Monday, September 28, 2009

Diversifying Our World

From Oak Harbor, Kim Writes: Last Saturday Black Swamp Bird Observatory (BSBO), Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge (ONWR), and Toledo Metroparks partnered to host a conference that looked at diversity in the outdoors in a very different way. If you're a birder (and, if you're not you SHOULD be!) then you've certainly noticed that most birders tend to be somewhat similar in appearance. So, after many years of talking about this problem, we finally decided to DO something about it. That "something" became:

"Diversity in Outdoor Recreation: The Many Faces of Conservation"

a one-day conference that we hoped would help to break down the cultural barriers that prevent ethnic groups from actively participating in outdoor activities.

This conference was Kenn's idea and he spearheaded the effort as the chair of the education committe for BSBO. He put together a great committee and led the way throughout the entire process. *Thank you to the crew - Rebecca Hinkle, Laura Bonneau, Karen Mitchell, Mark Plessner, Julie Shieldcastle, Tim Bollin, and Karen Zach! Along the way, Kenn expressed a new undestanding of what it takes to pull something like this together. For someone who has given hundreds of talks/presentations, being on the "other side of the fence" was a whole new experience for Kenn. And, although he was outside his "normal" role in an event like this, he was a marvelous leader. I have always been proud to share his name, but never more than now. He truly is my conservation hero! Thank you so much, Kenn! (I'm gonna get in so much trouble for this paragraph! But hey, that's what you get when you turn your wife loose with your blog!) : )

We invited three of the country's leading authorities on the subject to give presentations. First up, John C. Robinson, author of the book, Birding for Everyone: Encouraging People of Color to Become Birdwatchers. BUY THIS BOOK!! Or, buy two or three copies and donate them to your local school or public library! John's presentation was excellent. He discussed his experiences as a black birder in an almost entirely white birding community, and how this affected him and some of the people he met while out birding. He shared passages from his book, and concluded by challenging everyone in the room to help take the next steps to breaking the color barrier in the outdoors.

John C. Robinson in action!

Next up, Tamberly Conway. Tamberly is the Director of Latino Legacy: Building Place-Based Connections of Youth through Family Experiences with Forest Lands. This program is an amazing collaboration between USDA Forest Service (USFS), Texas Forest Service (TFS), US Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS), Stephen F. Austin State University (SFASU), Conroe Hispanic Force (CHF), Conroe Independent School District, Houston Independent School District, Texas Wildlife Association, Texas Youth Hunting Program, and the National Wild Turkey Federation. She shared the story of how she created the "Bosque Móvil" ("Forest Mobile"), a traveling information station filled with bilingual conservation and management outreach materials as well as hands-on activities and experiences designed to engage youth and their families in interactive interpretive and educational activities, exhibits and programs. Tamberly's energy and enthusiasm held everyone in the room at rapt attention.

Tamberly Conway in action!

Our final speaker of the morning was Dudley Edmondson. Dudley is a renowned nature photographer, and his dynamic presentation was punctuated with his stunning images. While birds and nature remain his primary subjects, Dudley realized a few years ago that in order to encourage more people of color to participate in outdoor activities, they needed role models. He began to turn his camera toward people, and use those images as a gateway to the outdoors. Black and Brown Faces in America's Wild Places was the result of these efforts. The book features 20 African Americans who are actively pursuing nature related careers and hobbies. As an added bonus, a 44-page booklet for youth is included.

Note the large camera in the forefront to Dudley's right. Footage from our conference will be included in a documentary about birders!

The conference was powerful stuff! While the audience was small -- it was mighty! Many state and federal agencies, as well as local organizations and NGO's were represented, including: Ohio Department of Natural Resources; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Toledo Public Schools, Woodmore Schools, Toledo and Cleveland Zoos; Black Swamp Conservancy; and Toledo Naturalists Association. The afternoon panel discussion was filled with great dialogue about the challenges we face, but, also with many useful suggestions. (More on the panel discussion in a future post!) We're planning to compile a summary of the conference and make it available as a pdf though the BSBO, ONWR, and Metropark websites. We'll keep you posted on the progress.

Wow! ---The conference was so dynamic that I almost forgot to mention that we kicked things off on Friday night with a wonderful reception at the National Center for Nature Photography, located within the Secor Metropark in Toledo. Karen Pugh and her staff at the center did a great job of coordinating the event, and arranged to have a digital exhibit of Dudley's fabulous images. It was a lovely evening, and a great way to get everyone fired up about the conference the next morning!

Dudley answers questions from an enthralled audience at the National Center for Nature Photography at Secor Metropark in Toledo.

---More on the conference, including the panel discussion, the amazing field trip experiences, and links to resources on diversity in the outdoors in a future post.


Forbidden Land of Namibia

I’m standing on a dusty road, in a windswept desert, and it feels like the edge of the earth. I’m about to cross the invisible border into the Sperrgebiet – or forbidden zone – an act which, for the last hundred years, would have got me arrested, beaten or shot.

A lanner falcon wheels above me in the silence of the African wilderness. Nothing else happens, so I carry on walking.

The Sperrgebiet, a 20,000-square-kilometre region of southwest Namibia, has been closed to visitors since 1908 to protect the region’s vital and lucrative diamond industry from smugglers. As of this month, however, the area has become the world’s newest and possibly most amazing national park.

The opening of the Sperrgebiet has been a long time coming. Owned jointly by diamond companies and the Namibian government, much of the zone has already been mined out but an element of paranoia – and bureaucratic lethargy – has nonetheless prevented tourists exploring this region, until now.

Why is the Sperrgebiet so tempting for adventurous travellers? There are many reasons: its ecology, history, culture and its extraordinary landscapes – as well as some truly exquisite seafood. Thanks to its forbidden status, the Sperrgebiet is one of the most unspoilt tracts of land on the wildest continent on earth. Even if it were just meadow, it would be a curiosity but this isn’t just your average park.

The Sperrgebeit is a very unusual environment. Much of it is a desert where the unique flora is watered by fog which rolls in from the Atlantic Ocean, caused by the icy Benguela current flowing from the Antarctic. I can feel a fierce wind even now, as I stand on glittering Diaz Point, 20km south of Lüderitz.

Lüderitz is where most people will begin their Sperrgebiet adventures. This former German colonial town has its own odd and desolate airport (occasionally overwhelmed by sand dunes) which you can fly to from Windhoek, the Namibian capital. I drove north from Cape Town: it took two days, through some of the starkest scenery on God’s earth, but the journey was well worth it.

Diaz Point is spectacularly austere. The promontory is named after the 15th-century Portuguese explorer, Bartholomew Diaz, who landed here on his famous journey south, when he became the first European to voyage around the Cape of Good Hope and into the Indian Ocean. When he first stepped ashore in 1487 he must have thought he had landed in a waterless, windswept, cruelly beautiful corner of hell.

But that unhappy wind, apparently so hostile and bitter, actually carries some noises more encouraging to man: I can also hear barks and calls of life. The islands offshore are home to pungent cities of jackass penguins; the beaches are draped with thousands of fur seals, which in turn support a bloodthirsty predator, the strandwolf – a ruffian local version of the brown hyena - that devours vulnerable seal pups whenever it gets the chance.

There are plenty of other faunal and floral oddities in the Forbidden Zone. Right in front of me, the beach is littered with the corpses of gelatinous scarlet aliens – or rather, that’s what they resemble. In fact, they are huge Namibian sea-nettles, one of the world’s biggest jellyfish. Similarly unique insects, plants and reptiles all thrive in this But that unhappy wind, apparently so hostile and bitter, actually carries some noises more encouraging to man: I can also hear barks and calls of life. The islands offshore are home to pungent cities of jackass penguins; the beaches are draped with thousands of fur seals, which in turn support a bloodthirsty predator, the strandwolf – a ruffian local version of the brown hyena - that devours vulnerable seal pups whenever it gets the chance.

There are plenty of other faunal and floral oddities in the Forbidden Zone. Right in front of me, the beach is littered with the corpses of gelatinous scarlet aliens – or rather, that’s what they resemble. In fact, they are huge Namibian sea-nettles, one of the world’s biggest jellyfish. Similarly unique insects, plants and reptiles all thrive in this harsh environment: misshapen cacti that feed off the sea-mist; trees so poisonous the smoke from the burning wood can kill you; beetles that stand on their legs to suck the lifegiving moisture from the air.

Then there are the real stars: the famous wild horses of the Namib – remarkable animals that wander between the shifting Barchan sand dunes, the peculiar quiver trees and the looming violet inselbergs, the ethereal and dreamy mountains that rise with eerie abruptness from the Sperrgebiet’s yellow dust.

As I travel inland, towards Aus, I spot my first horse, wild and lonesome and loping across the dirt road. Then I see more – dozens, then entire herds. Kicking and rolling in the sandy heat-haze, they look like the ghosts of ordinary horses, roaming free in the afterlife. It’s a strangely haunting sight.

No one is sure how these horses arrived here. Some think they were released by an eccentric German, Captain von Wolf back in 1907, from the thoroughbred stables that he kept at Duwisib, a castle built at enormous expense in the nearby Naukluft desert. Another suggestion is that they originally escaped from British Army vessels shipwrecked off the Skeleton Coast: the boats foundered, but the hardiest horses swam ashore.

The most likely idea is that they are the last remnants of the Schutztruppe – the German colonial army, that once ruled supreme over SudWest Afrika - until it was defeated by the South African forces of the British Empire in 1915. Whatever the horses’ provenance, they are slowly evolving, and adapting to the dry conditions.
Reluctantly, I turn away from the mesmerising sight of these wild animals and head south. Several hours of bumpy driving along dirt roads – many of them deliberately unmarked on maps, some of them almost lost to the drifting sands (you will need a vehicle with good ground clearance if not a 4x4) takes me into one of the world’s greatest wildernesses. This is Fish River Canyon, now a national park – as well as an impressive geological phenomenon – that is linked to the Richtersveld Park across the border in South Africa.

And wow. I’m fortunate enough to have done some remarkable drives in my time: across the deserts of the south-western US, through the jungles of Vietnam, around the rainforests of Madagascar. But none of them – not one – can hold a candle to the drive between Aus and the South African border, along the gorgeous green ribbon nourished by the Fish River. It’s a vivid and winding oasis of life amidst the utter desolation of one of the driest countries south of the equator.

The loneliness is part of the canyon’s hypnotic appeal: at one point I step out of my air-conditioned car, into the 40C heat (wherever you go in Namibia, take a hat, sunblock and many litres of water) and the silence stuns me. I can see African fish eagles soaring in the infinity of blue, desert baboons are squatting under a camel thorn tree just 10m away, but I’m possibly the only human being for 50km in any direction.

It’s slightly scary and rather humbling – and it gets better. The road ducks and twists through gorges, along wooded cliffs and, at one point, nearly tips into the mighty river. Then, suddenly, it climbs out of the canyon and out onto a desolate plateau, dotted with the occasional square of greenery indicating a vineyard (this lost corner of Namibia, it seems, even supports its own vineyards).
Yet if all of this makes the Forbidden Zone sound too daunting for a holiday, don’t worry. There are outposts of luxury – halfway down the Aus road to Richtersveld is the bizarre mining town of Rosh Pinah: I say bizarre because it so opulent in such an unlikely setting. It’s like a well-to-do Arizona resort town dumped in the African desert: the supermarkets are shaded with elegant palms, there are pubs and internet cafes and restaurants serving eland (antelope) steaks in pepper sauce. Even the garages stock bottles of fine South African pinotage.

Where does this prosperity come from? The many forbidding signs denoting the Namdeb Diamond Corporation give the game away. Diamond Zone 1, as Sperrgebiet is also known, may be opening up to tourists but gems are still big business here - two million carats of fine diamonds are mined in the region annually, and Rosh Pinah is one of Namdeb’s more significant towns.

The most important diamond city of all is Oranjemund, on the Atlantic coast, 90km away down a gravel road. But don’t bother taking this road unless you have a very good reason, plus a permit from the police and an invitation from a resident. Oranjemund is one of the most restricted cities in the free world. Only those in the diamond trade are allowed in. Namdeb take their security so seriously that even pigeons aren’t allowed – they are shot out of the sky just in case someone uses them to smuggle gems.

A better bet than being shot is to keep going until you reach the South African frontier, then loop around on the main road back to Aus. This road is tarmacked and the going fast so you can make the journey in a few hours. But do take some time to view the scenery: springbok run wild here, likewise oryx, zebra, ostrich and klipspringers - these cute little antelopes bound across the rocky hillsides with the grace of female Russian gymnasts.

Aus is a good base for travellers because it has one of the most alluring hotels in Namibia, the Klein-Aus Vista. The chalets near the hotel restaurant are clean and comfy, and the food in the restaurant is excellent (game meats like kudu come highly recommended) but what makes Klein aus Vista so amazing are the self-catering lodges high up in the hills, about 10 minutes’ drive from reception.

The Afrikaans owners of Klein-Aus Vista have tried to make these luxury huts as inconspicuous as possible: lodges like the Eagle’s Nest are literally built out of boulders, with rocks emerging in the sitting room. Each comes equipped with a braai area, where you can barbecue your own boerwurst if you don’t fancy the drive down to the restaurant. The kitchens sparkle with equipment, there are fine wines in the cupboard, and the views across the veld and the desert, where the Succulent Karoo meets the dunes of the Namib-Naukluft, are incomparable.

The nights are, if anything, even more magnificent. The total lack of pollution makes these skies some of the clearest on Earth: you can see the stars as my African ancestors saw them. And when the sun eventually wakes over the Karas Mountains, you may spot mongoose or hyrax sipping from the water dishes placed on the terrace of every lodge. I was actually woken by a large desert hare and a bat-eared fox, right outside my window, squabbling over the remains of my al fresco supper.
The last leg of any Sperrgebiet journey will probably take you back to Lüderitz, and to the airport out in the wilderness. But it’s well worth lingering in Lüderitz itself. This seaport, with its lofty Lutheran churches and gingerbread Bavarian houses standing stark against the dust of the encroaching desert, has a surreal charm, surrounded as it is by intriguing ghost towns, slowly drowning under lemon-yellow dunes.

The nightlife here isn’t up to much – though diamond miners do get boisterous in downtown bars such as Rumours or Kapps – so the best thing to do in the evening is to enjoy the fabulous seafood in the town’s finest hotel, the Swiss-run Lüderitz Nest, with its neat little swimming pool sheltered from the winds.

The hake and the kingclip are always good, the rock lobster is excellent but my favourite was oysters. I had a dozen on the half-shell every night, fresh from the cold sea right outside. So accommodating was the Lüderitz Nest after the rigours of travelling around Sperrgebiet that I came for three days and ended up staying for 10.

On the last day, I drove once more across the yellow sands to the dunes where the wild horses roam. I sat there for several hours, staring at these strange feral creatures wandering gaunt and alone through the endless, hazy deserts like shades of a long-lost cavalry. It occurred to me that they were a suitably poetic symbol for one of the world’s strangest and possibly most remarkable of national parks.







Wednesday, September 16, 2009

MBS: Will You Be Here?

Can you look this cute little Myrtle Warbler in the eye, and tell it that you're not going to be here?

From beautiful northern Ohio, Kenn and Kimberly write: The big bird festival known as the Midwest Birding Symposium was held in Lakeside, Ohio, in September 1997 and again in September 1999. Then it migrated west to Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa, but it’s coming back to Lakeside this week: September 17 - 20, 2009.

When the symposium was held at Lakeside in 1997, Kenn gave a program and helped lead field trips. At the time, he was living far away, in the southwest. It wasn’t his first trip to Ohio, but it was his first detailed look at the migration on the Lake Erie shoreline, and he was very impressed by the area and the numbers of migrant birds.

When the symposium was held at Lakeside again in 1999, Kimberly attended the event and took in everything it had to offer. At the time, she was living in central Ohio. She had been birding for a while, but this was her first big bird festival, and she was very impressed with the energy and excitement of the event.

We didn’t meet until 2001, Kenn didn’t move to Ohio until 2005, but we’ll be going to this Midwest Birding Symposium as a happily married couple. This symposium is happening practically in our back yard. And we’ll be keeping busy while we’re there!

Black Swamp Bird Observatory (of which Kimberly is the executive director) and its youth program, the Ohio Young Birders Club, will be hosting youth activities at the symposium all day Saturday, Sept. 19, at the Wo-Ho-Mis building (yeah, Lakeside has funny names) across the street from South Auditorium. Kenn will be giving a keynote talk on Saturday from 10 to 11 a.m. in Hoover Auditorium. And in between other activities, we’ll both be spending time at a special booth in the vendors’ area, shared by Black Swamp Bird Observatory and Kaufman Field Guides.

Some bird-bloggers will be coming to the symposium and blogging from there. We probably WON’T be blogging there, because we won’t have time! But we’ll be around, and if you’re attending, we’d love to meet you.

But here’s the main point of this post: If you’re attending the Midwest Birding Symposium and you want to get out and see some actual birds, be sure to consult our BSBO birding pages! We have updates on migration, info about the latest conditions, and the best birding maps available for many of the local sites. BSBO is the authority on birding in northwestern Ohio, and we’re eager to share this area with others. Just go to our birding pages and check them out.

And if you’re not coming to the symposium this time, make a mental note to join us during spring or fall migration in some upcoming year. We are proud of the great birding here and we want you to see it too.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Puzzled By Birds 2: Day Eight


From the finish line, Kenn and Kimberly write: Now we’re on the eighth day of our bird puzzle, and almost the whole creature is now visible. Unless the bird has its name tattooed on one of the few spots that’s still hidden, we’re seeing about as much as we’re going to see. So this is the point where the game contestant says:

"I’d like to buy a fowl."

And we fill in the last remaining pieces.

With the entire bird visible, it’s quite straightforward -- the only North American bird with that two-banded chest pattern is the Killdeer, that abundant, noisy plover of fields and open ground. We purposely kept the second chest band covered until late in the game, to give you a chance to focus on other features.

We were pleased to get dozens of responses to the quiz. A few brave souls even guessed on the first day, although no one got it right until a couple of days later than that. In the early returns, Mountain Plover was the most popular choice, and that was a good guess on the basis of what was visible. Mountain Plover is also brown above and white below, the pattern of the back of its head is similar, and it also lives in dry grassy places. Upland Sandpiper also got some votes, undoubtedly on the basis of habitat.


The first person to get the correct answer was Janet Creamer, a fine naturalist from Indiana and a contributor to two excellent and worthwhile sites, the Indy Parks Nature Blog and Midwest Native Plants, Gardens, and Wildlife. Looking at the habitat and at the small amount of the bird visible on the third day, Janet deduced that Killdeer was the most likely identification.

Others who came in shortly afterwards with the correct answer included Carol at Wildlife Around Us, Kirk Mona, Barb Myers, "Dave C," Marcel Such, Joel Such, Jim Royer, and Barbara Coley. Ohio’s well-known nature expert Jim McCormac took a look, a few days in, and identified it with immediate confidence: "Killdeer!" We knew we couldn’t fool Jim for long. And many more people got the answer right as more of the bird was revealed.


Thank you to everyone who took part; we hope you found it more entertaining than aggravating! Best wishes for enjoying birds out in the field the rest of this month. We hope that we’ll see many of you at the Midwest Birding Symposium, which is about to start at Lakeside, Ohio, practically in our back yard.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Puzzled By Birds 2: Day Seven


From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn and Kimberly write: Here we are on the seventh day of our bird puzzle challenge, wherein the bird and its habitat are gradually revealed, a fragment at a time. By now there’s a lot of the bird visible. Are you ready to take a guess? We won’t publish the comments (so don’t worry about possibly getting it wrong), but we will give credit to those who are among the first to get it right.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Puzzled By Birds 2: Day Six


From a rather hurried state en route to a research meeting, Kenn and Kimberly write: This is the sixth day of our gradual puzzle challenge, and by now a fair amount of the bird is visible. Can you tell what it is? Send us a comment if you’d like to guess. We won’t publish the comments (because we want everyone to have a chance to work it out on their own), but there will be honor and recognition for those who are among the first to get the answer right, and graceful anonymity for those who get it wrong. This is just for fun, after all.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Puzzled By Birds 2: Day Five


From Puzzlebird Headquarters, Kenn and Kimberly write: This is the fifth day of our ongoing puzzle challenge, wherein we fill in a few more pieces of the bird every afternoon. When you think you know what the bird is, send us a comment. We won’t publish the comments until after the quiz is over, and we won’t even publish your comments then unless you specifically say we can, but we will announce who came up with the correct answer first. (So down below, where it says "0 comments," that’s actually not true -- comments are coming in from all over, and we’re pleased to see that so many seem to be enjoying this challenge.)

Friday, September 11, 2009

Puzzled By Birds 2: Day Four


From out in cyberspace, Kenn and Kimberly write: If you’re just joining us, this is the fourth installment of an ongoing puzzle. Every day from now through next Tuesday, at about 3 p.m. (Eastern Daylight time) we’ll reveal a few more pieces of this jigsaw puzzle bird. How many pieces do you need before you can identify it to species? If you really want to challenge yourself, of course, you could go back to the first entry on September 8 and try to identify the bird from the tiny fragments shown there.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Puzzled By Birds 2: Day Three


From the bird factory, Kenn and Kimberly write: This is the third day in a row of our diabolical bird puzzle. Today you can see a little more of the bird than you could yesterday. Ready to take a stab at identifying it? You can send us a guess through the "comments" section and it won’t actually be published until the quiz is over, and not even then unless you specifically ask us to, so don’t worry about making a wrong guess! We’ll be proud to crown as the winner whoever gets the species right first. And if you can’t tell what it is yet, check back later ... we’ll reveal a little more of the bird and its habitat every day for the next six days.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Puzzled By Birds 2: Day Two

From Puzzlebird Central, Kenn and Kimberly write: In yesterday’s post we described how this "photo quiz" works. Every day, for eight days in a row, we’ll repeat this photo with a few more of the pieces filled in each time. Provided we got the settings right, each day’s post will appear around 3 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time. If you’re up for a challenge, see how many pieces you need to have filled in before you can identify the mystery puzzle bird.

Jamming with the birds

From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes: No, this isn't another post about a gig with our band. This is just to update a couple of points from yesterday's post about our "Puzzled By Birds" quiz.

In introducing the quiz, we mentioned a similar (but faster!) bird quiz available for iPods and iPhones, but we made a couple of errors. For one, we got the capitalization of the company wrong: it's birdJam, not BirdJam (small b, capital j). Capitalization is important -- just ask the Yellow-crowned Night-Heron, who would be vexed constantly by the many incorrect printings of his name, if only he could read! Secondly, we mentioned that we thought that our friends at that company had gotten the idea for their new "birdJam Twitch" game from our quiz back in January, but they didn't; they had come up with the idea independently. Great minds running on the same tracks (or flying in the same flocks), you know.

We don't have any connection with birdJam; we just know that they're good people and that they make some nifty applications for iPods and iPhones. If you've got one of those devices, or are thinking about getting one, you should check out birdJam's cool apps here.

By the way, a few brave souls already sent guesses for "Puzzled By Birds 2," on the basis of the marginal clues available yesterday! But so far no one has named the bird correctly, so the truth is still, as they say, out there.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Puzzled By Birds 2: Day One

From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn and Kimberly write: Back in January we did a new kind of bird identification puzzle on our blog. It was so popular that one of us (we won’t tell you what her name was) has been suggesting ever since that we should run this kind of puzzle again. It was so popular that our friends over at BirdJam copied it for an app called BirdJam Twitch, which is pretty cool. But our version is free and it lasts longer! So we're proud to present another "Puzzled By Birds" for your enjoyment and / or aggravation.


So here is our next installment of this new kind of bird identification quiz. The picture here is a kind of digital jigsaw puzzle with most of the pieces removed. The original photo was of a bird that occurs regularly in North America. Can you tell, from the pieces visible here, what kind of bird this is? (If you can, you’re some kind of super-birder! Please come help Kenn with finishing his update of Advanced Birding!)


For the next 8 days, we’ll be posting this picture again each day (about 3 p.m. Eastern Daylight time) with a few more of the pieces added. You’ll gradually be able to see more of the bird and its habitat. When you think you know what it is, send us a comment. We won’t publish the comments unless you specifically ask us to publish them when the quiz is over - - but we’ll keep tabs on them, so we’ll be able to announce who was the first to correctly identify the bird. We hope that you’ll enjoy this little challenge and that it will give you a few minutes of interesting concentration on how to identify a bird without seeing all the field marks at once.