it takes to have a healthy environment and strong communities.

I have realized that both require vision and focused efforts to see that vision come to life. Once the desired goal has been expressed, we must take ownership of its building and maintenance. In other words, if we want something to happen, we must make it happen.

This story from BirdNote provides a great example of what I mean. (When you check it out, you can also take a look around BirdNote's new Web site, which is fantastic.)

Of course, improving our environment and our communities means hard work, but if we really want to transform our relationships to each other and to nature, the work will be worth it.

For more ideas about communities and the environment, check out this blog from the Natural Resources Defense Council's Kaid Benfield.

Who Would Have Guessed?

About a week ago, I heard a BirdNote podcast about the molting birds go through around August. One of the points made in the piece was that some birds may become tailless during this time. Having never seen a bird that had lost all its tail feathers, I found the information interesting but wondered at the frequency of such an occurrence.

Well, this evening, as I was taking a walk, I saw an American robin that had no tail feathers. Instantly, the BirdNote information, which had faded to the background, sprang to mind. It was a nice feeling to be aware of and understand this strange sight.

The Hunt for Green Ammunition

Last fall, I blogged about lead-free fishing and hunting equipment. With fall hunting season just around the corner, I thought I'd give another resource for finding such equipment.

The American Bird Conservancy has a list of manufacturers and retailers who make and sell lead-free ammunition. To see the list, click here.

Birds are heavily impacted by lead in ammunition. Some pick up birdshot with gravel, and those that scavenge eat it when they feed on an animal that has been shot by lead ammunition but never retrieved by the hunter. Exposure to lead weakens and sickens the birds, and most die painful deaths. For a story about the impact of lead ammunition, check out today's BirdNote podcast.

If you are a hunter, when you are buying ammunition this fall or any other time in the future, please consider choosing the lead-free options. As outdoorspeople, we can be leaders in bringing people together with the environment, but let's lead without the lead. Thanks.

Nature in a Pod

For those of you looking for some online information about nature, one interesting way to access it is through podcasts.

Podcasts are recordings you can access on your computer. In particular, if you have Apple iTunes, you can use that application to subscribe to and download different podcasts. However, you don't have to have iTunes to listen. Often, you can just visit the Web page of the organization that has created the podcast.

BirdNote offers a great podcast. Each day, the organization packs a bunch of information about birds into two minutes. It's a quick way to pick up facts about birds and hints for birding and attracting birds to your home.

Also, Nature, the television show on PBS, creates video podcasts of its episodes.


If you prefer to access these podcasts in iTunes, just search for them by name in the podcast section of the iTunes Store. They are free. Also, you might want to look for other environment-related podcasts by doing general searches with words like birds or nature. iTunes has a variety of such podcasts.