Month: February 2020

A question often asked – do bird feeders help or hurt birds? A thoughtful analysis from Cornell:

Cornell All About Birds

By Emma Greig

“…There are some clear benefits of feed­ing birds. We know that some regular feeder visitors, such as Northern Cardi­nals, are doing very well, because their populations are growing and ranges expanding. But supplementary feeding has also been associated with negative impacts such as disease transmission, deaths from window strikes (when birds fly away from a feeder and into a house), and increased predation pressures (such as Cooper’s Hawks feeding themselves by feasting on feeder birds). Can we rec­oncile these disparate consequences of bird feeding and determine if feeding is actually harmful on a broad scale?”

Read more here: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/analysis-do-bird-feeders-help-or-hurt-birds/

I thought I’d visit Crane Beach and Crane Estate yesterday since it was such a pretty day. I hadn’t been there in a while and wasn’t sure what to expect during school vacation week. To my surprise, I ran right smack into movie filming. The “home base” was the beach parking lot and it was pretty busy but they let me in to take a drive-around. It appears vacation programs are planned around the filming. I couldn’t find out what was being filmed but perhaps one of our readers know?

Charlotte and I attended a wonderfully informative program about owls today at the Wenham Museum. The presentation was lead by Julie and Jim of Wingmasters, a raptor rehabilitation organization devoted not only to rehabilitating wildlife but also to educating the public.

In attendance were a beautiful Barred Owl, magnificent male and female Great Horned Owls, an Eastern Screech Owl (gray morph), a stunning Barn Owl, the tiniest owl you will probably never see, but is definitely about, a Saw-whet Owl, and a gorgeous Peregrine Falcon.

All the birds at the presentation were at one time injured. Most of the wildlife Jim and Julie rescue can be returned to their habitats but some will never. A wing may be too badly broken to fly, an eye permanently injured, or in the case of the diminutive Saw-whet, it is developing cataracts.

Charlotte loved the program and was all she could talk about on the return trip home. We are usually looking at owls and eagles far off in the distance or through my camera’s lens so this was thrilling for her to see them up close.

I took many photos but unfortunately am still without my computer and won’t have it back until Monday, at the earliest. It’s extremely stressful not being able to work, along with the fact that I am in the midst of launching our Monarch film. I don’t know how you feel but I think it extraordinary how tied to our computers we have become and I have come to fully realize that this week. From design projects, to film and photo projects, to lecture programs, they are all wholly dependent on a perfectly functioning computer. For reasons I don’t want to get into here, I am going to have to learn several new challenging software programs. Argh! One thing that can be accomplished this week though is continuing to work on a film script, which I am writing longhand! And knitting many hats this week 🙂

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8zPWIlH6dN/

I went to Hunt’s Photo in Melrose recently and kind of impulsively bought a new camera (thank  you GMG Jimmy for the encouragement).  For its first outing, I drove to Parker River Wildlife Refuge and Plum Island once again looking for eagles. It was dreary and wet and hardly anyone was around but I found a snowy owl in the distance posing as if it were waiting for me and my new camera to experiment. Then along came a seagull to harass and I could hear their warning sounds to each other. I was lucky enough to capture some of the encounter and thought you all might like to see it too. Next, I plan to learn how use the video features on the camera!