Biggest Week in American Birding

Yesterday I wore my green-gray BSBO t-shirt to the gym. Black Swamp Bird Observatory. Today is the last day of "The Biggest Week in American Birding" hosted by BSBO and last weekend we were in Lakeside for an art workshop (observing, not teaching) and some of the activities were there. I picked up a visitor's guide and could spend a month perusing it. https://www.facebook.com/bsbobird/ or BSBO - HOME

Here's just one useful article: How you can help birds. Keep cats indoors. Don't release balloons. Discard used fishing line. Take a beginner birding. Drink Bird-friendly shade-grown coffee. Protect windows from collisions.

Cats kill an estimated 2.4 billion birds every year. Birders don't like wind turbines or giant glass windows on buildings, but they don't kill as many birds as cats.

I'm not a birder, and I can probably only identify 25 birds, and mostly I learned those names when I was a child. Not sure how, perhaps my mom or my teachers. Here at my living room window at my computer I see herons and mallards, owls and woodpeckers, hawks and crows, cardinals, robins, wrens and doves. Some get on the windowsill and look at me! And of course, when we were up on Lake Erie we saw many species not common around here. More than 3 dozen species of warblers pass through northwest Ohio and the BSBO tracks them.

Bird watching

I've never made it a priority, but I thought it would be nice to know more about birds. God must have had such fun designing them. My fellow librarians gave me binoculars as a retirement gift, thinking I'd lounge on the deck and view birds. About 12 years ago I participated in some morning birding group walks at Lakeside. Great people. We even went to the Black Swamp Bird Observatory in Magee Marsh Wildlife Area for a lecture and bird watching. Some could identify 100s of birds. Me, not so much. I think I learned about 5 more birds than I knew at age 10. So when I saw a bird calendar at Marc's this morning for $1, I thought it was a bargain and I could look at a page a day. And now I feel really smart, because earlier they were $16.99 according to the web site. Audubon Birds Color 2023 Page-A-Day Calendar - Calendars.com