WINGSCAPES

Midwest Birding Symposium 2009 a Huge Success

As a proud sponsor of the 2009 Midwest Birding Symposium, members of the Wingscapes team recently attended the event to participate in its activities, lectures, and birding community fellowship, as well as to share with the attendees the news of the exciting new additions to the Wingscapes product line.

The symposium, held this year in Lakeside, Ohio, was by far the best yet of the Midwest Birding Symposia ever held. Superbly hosted by Bird Watcher's Digest, the Ohio Ornithological Society, and the community of Lakeside, Ohio, the event attracted over 800 participants.

Among the many activities available to attendees were the vendor hall where a wide variety of birding-related products, including the BirdCam 2.0 and the Audubon BirdCam, could be discovered and examined. There were also dozens of lectures presented by an international collection of authors, ornithologists, and birding guides, and even a display where live birds (such as this American Kestrel) and other creatures could be encountered much closer than would be possible in the wild.

As a result of the symposium, hundreds of birders were able to expand and enhance their birding knowledge, as well as meet fellow birders from around the world. However more importantly, as a result of the event thousands of dollars were raised for conservation activities benefiting birds and their habitats that will be undertaken by the Lakeside community, the Ohio Ornithological Society, and the Nature Conservancy to mention only a few.

Winter Visitors On Their Way

Although summer has not quite yet left us, evidence that the autumn migration is well underway is being seen all throughout the country. Soon many of our favorite spring and summer feeder visiting birds will be replaced by species that overwinter in our respective areas.

Amy from Chicago reminded us of one of the more exciting wintertime birds that often extend their wintertime range southward into the northern United States when she uploaded to the Wingscapes Flickr Group this image of a Common Redpoll she took last February using her Wingscapes BirdCam.

Sleek or Fluffy?

Thanks to their ability to individually control each of their feathers to help regulate their body temperature, birds are remarkably changeable in their appearance. When cold, a perched bird can hunch down and “fluff up,” effectively creating an insulating down coat for itself. If the same bird is too warm, it can stretch out and sleek down its feathers to release heat and help it keep cool.

This Ruby-throated Hummingbird picture for example, recently uploaded to the Wingscapes BirdCam Photo Gallery by Michael from Shorewood, Wisconsin, provides an excellent illustration of the “stretch and sleek” cooling technique.

ignore test blog post

ignore test blog post

The Red Feather Dilemma

One of the great dilemmas of nature is why some bird species display vivid or bold colors. Take the Summer Tanager for example. While the female is a soft yellow (as shown here by the superb photo recently recorded by David from Cary, NC using his Wingscapes BirdCam), the male is a vivid red.

Ornithologists tell us that producing such red plumage is physically taxing on the birds. Not only does it require more energy to do so, it also makes the bird more visible to predators; however red also indicates the male's good health and thus likely attracts females.