I'm passing this along from Cornell:

Little Green Places: contest invitation‏ From: Patricia Leonard

Hello again! This past June we told you about the Celebrate Urban Birds! project from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It's an easy, fun way for city-dwellers to get to know their birds, enjoy the outdoors, and contribute information that scientists can actually use to study urban birds. Now we want to tell you about our "Little Green Places" contest. We want to see your photo, drawing, or video of a Little Green Space that's good for birds. Have you noticed a spot that birds like because it provides shelter, food, or water? It could be an ivy-covered wall, flowers next to the stoop, a windowbox, a container garden on a rooftop or balcony, your school garden, or the potted plants by your library entryway. Send a photo, drawing, or link to your video to urbanbirds@cornell.edu . We'll send the first fifty entries a copy of the new "Celebrate Little Green Places" poster and there will be other great prizes, including a $100 gift certificate from Johnny's Selected Seeds. The deadline is October 31. Information about the Little Green Places contest can be found on our web site: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/celebration/temporary/little-green-places-photo-video-contest(Make sure to watch our video about the contest!) We're also attaching a flyer that you can post on a bulletin board, if you wish. Please feel free to modify this information for use in a newsletter or in any other way that helps spread the word. We can't wait to see your Little Green Places!Best wishes, Karen Purcell, project leader Celebrate Urban Birds! http://www.celebrateurbanbirds.org/
kap7@cornell.edu

"To See Every Bird On Earth" By Dan Koeppel (audio version)

One drawback of riding the bus to work each day is that it takes longer than if I were to drive my own vehicle.

Listening to music on my mp3 player helps me pass the time but I can only listen to so much music before I need a break from it. I also like to read, but reading in a moving vehicle gives me motion sickness. That wouldn't be fair to the person sitting in front of me. I don't read as much as I would like to at home either. If I have free time on my hands, I would rather be outdoors doing something active like hiking or birding, for example. When I do finally find time to read, I'm usually tired and reading makes me even more tired...zzzzzz.

Recently, I've started to listen to books on CD while riding the bus. It's a great way to make use of my traveling time. On average, I'm able to go through about two books a week.

Last week as I was searching through our local library's audio books, I came across an audio book titled "To See Every Bird On Earth" by Ted Koeppel.

This is the story about Richard Koeppel as told by his son, Dan Koeppel. Richard's life ambition was to become an ornithologist but he ended up becoming a doctor in order to satisfy his parent's expectations. Richard went on to get married and raise a family but he never lost interest in birds. Much of the book is about the personal experiences of the Koeppel family. Dan writes about the family's Jewish heritage, his father's disappointments in life, his mother's infidelities, his parent's divorce and Dan's desire to have a closer relationship with his father. All of this is woven in between the birding-related portions of the book which follows Richard from the time he saw his first Brown Thrasher to the moment he reached -(and exceeded)- his 7,000th species.

The reading is done by John Mcdonough whose voice reminds me John Houseman or David Attenborough. He enunciates each word clearly, making it easy to hear him even if there is a lot of background noise on the bus. His scholarly reading style works well when he is describing circumstances surrounding the sighting of notable species as well as colorful details about the birds themselves. I thought the most interesting part of the book was reading about the personalities of the big listers-(birders who are obsessed with seeing and listing as many species as possible)- and the intricate rules that they have to follow.

I would have preferred that this book would have focused a little bit more on the birding. The portions which dealt with the family gave the book an overall somber tone. Still, I don't imagine that it's easy to write this type of book and it did keep my interest throughout. If I wasn't interested in birding, I'd probably rate this book about 5 out of 10. Since I am interested in birding, I'll give it a 7.5 rating.

Part 1- Birds Of Prey Are On Their Way

I've had some memorable moments this year viewing birds of prey. I enjoyed a close-up view of this young Red-tailed Hawk back in January as it perched in a cedar tree at Hammonasset park.

I also enjoyed watching this immature Bald Eagle sitting on the ice at Wethersfield Cove.

When Spring arrived The Ospreys started to move in. This one was perched on a snag at Wright's Cove in Portland, CT.

I had some difficulty trying to decide if this was a Cooper's or a Sharp-shinned Hawk. I was leaning towards a sharpie but decided to just combine the two and call it a carpie.

Now the time has arrived when many of these hawks, eagles, falcons, and osprey will withdraw from their breeding grounds across North America and fly south to their wintering grounds.

I don't really want to watch these magnificent birds in order to count them or collect scientific data. Instead, I will watch these majestic birds of prey as they circle higher and higher into the sky. There are times that I can almost imagine that I'm up there with them escaping the trivialities of life and getting a bird's eye view of the bigger picture.

Goodbye Joe-and thanks for the help-

This is a photo of Joe Wojtanowski, the founder of the peak mountain hawk watch site in East Granby. Joe has been coordinating the hawk watches there for the last six years. Although the number of hawks seen here during migration don't rival the numbers seen near the shoreline sites, Joe did once count 3,00 Broad-winged Hawks here on one particular day. I've stopped by his site a few times over the last couple of years and was able to pick up some helpful information including: tips about identifying hawks in flight , peak migration times for each species, best viewing conditions-(better if there are some clouds around), and the best wind direction- (Northwest).

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As I was preparing to add a link to the Peak Mountain Hawkwatch Data Summary Page, I was sad to learn that the site was closed down as of yesterday due to a conflict of interest from some of the residents of East Granby. Joe had mentioned that the next couple of weeks are prime time to look for migrating Broad-winged Hawks.

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There are many other Hawkwatch sites in Connecticut from which to view hawks. Here is a link for Connecticut Hawk Watch Sites. You can select the link to any individual sites to get directions to the site and data summaries for the hawks seen at the location broken down by year, month, and day. These sites are open to the public. If you don't live in Connecticut, here is the main link to Hawkcount. In addition, here are tow hawk watching opportunities offered by The Hartford Audubon :

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Wednesday & Thursday, September 17-18, 2008 Johnnycake MT, Burlington Come see Broad-winged Hawks migrating at their peak through Connecticut with chances of seeing hundreds or thousands of birds. Also see other hawk species as well. Bring a chair, food and drink and spend the day watching migrating hawks. Meet at 8:30 AM. Call leader for directions. Contact leader for directions. Leader: Paul Carrier

Saturday & Sunday, September 20-21, 2008Hawk watch at Booth Hill, West Hartland-Come see Broad-winged Hawks migrating at their peak through Connecticut with chances of seeing hundreds or thousands of birds. Also see other hawk species as well. Bring a chair, food and drink and spend the day watching migrating hawks. Meet at 8:30 AM. Contact leader for directions. Leader: Paul Carrier

I haven't taken any recent hawk flight photos, so all the photos in this post are older ones. You can see the black wing border and broad white stripe of the Broad-winged Hawk . The dark leading edge of the shoulder area is seen on the Red-tailed Hawk. It's great when you can see these markings but I've noticed that hawks can take on many different shapes and positions when in flight that making them much more difficult to identify at times.

Earlier this month, I saw my first Mississippi Kite. The video wasn't very good but it was a great bird to see! There were actually two that were regularly seen flying over Great Pond in Simsbury for the last couple of months. As it turns out they paired up and were successful in their efforts!

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I turned off comments on part 1 but you can post coments under part 2-thanks.

Part -2 Shorebirds After The Storm

Some of the birders around Connecticut were hoping that the remnants of this weekend' tropical storm might bring some new birds in. I checked The Rocky Hill Meadows after a night of some moderate wind and rain. The most interesting sightings for me were three American Golden-plovers. None of them came particularly close to me so I couldn't get much of a photo.
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I've only seen these birds a couple of other times. While I was there another birder suggested that one of the plovers was actually a Black-bellied Plover because it showed white under the tail. Not having any experience in comparing the two species it seemed to make sense to me. Although, I was pretty sure that a Black-bellied Plover would be a more unusual sighting at an inland location. After discussing this with some more experienced birders, I learned that the bird in question was an American Golden-Plover that was in the process of molting. The molting gave the appearance of white under the tail. The better field mark for identification was the clearly defined white eyebrow as well as the shape of the bird. I would like to see the two side by side for comparison some time.

It was not quite the fallout we were hoping for but I was happy about the golden plovers. Other birds of interest seen here included: White-rumped Sandpiper (not by me), several Pectoral Sandpipers, Least Sandpipers, Lesser Yellowlegs, 2 adult Bald Eagles, 2 Red-shouldered Hawks, 2 Cooper's Hawks, Great Egret ....

And yet another Solitary Sandpiper. These guys don't seem to want to leave me alone. I think they might be following me. I caught a pretty good video of this one talking to me.