Entries from July 2007 ↓

I have been working on this project for the last couple of weeks and I think it is time to officially “launch” it. The Birdfreak Team - mostly me, Birdfreak, is now offering web design for bird clubs. Our goal is to offer easy to use, clean looking, and fully functional websites for bird clubs - all at an affordable price.

I set up the website for our local birding club, NCIOS, complete with a blog. So far, the feedback from our birding club has been all positive.

Eddie Callaway did all the work of creating the NCIOS website. We talked about some ideas for the site and the next thing we knew he had it up and running. He has the website well organized and has included a wealth of information . The site is straightforward and easy to use, even for beginners. It’s becoming a valuable tool for our club members to trade information and stay in touch with each other. - Barbara and Daniel Williams (former President of the American Birding Association)

If you’d like to learn more about what we offer, please check out our Design Blog or the main site. If you know of a bird club in need of a website or overhaul of an old site, please send them our way.

Summer is the greatest time of year because even when not birding, it is the easiest time to be outside for many hours at a time. After a morning of birding I decided to spend the afternoon outside, writing and enjoying the mid-summer weather. One of the best things is to be able to browse the internet from the wireless router while enjoying bird sound, butterflies, and our forested backyard.

Summer is also a favorite time for our 1 year old Doberman-mix, Arizona.

Arizona is a native Illinoisan but was named after our favorite birding destination.

We presume he has greyhound in him because of his shape and the lightning speed.

We would highly recommend rescuing a Doberman - they are good-hearted, wonderful dogs that have gotten a bad name but are really just sweet, gentle creatures.

A children’s book by Carl Hiaasen called Hoot was recently made into a movie. The book and the movie are both worth checking out, both as good fiction and an insight to the very real problem for owls, habitat loss.

Upon reading a review for the movie Hoot by The Center for Biological Diversity…

Hoot is an “eco-thriller” about a group of teenagers who take on Florida developers that are destroying habitat for burrowing owls.

…we noticed the word eco-thriller, books and movies that call for solving a real-life environmental issues, such as saving Burrowing Owl habitat. Highlighting bad guys while dealing with realistic environmental situations makes for good movie watching and many organizations, such as the National Wildlife Federation support the movie Hoot.

The National Wildlife Federation is promoting this film because we think it’s a great story about how young people can make a difference for wildlife. We hope it will inspire many youth across the country to take an interest in their local natural areas and undertake their own wildlife projects. –The National Wildlife Federation Website

The book and the movie are excellent for both adults and children. We recommend reading the book first since it is much more detailed. We hope to find and review many more eco-thriller books that raise real-life issues on birds and habitat loss. It is a great way to raise awareness of environmental problems that affect us all and might spur interest in people to do something about it.

President Theodore Roosevelt established the first National Wildlife Refuge in 1903. The refuge system covers nearly 93 million acres over the United States and includes a diversity of ecological habitats.

The mission of the National Wildlife Refuge System is to conserve fish, wildlife, plants, and their habitats.–NWR

The Blue Goose Passport is a fun way to record your visits to the National Wildlife Refuges. The inexpensive book includes listings for the different refuges, a little about them, and when they were established. Most listings have space for their own distinctive stamp, which you can get for free, usually at a refuge’s visitor’s center.
The logo was created by J. N. “Ding” Darling in the 1920s.

The Blue Goose Passport is a cool incentive to try and visit them all. The National Wildlife Refuges comprise a large number of great birding areas. It is exciting to get a new stamp and makes an additional way to record your trip.

The reason birding has been slow at the Callaway Nature Preserve.

There are nesting Cooper’s Hawks at the Callaway Nature Preserve, and they find loads of stuff to eat because our neighbor has yet to mow the lawn this year…

I just read a cool little article about the Red-breasted Nuthatch being honored on a 25-cent Canadian coin.

I’ve always been fascinated with nuthatches, the White-breasted being abundant in northern Illinois, and frequent backyard entertainer. The Red-breasted Nuthatch is much less common in our area, usually arriving only in the winter months and only briefly in our yard.

The Canadian Wildlife Federation is also doing a series called Hinterland Who’s Who in which the Red-breasted Nuthatch has been featured.

It is great to hear about a fun, common northernly species getting some much-deserved recognition.

As borderland birders - living along the Illinois-Wisconsin border - we are rewarded with great birdspots in both of these beautiful Midwestern states. We also try to monitor any news and sightings from our northerly friends. One topic that has been up for debate (again) is what to do about Horicon Marsh’s dreadful Highway 49.

There is a wonderful post about Highway 49 at Mike’s Birding & Digiscoping Blog that illustrates the problem at Horicon Marsh. Highway 49 is a heavily traveled road with a speed limit of 55 mph that cuts right through Horicon Marsh, a National Wildlife Refuge!! That fact alone is scary for wildlife but perhaps even scarier is birding along this highway.

Imagine scanning mudflats and pools of water for Dowitchers, Rails, and Egrets with eighteen-wheelers barreling by you at 65 mph - literally feet from your scope. See pictorial example below:

Now imagine you’re a Virginia Rail or Least Bittern trying in desperation to cross this concrete river - with your young. Several thousand individuals of 91 species of animals have been documented as roadkill. There are probably hundreds more that were missed. The most sickening of these totals are the 54 Least Bitterns!!

Under federal law it is illegal to pursue, hunt, take, capture or kill migratory birds. Running them over with a vehicle, intentional or not, would be a violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

The problem is simple: lots of heavy traffic going too fast along a road frequented by birders who are stopped along both sides of the highway. The shoulders are wide and designed for stoppage.

The solution is not so simple. Non-birders might say that the road should be banned from birders stopping along it. However, this is ludicrous considering that A) this is a National Wildlife Refuge and B) Horicon Marsh draws in TONS of birders and tourists which means lots of money and attention for the birds.

So what should be done? There have been ideas brought up but for us there is really only one thing that can be done. This stretch of highway should be closed to through traffic and converted into part of the refuge road. This would mean no trucks and a speed limit of 30 mph or less.

Some people might find this crazy and too big of an inconvenience but the stretch of road isn’t exactly in the middle of nowhere. A simple new route on county roads would cost drivers a mere 11 or so miles. So ask yourself this - is a small detour worth the safety of our birds, not to mention birders?

We are running out of great places so why should we allow the ones we have be tarnished? In the upcoming weeks we will be contacting various entities to let them know what we think. We would love to hear other opinions on this topic, even if you’ve never birded Horicon before. Roger Tory Peterson considered it one of the top 12 birding hotspots in the U.S. Let’s keep it that way.