anti-hunting

Highlights

Posted on Monday, 13 May 2013 by The Birding Bunch

Psalm 4:
4 Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah.
5 Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, and put your trust in the Lord.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It’s the birdiest time of year and I cannot keep up!

As of this writing, I have two posts scheduled out and am so very behind on editing photos. I want to do that dreaded task of uploading our photos online for prints. I just learned our bird photo albums have not been updated since November. Today, I will share a few highlights and I may not be as regular with posting for the next few days.

If you wish to look at our year list, you’ll see our latest birds. Some are pretty neat, I think. I still need to get a couple of birds added, but need to have them confirmed.

For my blogging friend in California… We have one of your birds here! Maybe we can send some of ours your way, just look for the white throat.

A special Butterbutt-
Audubon’s Warbler

We’ve seen a Black-crowned Night-heron (Now what would this Alpha code look like? I’ll find out later), Lark Sparrow, Cape May Warbler, Chestnut-sided Warbler… The Bobolinks, Baltimore Orioles (five of them), Dickcissels, Red-headed Woodpeckers have returned to the yard. Oh, one of our poor birds has a LISP, the Lincoln’s Sparrow. People say these are not feeder birds… well, I don’t believe that! We have a nice sized group here.

The Kestrels seem finally settled and we’ve seen one Kestrel bringing food to the one in the box. For some reason, they’ve allowed Meadowlarks, Red-winged Blackbirds and Grackles to perch on their box. This seems odd, but I wonder if the one on the nest doesn’t bother with it as it would require getting off the eggs. A couple of hapless Starlings were flying about the box, but seemed terribly afraid to land. They left.

Thursday, we had a great evening of birding. In one and a half hours, we saw 48 species, all within a mile of home. We left as soon as the rain slowed to a drizzle. (We got 3 1/4 inches that day.) The flooding pasture gave us a new yard bird, Blue-winged Teal.

Saturday, was the once a month field trip and we reached a personal high count for the day. 86 species. I hope to create a page for this list.

What is missing so far is our Ruby-throated Hummingbird. We set out nectar hearing of early reports. Soon, soon…

Sadly, the Ring-necked Pheasants are rebounding and we know what that means… We hear a couple of the males from our house. Others are seeing them around Iowa as well.

Categories: alpha codes, anti-hunting, bird rarities, di shpatza, lifers, raptors

It’s that Season Again

Posted on Thursday, 6 December 2012 by The Birding Bunch

Proverbs 12:
¹⁰A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.

SOAR
Scroll down a smidge to the photo and click on it.

And sadly, this has no season…
D14 Announcement

If you are unawares, D14 is the third eagle hatched from this year’s Decorah Bald Eagle nest. D12, the first eagle hatched, met a similar fate in July.

Both of these are deaths because of something humans have done. Thankfully, with education, time and resources these things can be changed, if people are willing.

Now thinking closer to home, how are our actions directly harming the birds? I will leave this up to you rather than me listing all I am aware of. You may have gleaned some from past posts, but other things are just plain common sense. Are you willing?

Categories: anti-hunting, dangers to birds, ponder

Strong Ring-necked Opinion

Posted on Monday, 15 October 2012 by The Birding Bunch

(KJV) Hosea 4:
2 By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood.
3 Therefore shall the land mourn, and every one that dwelleth therein shall languish, with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven; yea, the fishes of the sea also shall be taken away.
(NAS)* Hosea 4:
2 There is swearing, deception, murder, stealing and adultery.
They employ violence, so that bloodshed follows bloodshed.
3 Therefore the land mourns,
And everyone who lives in it languishes
Along with the beasts of the field and the birds of the sky,
And also the fish of the sea disappear.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It seems a great concern of Midwest birders the declining populations of Ring-necked Pheasants. Maybe this is a concern nation-wide??

I am sure this will come across as harsh, but I have to ask…

Why?

I have no problem with this beautiful bird whatsoever, the problem lies elsewhere.

Like the house sparrow, it is an introduced species and if I understand this correctly, it was merely introduced to our continent for sport. Every year, “farms” raise the birds just to be released for the pleasure of hunters. To me, this is very distasteful and cruel. I would rather the bird be allowed to become extinct in North America.

When discussing in a forum about putting native grasses in our pasture, someone brought up that some pheasant organization might pay half for the seed if we allowed hunting on our property. I wouldn’t feel right about creating the habitat for that activity. Those Pheasants could move on to became some hunters’ showpieces. Poultry is readily found in the store. I have met only a couple hunters who truly had a need for the meat they hunted.

While letting this post sit in drafts awhile, I came across something these farms do…
Strange Pheasant
They do not remove these eye shields before releasing which makes an additional hazard for these birds. Though the Pheasants cannot see forward as we do, they can see peripherally what would be in front of them. These blinders are in the way!

*Normally I use only the King James version of the Bible, but in this case, I thought the New American Standard was a little more clear in today’s language.

Categories: anti-hunting, bird facts, dangers to birds, di fekkel, ponder, sadness | 19 Comments

STOP! Don’t Shoot!

Posted on Saturday, 22 October 2011 by The Birding Bunch

I keep forgetting- it’s hunting season. And I cannot believe that I had to support the hunting industry just to avoid being shot by one of their members when we go birding. We were at the mall yesterday. GASP! I don’t like the mall. That is another issue, but we did walk away with some neat books in hand (Crossley’s ID Guide, for one) and bellies filled with good things.

While at the mall, we decided to brave Scheel’s to find what we call Don’t-Shoot-Me clothes. You know, the neon orange vests and hats. The others got bright orange stocking caps and me, a vest that is large enough to handle any number of layers that I might need to wear for cold weather birding. Oh and that thing has pockets. Two front ones big enough to handle field guide and snacks and a massive back pocket that Papa said jokingly was big enough to hold the youngest child.

I tell you, Scheel’s did nothing to improve my view of hunters with all their displays of dead animals. Beautiful elk, moose, deer and all those ducks. I look at the case of Wood ducks thinking how they should have been left alone to make more brightly coloured beauties, but no! They were encased in glass with a sign boasting of the killer’s award for something or other.

Now to get off that topic, here is our first partakers of the big seed block. House Finches.

House Finches are a year-round resident of Iowa. They look very similar to Purple Finches, which are a winter resident here. We have yet to have any Purples come to our place that I am aware of. Last year we had some brighter than usual finches, so I thought possibly they were Purple, but nope. The way I tell if it is a House finch is to look at the crown of the male. It is brown on a House, regardless of how bright he may be. The female Purple finch has a light coloured eyebrow, which a female House does not have.

Thursday we had a couple more Juncos, along with some 1st winter White-crowned sparrows. First time we’ve seen those. We had only ever seen them in the spring with their black and white striped bicycle helmets. Harris’s are still hanging around, too.

Proverbs 12:

²⁷The slothful man roasteth not that which he took in hunting: but the substance of a diligent man is precious.

²⁸In the way of righteousness is life: and in the pathway thereof there is no death.

Categories: anti-hunting, di fekkel, field markings, sadness | Leave a comment