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How to Do a Bird Sit
Kern Wildlife (AC website)
A bird sit routine can be an anchor in your life, especially during turbulent times. The practice is like an outdoor meditation, with a focus on birds.
Audubon California website. By Molly Tsongas, April 09, 2020
Enjoy watching birds from home? Did you know that birdwatching is a gateway to a powerful mindfulness practice? It’s called a “bird sit.”
A bird sit is like an outdoor meditation with a focus on birds.
Bird sits provide similar benefits to mindfulness practices, including relaxation and quiet mind. They also cultivate a deeper bond with the birds around us and reveal the birds’ secret languages.
Follow these 5 simple steps:
1) Find a Spot: Choose a spot where you can sit quietly and observe birds for 10-20 minutes. This can be your window, doorstep, backyard, or local park. Convenience is key.
2) Have a Seat: Find a comfortable sitting position. Feel free to bring along whatever you need to be comfortable such as a chair, cushion, blanket, snack, or hot drink. When we sit down, the birds to come closer to us than they would if we were walking.
3) Wake Up Your Senses: Take 5 deep breaths to settle your nervous system. Then, take a moment to activate your senses, focusing on what you are feeling, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling. Take a moment to listen for the quietest sound in all directions. Imagine expanding your senses from your body outward, to explore the world around you.
4) Tune in to the Birds: Now, tune into any birds you might hear or see. Don’t worry about identifying them. Instead, lead with curiosity and ask questions like: “What are the birds doing right now? Do they have a nest nearby? What have they eaten today?” Watch their behavior and listen for their vocalizations. Try to notice when the birds seem relaxed, alarmed, aggressive, or joyful. Gently check in with the feelings that arise in your own body while you are sitting.
5) Repeat: The best benefits come from repetition. Each day, look for the same birds you may have seen the day before. Getting to know a few feathered neighbors well is much more important than listing all the birds you’re seeing or hearing. You may begin to discover which birds sing first at sunrise, which birds are mated pairs, where the nearest nest is located, and when the hawks are hunting.
Over time, you’ll discover what the birds are saying to each other and how their behaviors are driven by predation, feeding, mating, and nesting in the landscape. You’ll begin to understand how your behaviors affects nearby birds as well.
What secrets will the birds reveal to you the longer you practice?
Thanks to Susan Penn at Redwood Region Audubon Society for posting this on their website and for providing the link to the original Audubon California post.
[Chuck Almdale]
Black-Cockatoos, et. al. | GrrlScientist
Here’s another from GrrlScientist.
She wrote “Not everyone experiences the joys of birding like me – a white woman,” which is included in our posting of May 30, 2020, “Birding while black in NYC Central Park.” She is a prolific writer. If you’ve birded in Australia and admired their many parrots, rosellas, lorikeets, cockatiels, cockatoos, black-cockatoos and budgerigars, totaling to an ever-shifting number of species somewhere over fifty, you’ll be interested in the following report, published 5-31-20 in Forbes. Maybe you’ll pick up an “armchair lifer.”
Hidden In Plain Sight: New Cockatoo Subspecies Identified In Australia
Forbes, May 31, 2020. GrrlScientist: Senior Contributor in Science. Evolutionary & behavioural ecologist, ornithologist & science writer.
Advances in DNA technologies have uncovered a new subspecies of red-tailed black-cockatoo in Western Australia. A large genetic study has uncovered a new subspecies of one of Australia’s most iconic birds, the red-tailed black cockatoo, Calyptorhynchus banksii. The newly identified subspecies is unique to inland Western Australia and lives in regions spanning the Wheatbelt, east of Perth, to the Pilbara in the state’s north-west.
Fig. 1 The distribution of Calyptorhynchus banksii subspecies in Australia and localities of the individuals genotyped in this study. Circles represent tissue samples (n = 113) and stars represent toe pad samples (n = 29). The inset photo of Calyptorhynchus banksii banksii demonstrates the morphological differences between male (right) and female (left) birds. Photo: Patrick Tomkins. (doi:10.1038/s41437-020-0315-y)
GrrlScientist has written a lot of articles. Because she alerts fellow American birders to them through her BirdChat messages, I have read many of them over the years. However I was not aware of her website which I found through a link in the Forbes article above. There I found over one hundred articles on various subjects. Here are a few: bumblebees, birds, narwhals, tigers, coronavirus, Cherokee seeds, algae, engangered plants, climate change, fireworks, salamanders, electric eels. And on and on. Birds are her favorite subject and parrots are obviously her favorite birds. Like Black-Cockatoos (a member of Psittaciformes order, but technically not a parrot).
Read the article above and check out her website. I highly recommend it.
[Chuck Almdale]
Birds at my window | RM Videos
First we see the Eurasian Eagle-Owl (Bubo bubo) and her – ahem – rather large chicks. From the Netherlands, I think. 5-18-20. 3:16.
And now a Common (Eurasian) Kestrel and her five brown eggs. 6-6-19. 2:17
RM Videos has quite a collection of short films, including many about birds and another many about that perennial favorite, people doing stupid things. If no film or link appears in this email, go to the blog to view it by clicking on the blog title above. If the film stops & starts in an annoying manner, press pause (lower left double bars ||) to let it buffer and get ahead of you. [Chuck Almdale]
The California Science Center, located next door to the Museum of Natural History of Los Angeles County, now has an online tour of Space Shuttle Endeavour.
Tour One takes your around the flight deck, including a sit in the commander’s seat, the middeck and the payload bay. Use your mouse to move your vision around the area. Just click the big arrow and off you go! See if you can find the warp drive switch. More tours to come! [Posted by Chuck Almdale]
Endeavour flight deck forward view
Tour Two: Stand on the wings and explore the aft compartment!
Hey—you’re “standing” on the NASA meatball logo on the left (or port) wing of the ship! There’s another meatball in front of you, on the side of Endeavour. Like all the graphics on Endeavour’s skin, the meatballs are hand-painted! Zoom out to take in the entire view of Endeavour. First, look at the row of black hinges along the bottom of the payload bay door. You’ll count 13 of them starting with the one just above and to the left of the NASA meatball. The hinges toward the front are bigger because the front half of the payload bay doors have deployable radiators that need stronger hinges for support.
From the website:
Right now, space shuttle Endeavour is on exhibit in the Samuel Oschin Pavilion, preparing for its future installation in launch position in the Science Center’s upcoming expansion, the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center. But while you’re staying safe at home, you can take a peek inside Endeavour‘s flight deck, middeck and payload bay through this unique tour, created by photographer Jon Brack and narrated by Perry Roth-Johnson, PhD, assistant curator of aerospace science here at the California Science Center.
Released to commemorate the anniversary of Endeavour‘s final launch, this is the first of a series of four Inside Endeavour tours that will be released throughout the spring and early summer. You don’t need a VR headset to enjoy these tours, but if you have one, hook it up and try it out. Stay tuned for more views Inside Endeavour!
Map of Endeavour tour
Special SpaceX Bonus Videos
Tour from Space: Inside the SpaceX Crew Dragon Spacecraft on Its Way to the Space Station
NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley take viewers on a tour of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft that will take them on a 19-hour-journey to their new home in orbit. 5-30-20. 8:26
Watch Dragon capsule dock to the International Space Station
See NASA Astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley dock the Dragon capsule to the International Space Station. 5-31-20. 7:20
SpaceX Crew Dragon ‘Endeavour’ tour: View of Earth and astronaut comforts
See Earth from SpaceX Crew Dragon’s window as NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken give a 2nd on-orbit tour of the spaceship. Hurley and Behnken also show where some of the cargo, spacesuits and sleepwear is stowed. 5-31-20. 9:08
Steelhead return to Washington Rivers
Outside Online, a production of Outside Magazine, has a large file of short films. Longtime blog reader, Carol Prismon-Reed recently brought to our attention one in particular.
What Dam Removals Can Do for a River
Rising from the Ashes, from Trout Unlimited, follows the scientists studying the summer steelhead resurgence in Washington’s Elwha River. Since the removal of the Elwha Dam in 2011 and the Glines Canyon Dam in 2014, these fish are now free to run from the Pacific Ocean up into the Olympic Peninsula. May 24, 2020.
More videos are listed further down the page.
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Nature Finds a Way
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There is more purple to be seen on the peninsula!
Riverbank lupine (Lupinus rivularis) is in full bloom around the Elwha watershed right now, and its delightful scent and beauty, aren’t even the best parts about it!
As many of you probably know, the Elwha River is the site of the largest dam removal project in the history of the world. The dams were removed (project completed in 2014) because they created a barrier for migrating fish, blocking them from over 70 miles of their historic habitat.
The dams, built in 1911 and 1927, created reservoirs on land that was previously old-growth forest. Removing the dams drained and exposed the gravelly and sediment-filled lakebeds. The land that was underwater for about 100 years, is now on the path to becoming old-growth forest again. Riverbank lupine is a crucial element to that succession.
Riverbank lupine thrives in areas where many other plants struggle. It can colonize disturbed, nutrient-poor soils due to its nitrogen-fixing abilities. Once the plant dies, the nitrogen is released, nourishing and improving the soil for plants to come.
Finding the right species to revegetate the area after draining the lakes was important not only for improving soil quality, but for preventing erosion, lending shade, and creating habitat for birds and small mammals to facilitate seed dispersal.
The National Park Service Elwha Revegetation team sowed riverbank lupine (seeds collected from the Dungeness River watershed), along with many other native species after Lake Mills was drained. Not sure what to expect, they found the riverbank lupine to be the key in the revegetation effort, helping to set the stage for the remarkable resurgence of life in the resilient Elwha watershed.
If you ever get a chance to visit with these plants, give them a big sniff, enjoy their vibrant colors, and remember the role they are playing in one of the greatest conservation success stories of our time.
(Please note: access to the upper lake-bed in the National Park is still closed due to corona virus restrictions. Lower-lake bed is open and also has fabulous lupine blooms!)
Photo Credit: Deanna Butcher
Upper photo (Former Lake Mills May 2017)
Lower photo (Former Lake Aldwell May 2020)
Support the Dungeness River Audubon Center by clicking below!
Dungeness River Audubon Center
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Instagram Other video titles on this page include:
Meet California’s Big Tree Hunter
In 1940, the American Forestry Association launched a campaign to locate the largest specimens of American trees. Since then, big-tree enthusiasts like Californian Carl Casey have been on the lookout for what’s defined as champion trees. In this film from director Brian Kelley, alongside the Gathering Growth Foundation, Casey explains what a champion tree is and some strategies he used to find the world’s largest pine tree.
One Man’s Battle Against the Russian Olive
The Russian olive tree is a notorious invasive species around Bears Ears and Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monuments. Since 1999, working along the Escalante River in southern Utah, aging park ranger Bill Wolverton has hacked and chainsawed his way through more than 40 miles of Russian olive trees. Love of Place, from DFS Films, documents his journey to restore his beloved river.
Paragliders Protecting Bearded Vultures
For aerial athletes, it’s not unusual to come across birds while in flight, like the threatened Bearded Vulture (Lammergeier). That’s why French freeflier Pierre Naville and the conservation organization Asters have teamed up with filmmaker Mathieu Le Lay to create this piece and raise awareness about proper flying techniques to mitigate the impact of aerial sports.
Outside’s Adventure page includes titles such as:
The Loneliest Everest Expedition
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, three Chinese teams reached the top of the world.
We Are in the Middle of an Unprecedented Climate Experiment
The pandemic has shut down the most polluting industries around the world and turned us all into more adaptable consumers. That still isn’t enough.
Poke around on Outside Online. There’s lots of other interesting and useful stuff.
[Chuck Almdale]
SANTA MONICA BAY AUDUBON SOCIETY BLOG 