Read your blog, MAK - wow! On Tuesday, I will be the proud owner of a new Mac, so will look forward to viewing your video. I am sure your narration is full of excitement! 

(Poor old Big Mac - he has been such a faithful servant, but I fear the wee lad is tired now. Sure hope the new one lets me log on!!)

Just like our beloved pets, our faithful PC's get old, need attention but eventually wear down. I lost 2, (RIP), full of info that I can never replace.      Good luck with your new Mac. 

Fish and Wildlife Investigating Deaths of Golden Eagles Near Fallon
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is investigating the deaths of four golden eagles found in the area between Fallon and Lahontan Reservoir. A preliminary investigation indicated the eagles had been shot.
Shooting an eagle is a violation of the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act as well as the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Penalties for violating the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act can include up to two years confinement and $250,000 fine. Penalties for violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act include up to six months confinement and $15,000 fine per bird.
Click here to find out more!

Golden eagles are frequent visitors to the Carson and Lahontan valleys this time of year, and can often be seen near rivers, ponds, lakes and agricultural fields. Their preferred prey is small mammals like rabbits, ground squirrels, mice and sometimes small birds. Golden eagles are most often seen scavenging animal carcasses, especially during winter months when their normal prey is not readily available.

Anyone with information about the eagle deaths should contact the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement at 775-861-6360.

[Love these!]

Since December, Sharon Sander has been spying on a family of eight Egyptian geese at Brackenridge Park Golf Course.

The two parents and six goslings are a long way from their native Africa.

Sander, who discovered the family while walking to a fitness class, had a birder help her identify the geese.

“They are really beautiful,� she said. “They are bigger than mallards and have a weird call.�

The golf course is near the San Antonio Zoo, and Sander said the geese might have escaped from there or from someone who owned them as pets.

Lynn Cuny, founder of Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation in Kendalia, said the center has rescued several Egyptian geese.

“A lot of people keep them as pets because they are so unusual-looking,� Cuny said. “But city life for a bird of that size can be kind of tricky.�

Still, Cuny said they can survive.

“The geese need food, water and safety,� Cuny said. “With cars, dogs and kids with BB guns, that can be hard. However, if the geese do find a safe environment with family members nearby, the geese will tend to stay put.�

The San Antonio River flows through the Brackenridge golf course, so the geese have access to water.

Plus, Sander walks through the course every other day or so to make sure the geese are doing fine.

“I've been watching them since the babies were just little fuzz balls,� Sander said. “The other day I even got the dad to eat food out my hand. A little organic bread every now and then can't hurt them.�

When the geese don't have Sander to protect them, they have a possessive mother on the case.

“The mom is pretty fierce,� Sander said. “The other day a hawk swooped down and tried to get them, but they all started making noise and were able to scare it off.�

Love these!


MYSA

He was too whiney for her and she would stoop on him.

  Oh Mariah and Oh jeanne. I can see her intolerable look and pouncing on whiney.. "Shut up for Pete's sake!" Guess I'd leave too after that. 

PT 2

CTAM Camp from Mountain top
Jeff
Odd looking rocks

Jeff is at the South Pole: Yay excitement.

Cockpit of LC-130
Flying over mountains on way to Pole
The South Pole Station
Actual South Pole Marker !!!
Welcome to CTAM

Wow MAK!  He looks like a luminaria - lit up from within!

Exactly my thoughts too BC but you said it better. See MAK??

That's a good idea MAK, my cats never go out but it's the people that dump their cats and kittens and then they multiply many times and these cats have no food. It's never going to end but to shoot them, no way! It's a no win situation. Poor birds and poor cats, they didn't ask for this.

Thanks Bobbie, love the story of Robbie!

Wow Ei, they are right on the wall, can't miss them. You can't see them? OK, this is getting crazy!

Did you link to MAK's page or copy them into RFC's videos? 

Ei

I removed the video from facebook, why bother when no one can see them. I'll help her do the youtube thing. Thanks Ei, glad you told me.
I just clicked on the share button and copied the link to the RFC wall.

Same thing as here, then...it's a link to her page and I'm not her friend so I can't see it.  Which, in all honesty, is a good thing...the security settings actually work.  I've often wondered about what a non-friend could see if my stuff was shared by a friend...nothing, if security is set properly.

Ei

Wow Ei, they are right on the wall, can't miss them. You can't see them? OK, this is getting crazy!

Did you link to MAK's page or copy them into RFC's videos? 

Ei

I just clicked on the share button and copied the link to the RFC wall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfCYSkPPido# The proof

 The story:
My newspaper column last Saturday dealt with hawks visiting feeders. I mentioned the ever-present Accipiters that hunt birds attracted to seeds and suet, but the main thrust was raptors coming to eat suet and meat scraps. I noted that Red-shouldered Hawks are especially prone to this behavior. A reader from Southbury sent me the following:

Last spring a mating pair of red shouldered hawks showed up at our bird feeder – I purchased some beef liver and started putting it out for them.  The male got so brave that he would swoop down as I was placing the liver on a rock just outside of our deck.  Being very interested in animal behavior, I decided to put on an elbow length welders glove that I use to put wood into our wood stove, placed the liver on top of my fingers held out flat, elevated my hand and offered it to the male hawk.  Sure enough he swooped down and took the offered meat barely touching my glove.  I continued daily feedings which he then shared, albeit unwillingly, with his mate and subsequently with the three hawks that they hatched.  He would come and take a piece of flesh for each every afternoon. After the young finally matured, they went away and I rarely saw any of them during the summer.  Yesterday the mating pair showed up again and the male again took an offered beef kidney piece.  The first piece his mate took away from him so he came back and took another offered piece for himself.  He was back again this morning.  I can’t tell you how thrilling it is to have such a beautiful creature eat out of your hand!!  We have taken videos of the feedings which aren’t very good because it is so hard to focus on him as he zooms in, but if you are interested, I can forward them to you.  By the way, the male is the only one that will come to me – no matter how hungry the female or the chicks were, they would not approach me; however, if I left a piece of flesh after showing the female what I was doing, she would eventually go to it.

UNLESS YOU’RE FROM OKLAHOMA

This stunning flicker has been visiting Jeanne Kosciw’s feeders in Tolland. Tom Sayers took the photo, which to my knowledge is first one documenting an intergrade flicker in Connecticut. What is an intergrade  flicker? Sorry, time for a little taxonomy. At one time two species of flickers divvied up most of the continent, Yellow-shafted Flickers in the East and Red-shafted Flickers in the West. (For the sake of simplicity we’ll leave a third form, the Gilded Flicker of the Southwest, out of the discussion.) Eventually the biological thinking changed. Yellow-shafted and Red-shafted Flickers interbreed over a wide area in the center of continent, a fact that contributed to their being lumped into a single species, known as the Northern Flicker. The yellow-shafted and red-shafted forms now became subspecies or races. The products of their interbreeding are known as intergrades, as opposed to hybrids. Hybrids result from interbreeding between full species. Occasionally flickers showing varying amounts of red-shafted traits appear in the East. Glenn Williams wrote in The Connecticut Warbler (Vol. 30 No. 1) about an intergrade seen at Bluff Point in Groton on Sept. 20, 2009. In his research for the article Glenn found no instances of pure red-shafted birds  from the Northeast. Banding studies of birds showing red-shafted traits have concluded the birds were intergrades.

Tom’s photo shows a bird with a yellow-shafted head pattern (gray cap over tan face with red nape crescent, as opposed to the tan cap, gray face and lack of red crescent in red-shafted) but with strongly red undersides to the tail feathers. The bird is a female because it lacks a “whisker� or malar mark (black in yellow-shafted, red in red-shafted). I’m certain this is the first time this form has been photographed in Connecticut.

Beautiful bird.

RABlogs

[$20,800]

In October, 11 of the extremely endangered birds were released into the Wisconsin countryside in October to begin their 1,000-mile migration to Florida. One of them was promptly eaten.

“Probably a bobcat,� U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Tom MacKenzie said.

But that misadventure is nothing compared to the death of three more birds in Calhoun County last month. Dan Forster, wildlife resources director for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, said a local landowner in the southwest Georgia county contacted his office after the birds were discovered on his property shot to death.

The cranes were part of a wild population of just 420 in the nation, he told DNR board members in a briefing Wednesday.

State and federal agencies set up a reward fund for information leading to the arrest of the shooter. With contributions from several wildlife groups, the fund has grown to $20,800. But Forster said they have few leads.

Board member William Archer said the shooting deaths are a threat to the survival of the cranes.

“If somebody in a board killed three right whales off the coast, it would receive a lot more attention,� he said. “It’s a reflection on our state, like it or not, and I think it is a case where we need to overreact, not underreact.�

The board passed a resolution this week supporting the continued investigation, with several board members contributing to the reward fund personally.

“We hope the additional funds will entice someone to come forth with new information that will help solve the case," said Philip Wat, chair of the board's wildlife resources committee. "We are proud to be able to show our support in this way.�

Operation Migration, a nonprofit group based in Ontario, Canada, that guides migrating cranes using ultralight aircraft, contributed $1,000 to the reward fund. CEO Joseph Duff said the shooting of the birds is outrageous.

“It’s unfortunate that there are people there who just want to kill something. They certainly aren’t hunters,� he said.

MacKenzie, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman, said the birds that were killed were making their first flight south, following older cranes who knew the way.

“These birds were doing exactly what they needed to do and were just snuffed out," he said.

Forster said investigators are working the case, but there are no real leads and little chance that the culprit will be found without someone coming forward.

Duff said he is not giving up hope. It may take awhile, but he thinks the shooter will be caught.

“Once the publicity is over and things die down, somebody will brag," he said. "That’s when these cases break.�

MacKenzie said federal charges could be brought through the Migratory Bird Treaty Act or possibly the Endangered Species Act. Depending on the charge, a conviction could bring up to a year in federal prison and fines between $15,000 and $50,000 per bird.

He also said the death of the birds is a tragedy, but the reintroduction program has been a success, raising the eastern U.S. population of wild birds from zero a decade ago to about 100 today.

[In early September after Hurricane Earl swept the U.S. and Canadian east coasts, animal rescuer Hope Swinimer got a phone call in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, about a brown pelican sitting on the roof of a strip club called Ralph's Place, the National Post reported Thursday.]

http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2011/01/27/US-OKs-return-of-wayward-pelican/UPI-98831296152190/

In early September after Hurricane Earl swept the U.S. and Canadian east coasts, animal rescuer Hope Swinimer got a phone call in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, about a brown pelican sitting on the roof of a strip club called Ralph's Place, the National Post reported Thursday.