Where to from Here?

It's been about six months since I started this blog -- it seems so much longer.  Spring (which never really got on its feet this year) was just "heating up" back then.  There were Flickers and Starlings on my suet feeder, the hummingbirds had braved the snows in my yard, and the rats were foraging under the fence.  Six months later the rats are still there, the Starlings are re-forming their winter flocks after the breeding season (there were two in my backyard this morning making such an incredible variety of sounds it seemed like a huge mixed flock), and the hummingbirds are coming back.  Most people have hummingbirds in the summer who leave in the fall.  Around here, it's been different.  The hummingbirds left for the summer (because there were so many other food sources, I guess) and now that the weather has begun to cool a little and most of the flowers are gone, they're coming back.  This past week I've seen almost constant hummingbird activity.  They're so vocal (a lot of hummingbird sounds are not actually vocal, they're made by wings and tail) I can hear them from inside the house.  There have been at least two here regularly, a young female and an older female.  I'm on the lookout for more.

Zeke's first day home.

When I started the blog I did it for a number of reasons -- the most important of which are spelled out on my "About" page.  It was pretty dark time in my life, I had gone through the deaths of my mother and my canine companion Roscoe, and through it all it was bird watching and observing wildlife that really got me through.  Since I started, some things have changed-- for instance, my "puppy" Zeke now weighs close to 120 pounds -- and some things haven't.  Bird watching is still very important to me.

Zeke today.

It's been a pretty good year for my writing in general.  Both this blog and its companion, Books and Beasts, have been pretty well received.  I had an article about Roscoe published by Whole Life Times.  I've done a couple of guest posts for 10000 Birds. (Consider the Chickadee and Crazy Flickers). I may soon be doing a regular post for SodoMojo, a blog which covers the Seattle Mariners.  And my Klout Score (if anyone can explain to me how that thing really works, I'd love to hear it) is hovering somewhere around 47, give or take.  Not bad, all things considered.  It's a far cry from making a living as a writer, but I'm having fun.

Meanwhile, I keep thinking about what I want to do with these blogs.  Between them, they take up a fair amount of my time now, and I want to keep them as fresh an interesting to the readers as I can.  Without losing what's good about them so far -- I have some ideas that I am hoping to try out in the months to come.

The first of these involves my puppy Zeke.  I will soon be doing a review for Books and Beasts of Mary R. Burch's book Citizen Canine, about training for the Canine Good Citizen test.  Following that review, Zeke and I are going to undertake a regular training regimen with the goal of his passing the test at next year's Paws Walk.  And my intention is to document that training here -- with regular updates, and even videos of his progress.  I'll tell you a lot more about it in the near future, but if you think this would be an interesting addition to this blog, I'd love to hear from you.  (And if you don't, I'll still be glad for the feedback.)

The second thing is fiction.  I've written a little here, and a lot more at Books and Beasts, about point of view in fiction, and how incorporating the consciousness of other species might effect that.  I've also been working on that problem more practically in my own fiction, and what I hope to do is share some of that work with my readers from time to time.  I'm thinking of having a semi-regular short fiction post in addition to the regular contents of the blog.  Again, I'd appreciate any thoughts readers have on this idea.

Meanwhile, I'll keep doing what I'm doing, keeping you informed on what's going on with the birds and wildlife in this tiny corner of the world.  I hope it makes interesting reading.

If you like Birdland West, you might also want to check out our sister blog Books and Beasts, which focuses on reviews of books about animals and related topics.

 Many of the original photographs featured on Birdland West are available for sale as art quality prints.  You can check out all of our offerings at http://AlexWashoe.imagekind.com.  If you see an image here that does not show up on our Imagekind site please contact me directly and I'll let you know about availability.)

Updating the Yard LIst

Summer has finally come to Seattle and we've had a stretch of mostly dry, warm weather.  The wildflowers are blooming in the garden (which was taken over by weeds before they arrived).  And the Seattle Mariners followed up their surprisingly good first half with a club record 16 straight losses in July.  Yikes. 

But on to the wildlife. 

Sunday morning I was looking out my window and I spied an unlikely couple having breakfast together.  They're both frequent visitors to the feeders, but I've never seen them together before.  There they were, just chowing down like old friends.  I had to take the pictures through the window, because there's no way I could have gotten out on the deck without both of them taking off. They hung out for about ten minutes, not the least bit concerned with each other.

Sunday Brunch with a pal.

My dog Lulubelle routinely flushes the squirrels off the porch in the mornings.  It's impressive to see them leap into the branches of the cherry tree.  The House Finch has been here since winter.  He and his mate are here almost every day.  I haven't seen any young finches though.

Speaking of the cherry tree, it is heavy with fruit.  Most of it is beyond human reach (unless you know someone with one of those cherry picker trucks).  However, the ripe fruit usually brings a burst of bird activity.  As soon as some of the fruit begins to fall I expect to see robins and many other birds congregating in the yard.   Last year, it also brought a raccoon.  They're always around the neighborhood but we very rarely see them.  I'll be keeping my eyes on the tree in the evenings, though, hoping to get a good shot.

My second discovery was even more exciting, because it was a new species for the yard list.  Over the weekend I saw a bird with a lot of bright orange on its undersides.  I thought it might be the Black Headed Grosbeak who was here earlier in the winter, but who I never managed to get good photos of.  This time I was able to get some good shots, but when  I looked at them it wasn't the Grosbeak at all.  It was someone I've never seen in the wild before (although I've seen them a number of times at the wildlife rehab center.) 

Recognize him? (Because of the blackness of his hood and tail, I'm assuming he's male, since the females are supposed to have a greyer coloring, but I'm not totally certain about that). 

Yep, that's a Spotted Towhee.  Beautiful bird isn't he? There were actually two of them in the yard at the same time.  I don't know if they were a couple, or just buddies.  My guide says they prefer to eat off the ground, but these guys were eating at the feeder.  I guess they didn't read the guide.

With the good weather expected this week I hope to get outside a lot and find some new interesting activity to report.  

And just in cast you're interested, this is my Yard List since moving to West Seattle last summer (not counting the Red-Tailed Hawk who was mobbed by crows in the tree across the street):

  June 2010 through December 31, 2010
1. American Goldfinch (winter plumage)
2. American Robin
3. Anna's hummingbird
4. Bewick's Wren
5. Black Capped Chickadee
6. American Crow
7. Dark-eyed Juncos
8. European Starlings
9. Northern Flicker
10. Red-breasted Nuthatch
11. Rock Pigeons
12. Steller's Jay
Jan 1st 2011 through June 21st 2011
13. House Finch
14. Song Sparrow
15. Yellow-rumped warbler
16. Bushtit
17. House Sparrow
18. Black-Headed Grosbeak
19. Wilson's Warbler 
 June 22nd 2011 through _____
20. Rufus Hummingbird
21. Spotted Towhee
 

If you like Birdland West, you might also want to check out our sister blog Books and Beasts, which focuses on reviews of books about animals and related topics.

(Many of the original photographs featured on Birdland West are available for sale as art quality prints.  You can check out all of our offerings at http://AlexWashoe.imagekind.com.  If you see an image here that does not show up on our Imagekind site please contact me directly and I'll let you know about availability.)

Game Show Pigeons and Ball Playing Dogs

You have to bear with me for a second, but this will get around to birds, I promise.

Timmy, my resident "special needs" pigeon.

Over at Sciencewriter.org (possibly the coolest domain name ever), Davide Castelvecchi, who is a physical sciences and mathematics editor at Scientific American, has been stirring up controversy recently by revisiting what's known as "The Monty Hall Problem".  If you're not familiar with it -- where have you been?  It's been discussed over the years everywhere from hard science magazines to Car Talk.  It's derived from the problem that Monty Hall often presented to contestants on Let's Make A Deal.  You have three curtains.  Behind one of them is a car, and behind each of the other two is a worthless gag gift (like a donkey).  (I know, I know -- who says a donkey is worthless?  But that's not the point of the problem).  You have to pick one of the curtains.  Let's say you choose number One.  After you make your choice, Monty reveals what's behind one of the other curtains, and the one he reveals is always a donkey.  Let's say Monty opens number Two. Then, he offers you a choice.  Do you want to keep the curtain you chose, or do you want to trade?

Monty's problem (not my photo, obviously).

For most of us, our intuitive guess is that it doesn't matter.  We had a one in three chance of picking right the first time and that hasn't changed.  Or, conversely, since there are now two unopened curtains, we have a fifty-fifty chance.  Either way, switching can't increase our odds.

It turns out though, that isn't true. Statistically you are always better off switching.  In fact it almost doubles your chances. I'm not good with this sort of math so I'll just refer you over to those who are -- and if you want to argue about it (as a lot of people do, judging by the comments section) you can argue with them.  Proving the solution isn't really my point here. (Check it out here.)

The reason this came up again at Scientific American, though, is because of an article they published back in January of this year.  John Allen Paulos, a mathematician at Temple University, noted that pigeons didn't seem to have the same difficulty with the Monty Hall Problem that humans do.  On the contrary, pigeons (being good empiricists, as Paulos says) learn the best strategy after only a few tries.  (You can see the article here.)

A few years ago another scientist -- Tim Pennings, a Professor at Hope College in Michigan -- was playing fetch with his dog, throwing a tennis ball into the water for the dog to retrieve.  The dog, Elvis, would run along the shore and at some point plunge into the water toward the ball.  What Pennings found was that, in most cases, Elvis was choosing a path that closely approximated the optimal path (the path with the shortest travel time) to the ball.  The path can be worked out using fairly complicated calculus equation -- but Elvis seemed to be doing it "in his head" and "on the fly". (Again, I'm not going to try to explain the math -- you can look into it more here if you're interested.)

Precision landings almost every time.

These kind of remarkable abilities are everywhere in nature.  The small songbirds in my yard routinely land on the thin perches of a bird feeder that is swaying in the wind -- and they do so coming from across the yard, setting their trajectory as they approach. Only a couple of times have I ever seen a bird have to pull up and come at it again.  Squirrels leap from the rail of my deck to the cherry tree nearby, and catch the thin branches, which again are often swaying in the wind.  Birds also fly through the cherry tree despite its dense branches and (at this time of year) leaves.  They can fly straight through and out the other side.  Imagine trying to write a computer program to pilot something the size of a chickadee through such a complex space, complicated more by ever changing light conditions, wind turbulence, and so on.  The amount of calculation that it requires is staggering.

The catch looks easy, but try writing a program to do it.

But let's not leave humans out.  Ichiro Suzuki does the same thing nearly every day.  When an outfielder hears the crack of the ball leaving the bat and starts to run, he has time for almost no conscious thought about where it's going or how to get there.  Again, it's a complex mathematical problem solved on the fly -- timing his leap to catch the ball just before it goes over the wall.  And I've seen dogs playing with Frisbees or tennis balls who were as good as any major leaguer.

The greatest ball player I've ever known.

Paulos warns against the mistake of thinking that these abilities reflect some kind of conscious knowledge on the part of animals.  Of course, they don't.  They represent the problem solving ability wired into brains over billions of years of evolution.  (And in the case of dogs -- and to some degree pigeons -- of tens of thousands of years of intense breeding).  Corgis, for instance, are herding dogs, whose job was to keep livestock moving in one direction.  The ability to foresee the movements of a sheep and set your own course to intercept it effectively is not all that different from what Elvis was demonstrating on the beach.  

If you want to drive the unconscious nature of these faculties home, I invite you to walk into a room sometime and ask if anyone there is good at calculus.  When almost everyone predictably says no, toss a tennis ball to one of them.  Almost certainly, they will catch it, and when they do you can show them (with the help of a mathematician friend, if you're like me) the equation that describes what they just did.  We're all better at math than we think.

The furor over the Monty Hall problem does show, however, that for us humans our conscious thinking sometimes gets in the way.  I learned this a long time ago in art school.  One of the reasons why it's so hard for many people to learn to draw is because what we "know" about objects (say the size and form of a table) gets in the way of what we actually see before us.  Most people asked to draw a table will draw an abstract representation of a table instead of the object they see before them, which is skewed by perspective and point of view and really looks nothing like our idealized notion of "table".

 Oh, and I wanted to get back to pigeons.  More on that very soon.

If you like Birdland West, you might also want to check out our sister blog Books and Beasts, which focuses on reviews of books about animals and related topics.

(Many of the original photographs featured on Birdland West are available for sale as art quality prints.  You can check out all of our offerings at http://AlexWashoe.imagekind.com.  If you see an image here that does not show up on our Imagekind site please contact me directly and I'll let you know about availability.)

Fledglings in Seattle, Gulls in New Jersey

The beautiful summer weather that we had over the Fourth of July weekend has given way again to the cool, cloudy days we've been accustomed to this spring.  The yard is quiet, not much going on.  The dogs are restless and not happy about being inside.  I've been spending too much time at the computer and not enough time outdoors.

Hose Sparrow fledgling.  His gape flanges are still visible at the corners of his beak

But the big excitement continues to be fledglings.  Day before yesterday there was a loud, insistent chirping in the cherry tree outside.  (The cherries are starting to ripen, and when that happens we'll have all kinds of excitement around here for a couple of weeks.)  It sounded almost like the demanding voices of baby birds in the nest.  Working at a wildlife rehabilitation center, where the baby birds have to be fed constantly throughout the day, I've learned to recognize that sound.  But I was pretty certain there was no nest in the cherry tree.  It took me a long time, moving around on the deck and in the yard, to actually see the guys who were causing all the commotion.

House Sparrow fledglings in the cherry tree.

This is the second batch of fledgling House Sparrows that I've seen.  If you remember, about a week ago, I posted a picture of a slightly older HS.  These guys are even younger.  According to my naturalist friend, Kevin, if you look closely you can still see the yellowish "gape flanges" at the corners of their mouths.  The fellow I photographed before didn't have any remaining gape flanges.  So far this year the House Sparrows are by far the most prolific (or at least the most obvious) breeders around.

Slightly older House Sparrows form the week before.

Summer is also the time baseball heats up.  This year the Seattle Mariners are up and down, but they're managing to hang in the division race, which is a lot more than any of us expected.  I love baseball.  Safeco Field, which is the Mariners' home, opened in 2001 (the season the Mariner's set an American League record for most games won and Barry Bonds broke the single season home run record) and there is really nowhere better to be on a beautiful summer day in Seattle.  It's a beautiful park, and there is literally not a bad seat in the place.

Seagull impatiently waiting for the crowd to leave at Safeco Field.

Seagulls love baseball too.  Or at least, seagulls love Safeco Field.  I guess they aren't really interested in the game, though, because they usually don't start showing up until about the eighth inning.  They seem to have some sense of how long the game lasts, or else they're picking up on other clues, like fans starting to sneak out early to beat the traffic.  I would imagine that once the people are gone the gulls have quite a feast on spilled and discarded food.

Ichiro in Yankee Stadium, May 2008.  The Mariners got pounded.

Laughing Gull, Atlantic City, NJ.  May 2008

Back in 2008 (the last hurrah before the bottom fell out of the economy and my business) I took a trip back east to see the Mariners play at Yankee Stadium.  That was the last season the Yankees played in the old stadium -- the House That Ruth Built -- and the baseball lover in me couldn't stand to let them tear it down without seeing it once, in person.  I saw one game of the last series the Mariners ever played in that stadium in May of 2008.  The Yankees creamed them by the way.  Since I had to fly back -- and since it costs a fortune to stay in New York City (see how good I am at rationalizations?) I decided to spend a few days in Atlantic City, rent a hotel room there, and then drive up to New York to see the game.  It worked out like that (more or less -- I wasn't really prepared for driving in the Bronx).  I spent four days in Atlantic City, playing poker at night and hanging out on the Boardwalk in the day time. 

 

It turns out that the Boardwalk is home to a lot of seagulls -- mostly Laughing Gulls, which are different in several ways with the gulls we're familiar with here in Seattle. 

I spent more time photographing gulls, pigeons and the semi-feral boardwalk cats than I did at the casinos, which is good because as much as I love poker, I lost every game I played there.

If you like Birdland West, you might also want to check out our sister blog Books and Beasts, which focuses on reviews of books about animals and related topics.

(Many of the original photographs featured on Birdland West are available for sale as art quality prints.  You can check out all of our offerings at http://AlexWashoe.imagekind.com.  If you see an image here that does not show up on our Imagekind site please contact me directly and I'll let you know about availability.)

House Finches, the First Day of Summer, and Baseball

Finally got a decent photo of the male House Finch, seen here with his mate.

Today is the first day of Summer and I awoke this morning to the song of House Finches.  This couple (I assume it's the same couple -- I frequently see them together and never see more than one of each gender at a time) have been around since late winter/early Spring although I've been seeing a lot more of them in the last couple of weeks.  The female has posed for some good pictures but the male continues to be very elusive.  This morning I saw them eating on the rail of my deck -- food that I put out for our resident (and slightly mentally handicapped, I believe) pigeon Timmy.  Juncos, Sparrows, Starlings and the occasional crow also stop by to sample Timmy's food, but this is the first time I've seen the Finches there. 

The guides say that House Finches are only seen individually during nesting season, and that other times they tend to form large flocks.  I haven't seen any flocks, just this couple, who have been around most of the Spring.  But I also haven't seen any fledglings, and I was thinking that it must be late in the season for nesting.  But my naturalist friend, Kevin, assures me that it's still very much nesting season for House Finches.  "Sometimes they get a late start and may not have fledglings until the middle of July," he says, "or they get an early start and raise two broods of young in one season.  Keep your eyes peeled because you still may see some fledglings before the summer is over!"

I will definitely be watching.

Her Majesty, Lulubelle, enjoys the sun and watches for rats on the first day of summer.

I started this blog a little over two months ago (it seems much longer) at the beginning of a spring that has been unusually wet and cool here.  We are still well below our average temperatures in Seattle (today it's going to get up to a lovely 75, but it's not going to last --  tomorrow the drizzle comes back).  These conditions are creating all kinds of problems.  Today on the news I heard that the state's strawberry crop is delayed and may be the latest crop in many years.  Here at home my own garden has grown much slower than anticipated and my plans to outfit my yard for hummingbirds this year might have to wait.  

Also, there have been an unusual number of bear sightings in the suburbs -- it's been going on for a couple of years but this year it seems even worse.  Part of the problem is that the edges of the Greater Puget sound urban sprawl are pushing further and further into the greenbelt areas that the bears depend on.  But part of the problem also is the unusually cool weather which has retarded the food sources at higher altitudes and the hungry spring bears are coming down into the inhabited areas to look for food. That often ends badly for the bear.

I hope to bring you more about the bears in the near future.

Back in my first post I featured rats, starlings and Flickers.  They're all still here.  I haven't seen the Flickers as much lately and they've stopped their incessant banging on the side of the house in the mornings.  But I hear them frequently, especially early in the day. 

The rats are still here, and multiplying.

 The rat is not only still here, but now there are several smaller rats around as well.  Obviously, reproduction has occurred.  The rats seem quite comfortable in the yard, although my dog Lulubelle, true to her terrier ancestry, keeps a close eye on them and lets them know if they get out of line.  (I don't know what the "rules" are for the rats, but Lulubelle does.  She's a very rule oriented girl.)

Starlings in their shimmering summer colors

 And the starlings, of course, are still here too.  They've gone from their brown, brightly spotted winter colors to their resplendent summer iridescent purple and green.  That's because earlier in the year their new feathers are growing in, the white tips of which give them the white spots.  Now the tips have worn away, and their spring and summer colors shimmer.  All About Birds says this unusual way of changing colors is called "wear molt".  

 

 

Ichiro is hitting again and the Mariners are in contention.  What a great way to start summer.

Today -- the first day of Summer -- we are just enjoying the sunshine, watching the birds, waiting for the baseball game to start. (The Seattle Mariners-- who took two games out of three this weekend from the Phillies, the best team in baseball right now --  are in DC today, playing the Washington Nationals, and are one game out of first. Who could have predicted that?) (They lost, giving away a four run lead in the ninth inning -- but it was still a good day.)

And, of course, all of us are hoping for more good weather.

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Birdland West readers will be interested in my review of Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle by Thor Hanson, which is posted now at Books and Beasts.   It's a great book and a must read for all bird lovers.  Check out the review here.

 (Many of the original photographs featured on Birdland West are available for sale as art quality prints.  You can check out all of our offerings at http://AlexWashoe.imagekind.com.  If you see an image here that does not show up on our Imagekind site please contact me directly and I'll let you know about availability.)