Birder Blogging News

First, it's that time again, I and the Bird #52 is up at The Wandering Tattler. another splendid collection of the best of recent bird and birder blogging: the completely non-geeky edition. Check it out.

The next edition, the second anniversary edition, will be hosted by the father of I and the Bird, Mike of 10,000 Birds, as Mike says:

Believe it or not, the next edition of I and the Bird is our second anniversary! Since the first I and the Bird back in July 2005, the nature blogosphere has burgeoned, blossomed, and bloomed. Today, hundreds of impassioned authors write about wild birds and birding, straining the capacity of even the fastest web surfer. Because there are just so many amazing nature blogs out there and just not enough time to frequent more than a fraction of them, I'm adding a twist to our anniversary edition of IATB. When you submit your contribution to me [by July 10], our next host, I'd like you to also sell your blog to readers with a brief but pointed summary of what your blog is about. This tagline, slogan, or teaser should be 20 words or fewer, something like "The best darn birding blog on the planet Earth" or "Monitoring the avifauna of Oshkosh so you don't have to" or even "Birding, blogging, bombast" though that last one clearly needs work...

In other news, Mike of 10,000 birds has joined forces with Charlie of Charlie's Bird Blog and Corey of lovely dark and deep to make 10,000 Birds a Group Blog! More posts, more voices, more continents, more great photos.

Report from the Kitchen Floor

It's Circus of the Spineless time again, the blog carnival of all things invertebrate. It's up at Burning Silo. The theme is discovery. After you finish looking at my recent spineless visitors, "discovered" on the kitchen floor, head on over there for reports on the spineless from around the world.


I think the burying beetle was the most interesting critter to appear on the kitchen floor, but recently there have been others.

I don't know what kind of moth this is--though it is one I've seen (or ones very like it) many times before. The strange thing about this one is that it was lying still on the kitchen floor, looking dead, but apparently in some kind of stupour. The floor is cold, so that may have been it. I took it outside to photograph it (and because the kitchen was no place for it). It stayed right where I left it for several days. I nudged it occasionally and it always responded, still alive. After a while it vanished--whether of its own accord, or snapped up by a bird I don't know.


This spider is a frequent visitor, and probably a basement resident. It was perfectly alert, which is why I photgraphed it on the kitchen floor instead of moving it out first. I don't know what this one is either--should try to look it up at the Nearctic Spider Database. Update: Haven't been able to find anything except Dolomedes triton that fits, as suggested by the comments to this post--if this is right, odd that a fishing spider would be in the house.


It isn't So if it's Dolomedes triton then it is one of the Spider WebWatch spiders, but a couple of my favourites are among the nine spider ambassadors. If you watch spiders, consider joining the WebWatch. Click the link to find out more.

If you watch all kinds of things, and you're a blogger who hasn't yet heard about Blogger Bioblitz, click this link to The Voltage Gate and get involved.

Thanks to Jennifer at Invasive Species Weblog and Nuthatch at Bootstrap Analysis for the Blogger Bioblitz button!