Birding Christmas Blog Alert

My favorite blogger who is both artist, writer, and avid gardener (it's a good combination) is also responsible for my interest in birding.

Bufflehead up close: I hardly knew ya

To be fair, part of the blame should also go to the professor at vet school who routinely shepherds a covey of students out to the lake and back to introduce us to the joys of spotting a bufflehead a quarter mile away. I am not sure I could recognize a bufflehead up close, but that characteristic speck of white that is almost as big as the speck of black is unmistakeable!


Anyway, the blogger is doing the twelve days of Christmas with illustration and commentary.

Coot: Not A Moorhen

The link to Day 3 is here: Three Moorhens (at Ursula's blog)

Moorhen: Not A Coot

Hawaiian Moorhen: Yes Endangered

"...Our American form of this species is not endangered, not threatened, and not apparently in decline. There is a Hawaiian subspecies that’s probably in trouble, by virtue of being a native bird in Hawaii..." 


It's as good a crash course as any in Elementary Birding for the North American Continent.

And on that note, if you are a birder, consider participating in the Christmas Bird Count. It is the longest-standing science project for citizen scientists (113 years and counting), and one of the cooler ways to "do science" without being an official scientist. Literally cooler, at this latitude. It helps track bird populations and habitat trends. Bonus point: As a poster-child for citizen science, it has helped persuade academics and researchers--to some degree--that normal people can contribute meaningful information to science, without having a PhD.*

*An actual scientist told me this.