The Scars on the Planet

Did you know that birds are the best monitored creature on Earth? From amateur bird enthusiasts sending in quarterly counts and the annual Christmas Bird Count, from reintroducing birds to areas where they have disappeared to counting eggs and chicks in nests, we know our wild birds. Somehow, we still have managed to lose numbers of birds so that they are not actually extinct but have been affected by “shrinking baseline syndrome” due to all the usual reasons. Humans changing their habitats, humans using pesticides to kill off their food sources, and humans making migration, already a difficult process, even harder.

Twelve Days of Birds

Every year about this time, accountants love to tell us how much it would cost to purchase all the gifts “my true love gave to me.” As a history buff, I would love to know how much it would have cost originally. It was first published around 1780, although it had been known for much longer. It’s thought to be a French chant song. The music we associate with it today was composed by Frederic Austin in 1909.

Hanging with the Flock

Back when I first got into birds, my living room had three rows of cages for cockatiels, lovebirds, and the odd conure or two. I loved giving them out time almost every night, and because some of them didn’t fly very well, I used ladders to make bridges, put up plastic chains for walking over, and had a few ladders from the floor back to the cages. Those who could fly loved to land on the various wall decorations and observe the others.

Winter and Birds

Southern California is a great place to live if you keep birds outside. The winters are usually mild, the rain is much rarer than we’d like, and the only true drawback is that all these things make pests and predators more abundant. My doves, quail, and finches usually do very well through late spring or early summer, as long as they have been outside at least a month before the really cold weather started.