Bird & Nature Blog
A clutch of the latest stories from Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance
The harvest season has begun in earnest at our house with a quick flurry of honeyberries followed by the start of the juneberry and raspberry seasons with a few pie cherries thrown in for good luck.
I must start with a thank you to the bumblebees. As far as I can tell, they are the only pollinators of honeyberries and the principal pollinator of the raspberries. I'm not as sure about the juneberries but they probably help there too.
Photo by Hirotomo Oi
Looks like the summer will be wet and warm—good news for my nominee for the most fearsome of Wisconsin's animals. No, not our two rattlesnakes… no, not ticks as loathsome as they are… no, not our most dangerous mammals, the Holstein or Jersey bulls. Ladies and gentlemen, meet, if you dare, North America's largest mosquito, the gallinipper.
I don't think they are new to Wisconsin but I'm betting they are much more common. I speculate that our changed climate is the reason. The bugs need hot, muggy weather, and water standing in those pastures where their prime prey lives. The changed climate reliably produces that weather and those conditions.
Photo by Carl Wycoff
Welcome back to the Entryway to Birding blog! In last week’s entry, we explored some of the many reasons that a new birder might benefit from joining eBird, a citizen science platform for recording bird sightings and observations.
This week, I’m going to show you just how easy, fast, and rewarding submitting an eBird checklist can be using the eBird Mobile app. For those of you who prefer to stick to the desktop version, I’ll have some website-specific resources to share with you too.
Let’s get started by looking at eBird Mobile, designed to be used on your smartphone.
Photo by Caitlyn Schuchhardt
One of Madison Audubon’s most popular fall field trips is A Swift Night Out. This nation-wide field trip/citizen science event invites community members to bring their lawnchairs and binoculars, and join in on counting chimney swifts coming into popular roosting sites (chimneys). Sandy Schwab of the Wisconsin Chimney Swift Working Group leads the event, teaching attendees about these amazing birds and how they can help reverse this species’ downward population trend.
Now, the WDNR is looking for information about where chimney swifts may be nesting. Below is the press release with more information. The more we know about the locations where chimney swifts are roosting and nesting, the better the prospects are for conserving this great species.
Photo by Nancy J. Nabak
A set of lessons is of particular concern to conservationists and policymakers in Wisconsin. We can't help but see how important the outdoors are to everyone at a time of crisis, worry, and misery. As the plague started, people wanted to be outside. While some pursued favorite activities like birding or fishing, many just wanted to be outside walking and surrounded by Nature's variety and beauty. These walks and outings became a consistent and safe consolation. Backyards, neighborhoods, and small municipal parks were certainly important for folks, but a huge number of us hungered for bigger, more varied, and more beautiful places. Places we could—at least temporarily—lose ourselves and the burdensome consciousness of all that was going wrong and might get worse.
Here are the top 6 lessons I think we as a nature-loving community have learned or should learn through our rollercoaster experience with COVID-19.
Madison Audubon photo
