Birding with Kenn and Kimberly

From back home in Ohio already, Kenn writes: I had a whirlwind weekend, giving three talks in two days, in three very different settings. On Saturday I would get to address an audience of about 300 at the "Shreve Migration Sensation"; on Friday night it was a smaller audience of the top movers and shakers of Audubon’s statewide organization in New York; but in this post I want to talk about what happened Friday afternoon. The Friday afternoon event was a small gathering, by invitation only, organized by Nancy Castillo and Lois Geshiwim, owners of the Wild Birds Unlimited store in Saratoga Springs, New York. These two had decided some time ago that they wanted to promote the idea of shade-grown, bird-friendly coffee. They had started using their store and their website to educate their customers about this issue, describing how coffee grown in traditional shade plantations supported large populations of native birds, while factory farms of sun-grown coffee would support essen...

This White-throated Sparrow is just waiting patiently to be counted ... From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes: Here's a shout out to ace birder Rob Fergus, who writes the very popular blog over at The Birdchaser and who is also one of the principal organizers of the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC). The GBBC is going on right now, through Monday the 16th (Presidents' Day), and it's easy for anyone to get involved. You can count birds from the comfort of your kitchen window, or you can trek out into the wilderness, and your results will help to give a valuable snapshot of what's happening with birds all over the North American continent this weekend. It's the second-most-fun thing you can do on Valentine's Day (and it may be THE most fun thing you can do on Presidents' Day). It's a great activity for families -- if you're a parent with kids who are lukewarm on birds, get them involved in helping to count and then let them enter the data online and ...

From under a pile of blankets, Kenn writes: Okay, picture this. It's Sunday morning -- yesterday morning, and we're out before it's fully daylight, standing in the soggy weeds along the edge of a soggy woods. The temperature is above freezing, but the only way we know that is because the wind-driven precipitation hitting our faces is rain, not ice. And my thoughts are running something like this: - According to a US Fish & Wildlife Service survey in 2006, there are approximately 81,400,000 bird watchers in the United States. - If that's true, then last year, there were 81,353,380 bird watchers in the United States who did not take part in the Christmas Bird Count (CBC). But last year set a new high record for participation! Standing there in the freezing wet night and thinking about it, I'm reminded of the late lamented Rick Blom, who might have commented that "no one does this, and if you try it, you'll understand why." Still, we are out ...