A win for them might help the dolphins...
here's the trailer: http://thecovemovie.com/WatchTheTrailer.htm
(and my cousin Paula produced it)

Dale, congratulate your cousin.  I was so thrilled to see that this won. 

i hope the Cove wins only to help people pressure the Japanese government to stop the slaughter.  I saw an interview with the man who worked on this (he trained Flipper and later was sad to see that dolphins were captured from the wild.  He then has worked to keep them in the wild and safe).  He showed clips of the movie- where the water is red with their blood after they are trapped and slaughtered.  They are beautiful, intelligent creatures and to see this is heartbreaking

Donna!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy birthday!!!!!  Hope it is a wonderful, special day!!!!  Thank you for all you do for us!!!!!
 

http://rochester.ynn.com/rochester-news-2004-content/top_stories/498040/collision-shop-owner-helps-free-trapped-hawk

* the link has the video

An ordinary day on the job for a local collision shop owner turned out of the ordinary when he went to help out a local business partner on Avis Street in Rochester.
"When I went in there, I was talking to him for a little bit and he asked me if I knew how to change a furnace filter. And I said, 'yeah, why?' He said 'can you go in the utility room and change to filter for me and shut the door as soon as you get in there, though'. I shut the door as soon as I got in there and this hawk came flying at me - and he said, 'while you're in there, catch that thing for us.'"

And that's just what Mike Cavallaro did. After capturing the Cooper's Hawk, he brought it back to his collision shop and called the state DEC. The intern called a wildlife rehabilitator.

"It probably just got stunned by banging into a window or something," said rehabilitator Lee Brun. "It doesn't seem to have any broken bones, so basically I'll observe it, put it into a flight cage for a while and make sure it is good to go and then just release it."

A Cooper's Hawk is known for its precise flying ability. It feeds on other birds.

She really is a cutie!!! She definitely has her keepers busy!

Dana, 

The bird seemed to have more white.  Of course he didn't come by the feeder again today while I was watching!!  My guess would be a nuthatch.  I have a ton of chickadees that are around as well

YAY, Donna!!!!!!!

Really nice!  The water is beautiful!!!!  Happy Anniversary, Carrie and Shaky!

I have a question as well.  I didn't have my camera with me.  At my bird feeder, I had a small bird that was the size of a chickadee.  It had a verrrrryyy long beak.  Belly was whitish and there was a rusty tinge on one part of it.  The bird flew from my tree to the feeder three times (it was waiting for me to go away, I think).

I have no idea what it was.  At first, I wondered if it was a hummingbird because of the beak but it was too large and there wouldn't be hummingbirds at my feeder.  Then I wondered if it was a very tiny woodpecker.  I have no idea and can't remember where I put my bird book. It's probably where my birth certificate which also is missing in action

How absolutely adorable!!!

Lin Ping-- the baby panda in Thailand is also a character!  She's the first baby panda born in Thailand's zoo and they are wild about her.  This video is cute.  She is "helping" her keeper straighten up her living quarter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTj6n8GvRnw

Thank you so much for posting!!!  so sweet!

wonderful article!!!!!  I like the way Leo Roth writes.  He has previously written about Wild Wings as well.

It would be wonderful if we could see another article-- about Mariah's safe return with a beau and a nestsite  and Beauty having a nestsite safely away from the Queen

Poor mama owl.  Good thing the babies were watched and could be rescued. 

why were the cameras removed?

And another from 2006

Copyright 2006 - Rochester Democrat and Chronicle NY - All Rights Reverved

Bob Marcotte

Staff writer

They were the particular favorites of Catherine the Great and Mary Queen of Scots, who enjoyed the "sport" of releasing captive merlins and watching them spiral upward -- in so-called "ringing flights" -- in pursuit of skylarks.

Formerly known as pigeon hawks, merlins are one of three species of falcons that regularly occur in the eastern United States. They're smaller than the much-publicized peregrine falcons that nest atop the Kodak office tower. Instead, they're very similar in size to the American kestrel, a fairly common breeder here that can sometimes be seen hovering over medians of our expressways in search of prey.

However, size is about all that merlins have in common with kestrels. "A Merlin is to a Kestrel what a Harley-Davidson motorcycle is to a scooter," states the highly acclaimed Hawks in Flight, written by Pete Dunne, David Sibley and Clay Sutton.

Merlins, they note, are "highly aggressive, pugnacious raptors" with wing beats that are "quick, continuous, and powerful," and delivered in "short, pistonlike strokes." Merlins go out of their way to harass other birds of prey, even ones that are much larger.

They also differ in important respects from peregrine falcons. Merlins, for example, don't need a cliff or even a tall building such as the Kodak office tower to serve as a cliff substitute. They'll gladly take up residence in an old crow's or hawk's nest in a tall conifer, thank you. Even in residential areas. A nest in Grand Forks, N.D., was located in the yard of a fraternity house at a busy intersection.

Merlins also differ from peregrines in the way they go after prey. Peregrines are famous for diving at speeds of up to 200 mph to stun a pigeon.

Merlins, on the other hand, do not normally "stoop" on their prey from above. Instead, they fly directly at their target from a tree-top hunting perch, or swoop in below the treetops to flush smaller birds out in the open.

Urban merlins find an abundant food supply in the ubiquitous house sparrow and that other nuisance bird, the European starling, says Ann Hobbs, public information specialist with the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in Ithaca.

Which might have old-time 19th Warders wondering: Gee, where were these guys when we needed them? During the late 1940s through the early '60s, an estimated 30,000 starlings swooped into the 19th Ward in late summer to roost for the night along Burlington Avenue, just a few blocks from where the merlins nested this year.

More than 160 residents petitioned the city to do something about the noise, the fouled sidewalks and the ensuing stench.

Various remedies were attempted: gunpowder detonations, smudge pots, ammonia spray, Roman candles. Residents walked the streets, pounding on garbage can lids with baseball bats. Police patrols even fired shotgun blasts into the masses of birds. All to no avail.

It is interesting to speculate what a pugnacious merlin or two might have accomplished.