First Day on a New Continent

I am in the Philippines on a familiarization tour for birders. I am the only U.S. birder along on this trip with a whole mess of British bird watchers. We've had a good time, despite our many cultural, lingual, and intellectual differences.

We spent much of March 3 birding at Subic Bay, the site of the former U.S. Naval base. I'll post in more detail about the trip in the coming weeks, but for now, a few images from my first day on a new continent: Asia.

We were greeted by school-age dancers who performed a show they'd done earlier in the year for the local bird festival. The Candaba Wetlands are an amazing foraging and stopover point for migrant shorebirds, waders, and waterfowl. I arrived in the Philippines a half-day later than expected and only got to Candaba in time to pack up and leave for Subic.

That night we had a welcome dinner at a fancy restaurant on Subic Bay called The Lighthouse. My friends had a surprise for me: they knew about my birthday and the hotel made me a cheesecake! The lounge singers sang Happy Birthday to me, too, which was really fun.


It's great to have the chance to travel to new places to see birds. It's even better to make new friends and enjoy the company of existing friends while you're traveling after birds.

I'm trying to appreciate each moment and to count those many blessings.

I'd share some bird pix here, but have yet to download what I've taken.
More posts soon, I promise!

Sandhill Reflections

The blurry lines at top center are sandhill cranes. This is an art shot.

These two images of sandhill cranes were taken in New Mexico, near Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge a couple of Novembers ago. The night I took these it was as cold as the balls on a brass croquet set. The cranes were flying in against a tangerine, high-desert sunset, garoo-ing to each other and settling in restlessly, in twos and threes.

I recently got to enjoy watching a few sandhill cranes against the sunset in Florida, and it reminded me of that night in New Mexico.

Cranes clustered together for the night. They roost standing in water at night to make it harder for predators such as coyotes to sneak up on them.

Crossbills!

Photo of the actual white-winged crossbills by Shila Wilson

My sister, Laura Fulton, is the circulation director at Bird Watcher's Digest. She is many wonderful things (cook, numbers cruncher, mom, Wii player—and not in that order, mind you) but she is also a self-described non-birder. Sad but true, such people DO exist, and a few—a very few—even work at BWD.

So it was with a bit of wonder that I stood in her kitchen a few days ago, looking out the window at 50+ white-winged crossbills!

No lie!

Laura noticed them, realized they were something different, and IDENTIFIED THEM. Then she called me to come see them, figuring I'd be interested. Heck yes I was interested!

The last time I saw a crossbill in Ohio was in 1979, when I was in 11th grade! This was a special occurrence, so I called my local birding pals to come see the crossies.

Now I'm wondering if this will be Laura's spark bird?

It's a great thing when an avid bird watcher finds a rare bird. But it's even better when a non-birder finds one, because that's how new bird watchers are made. Contrary to popular myth, new bird watchers are NOT made by the transfer of a virus via a bite to the neck. That's only true for the Transylvania Bird Club.