Another FOS

First of Season birds are fun to find and important to birders and scientists who follow migration information and data. As a ‘Citizen Scientist’ of sorts, I also find it interesting to track the arrival dates of my backyard birds.

Late yesterday afternoon, I came home to find a couple of the season’s first Lesser Goldfinch feeding with the hundreds of Pine Siskin and American Goldfinch I have in my yard. I just love these stunning birds; the ones here have the dark, black backs associated with the Eastern variety of the species. Supposedly, the ‘green-backed’ Lesser Goldfinch are the more Western variety, though it is noted ‘black-backs’ occasionally are found further west.

This first photo is one I took last year on June 1st, the first time I'd seen them. They seem to be a month earlier this year...but then I was so new then; perhaps I just never noticed them.

I think for awhile, I thought these tiny finches were displaying the difference in male and female Lesser Goldfinch; it took awhile to realize there are two varieties.

Males of both varieties are, as usual, more colorful; brilliant yellow below, with dark wings which are white at the base of the primaries. As the name suggests, green-backed Lesser Goldfinch are a dusky-green above; along the neck and the entire back is greenish…only the top, front of the head to the bill (not unlike an American Goldfinch) is black. The black-backed Lesser Goldfinch is black from the bill all the way to the tail; the entire upper body is dark…stunning against the pure, bright yellow of the lower half. These are our tiniest finch; only 4 ½ inches long and about 9.5 g…making them noticeably smaller than the Am.Goldfinch which is closer to 13 grams. You might also notice that this little goldfinch has a proportionally larger bill than do others.

Here are a couple shots of an American Goldfinch...so you can see how much more yellow they are:

You can find a couple more (poor) photos I took of Lesser Goldfinch here, and pages of photos of them on Google, here.

Except where noted, photos from Wikipedia

Update: Bottled Water is Polluted!

Yes, a new report released today by the Environmental Working Group, says bottled water is no cleaner than regular tap water…and most is downright polluted ...with Wal-Mart’s ‘Sam’s Choice’ leading the pack in contaminants. Ten popular brands were tested and found to containe 38 chemical pollutants altogether, with an average of eight contaminants in each brand.

Unlike tap water, which is regularly tested and results made public, the bottled water industry is not mandated to disclose their results…if any testing is done at all. Bottled water is not held to the same safety standard as tap water; all the beautiful images of high mountain streams and cool, deep springs doesn’t make it safer; nor do prices 1,900 times tap water. Instead, bottled water can contain disinfection byproducts, fertilizer residue and pain medication…not to mention the chemicals the plastic bottle off-gases into it. Chemicals such as phthalates or Bisphenol A, both with carcinogenic effects and now linked to obesity by triggering fat-cell activity.

To read the full EWG Report click here.

It would be so much healthier to put a charcoal-filter on your tap water and re-fill your own hard-plastic water bottle for the road. Do it; our land-fills are choking on throw-away bottles and our seas are filling up with garbage!

Click that last link or this one to discover two new 'continents' in the middle of our ocean (shown above) ...made entirely of plastic; 100,000,000 tons of it.

Consider this an update to my blog entry: Don't Flush Your Drugs!, More on Water Wars, and Bottle Your Own! Yeah, you could say I'm a little concerned about the water I drink.

More:

• WebMD


• National Geographic’s: The Green Guide
  
• Natural Resources Defense Council
  
• NRDC’s 1999 results of 4-year study
  
• NRDC on marketing
  
• Sustainablog; older but good
  
• Drinking water scorecard for your area
  

Project FeederWatch!

Project FeederWatch, the popular ‘Citizen-Science Project’ with Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology, starts next month! It runs November through part of April…just 21 weeks. More than 10,000 participants across North America have made Project FeederWatch part of their winter ritual…this will be my first time; having just begun ‘birding’ early this year.

It sounds easy; pick an area you can see from one spot where you have attracted birds with feeders or landscaping; I’ll pick the spot in my kitchen where the bay-window looks over my entire backyard…and count the birds from the same spot twice a week. The idea is to choose two consecutive days, scheduled in advance…and count the largest number of each species you see at the same time. If something comes up and you can’t count one day…it’s not the end of the world; but we’re not to change counting days. If we see an interesting bird on a different day, there is a way to make note of it, too…it’s all for the love of science, doncha know! (And no…one does not have to pledge a full day of counting.)

As far as how to count, they offer a tally sheet and instructions oh how to keep it simple. If you see six Juncos one time and ten another; the count is ten. They want the greatest number of individuals at one time, so the math is painless. There are suggestions for how to count large numbers and other tricky situations. One can enter data online or mail it in…it really IS super easy! Since 2005 Project FeederWatch has published an annual summary of results from the prior season in Winter Bird Highlights. There are several very interesting News Articles published and available for online viewing; including feature stories about specific sightings like the Streak-backed Oriole in Colorado and the Clay-colored Robin in New Mexico. Wow, I wonder if it was seen on my pal’s property down there.

Is it important to count? Does every bird matter? Does your count matter? Check out how FeederWatch data is used by Lab research in Scientific Publications.

There is also a very informative page where one can learn about feeders, food, plantings, tricky bird IDs, rare, diseased and other strange-looking birds…and some advice on how to ‘avoid’ unwanted visitors to your feeders.

Michelle, over at The Northwest Nature Nut started a Great Bird Count of October that several of us enjoyed. It was great fun to read all the diversity witnessed and humorous stories shared. You can see my (rather slow) progress on the sidebar here. I hope a bunch of us also participate in this Project FeederWatch…it seems to me that for very little extra work, our hobby can provide scientific data that will help the birds we are so interested in watching.
You can sign up for Project Feeder Watch, here!

All photos in this post from Wikipedia