Birds of the Southern Ocean

 Black-browed Albatross chick                                       Chinstrap Penguins on an iceberg


Do you love Penguins? Albatrosses? All the other badasses of the bird world?
Come check out Dr. Owen's presentation this Tuesday, January 28th at 7 pm in 223 Natural Resources!
How do Albatrosses spend almost all of their time on the wing?
How do penguins endure freezing cold and dive hundreds of meters for their food?
How could anything be this cute? And what does a Black-browed Albatross chick think about for months when it is left alone at its nest?

First Meeting of the Semester!

For the First meeting of the Spring Semester we will be meeting for a few minutes in Room 223 of NR and then heading out to do some Owling. Hopefully we will have better luck then last time. E-board has been looking around and last night some members successfully  called in an Eastern Screech Owl within minutes.



Remember, we still have a ton of shirts that people have not claimed. If you have ordered a shirt, please come to the meeting tonight or contact us to set up a meeting time.

We have some really cool events coming up including Cross Country Skiing/Tubing at Burchfield Park (Feb 1st), Owling in the Soo (Feb 7-9th), and Florida for Spring Break. If you are interested in any of these events and cannot make it to a meeting, please contact any board members for more information.

Birds you didn't know existed

Hey everyone! In an attempt for you to get more out of this blog, I'm going to do a weekly post about a really cool bird of the world that you (hopefully) have never heard of! This will also force me to go to the library more often. Our first bird is the Blue Vanga (Cyanolanius madagascarinus). They are common and widespread on Madagascar. These beauties are the only member of the family Vangidae that can be found outside of Madagascar; Blue Vangas also inhabit Comoro Island, and are considered subspecies. Little is known about their movements or mating behavior. They prefer deciduous dry forest on Madagascar's west coast and evergreen humid forest in the east. They can be found at all elevations and woodlands on Comoro. They are insectivorous, and commonly eat beetles and caterpillars, spiders on Comoro, and occasionally will feed on berries and foliage. They have been observed feeding in small flocks of Blue Vangas as well as larger mixed flocks of passerines (primarily other Vangas). Suprisingly, only four members of Vangidae are threatened and none have gone extinct since 1600, even though Madagascar is heavily deforested.

They are highly acrobatic, and can often be found feeding upside down!


Please let me know if this guy is still too well known and I'll try to find a more obscure bird next week : ) There's about 10,000 more to choose from.
Check the calendar for all MSU Birding Club events. Meetings held every Tuesday in room 223 (ROOM CHANGE THIS SEMESTER) of the Natural Resources building. Hope to see you there!

Snowy Owl Invasion

Well, we're a bit late to be breaking news but THE SNOWIES ARE IN MICHIGAN! Lots of 'em.
Here are some great articles about why this is going on. In a nutshell: Snowies eat lemmings. Too few lemmings drives them south in search of food, as does competition if there are too many.

http://mag.audubon.org/articles/birds/notes-snowy-owl-invasion

 http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/gotsnowies2013/

http://muskegonbirdblog.blogspot.com/
- lots of recent sightings over there. Lots of other great birds too!

We're headed to Bellevue this weekend for Sandhill Crane Counts. Meeting outside Natural Resources at 1:30 pm. and we'll be back around 5:30.
Also headed to Kellogg Bird Sanctuary. Meeting 9 am outside NR.

Let's try this again... Duck Watch!

Duck Watch this Sunday! We'll meet at 3:30 pm behind Natural Resources and carpool to Lake Lansing South. Hope you can make it! We're not likely to see any Harlequins, but they sure are gorgeous ducks! Dress warm!

If you loved bird banding earlier in the year, consider helping out the BULA station!

 

T-shirts are here! Show off your Burke Lake Banding Station pride by purchasing a shirt! Along with standard t-shirt sizes, we also have a few youth and women's shirts, so get them quick before they're gone! All profits go to the future continuation of the station.

All styles (regular, women's, youth), all sizes (S,M,L,XL).............$18.00

Please email burkelakebanding@gmail.com if you are interested in buying a shirt.

Detroit Zoo!

MSU Birding Club will be joining MSU's Ornithology class with Dr. Rasmussen for a behind the scenes look at the Aviary at the Detroit Zoo! Details soon to come.