The Foster Library is located at 651 East Main Street, Ventura, CA 93001. Visit their official site for more info.

We will cover the basics of bird identification in this interactive workshop. I will show parents and children how to connect to nature using play, careful observation, books and smart phone technology. A smart phone is not required for this workshop but you may optionally download Birdeez for your iPhone at www.GetBirdeez.com

Read the official release

This is an event for adults and children, so bring your family if you are in the area! I hope to see you there!

More information on the flier: NatureTrack Connecting to Birds Jul 2013

Today, you can see the first video in our series on the Tree Swallows of Lake Los Carneros. Tree swallows were locally extinct when the Santa Barbara Audubon Society put up their bird boxes. Now they are back, and we get to watch them grow! Check it out.

Keep reading for a full summary of the day’s events.The Tree Swallows are doing well this year, nesting repeatedly. On June 16th I found 16 eggs! Eight were definitely tree swallows, four may have been and four I believe are Violet Green Swallow Eggs. We also found four chicks in the brush stage of development. We’ll keep visiting about once a week to keep track of how these guys are doing.

Also I saw many other birds here is a complete list of species (with Shape and Size for Birdeez Identification):

• Mallards (Duck-like, Large)
• Caspian Terns (Gull-like, Large)
• Cliff Swallows (Swallow, Small)
• Tree Swallow (Swallow, Small)
• Northern Rough-winged Swallow (Swallow, Small)
• Turkey Vultures (Hawk-like, Large)
• American Kestrels and Fledglings! (Hawk-like, Medium)
• White-tailed Kites (Hawk-like, Large)
• Red-tailed Hawks (Hawk-like, Large)
• Anna’s Hummingbird (Hummingbird, Extra Small)
• American Crow (Perching, Large)
• Rock Pigeon (Pigeon, Medium)
• House Finch (Perching, Small)
• Great-tailed Grackle (Perching, Medium)
• Western Scrub-Jay (Perching, Medium)
• Acorn Woodpecker (Tree-Clinging, Medium)
• Red-shouldered Hawk (Hawk-like, Large)
• American Goldfinch (Perching, Small)

I’m sure I missed a few while peering into bird boxes, but I think that is not a bad day of birding!

I hope to have more videos posted soon, so be sure to follow out BirdeezTube Channel on YouTube and check back on the blog soon!

Here are the birds by name, species and handler!

1. Kanati, a Male American Kestrel. Handler Chris.
2. Athena, a Barn Owl. Oops! I forgot her handlers name! Sorry.
3. Ivan, a Red-tailed Hawk. Handler David.
4. Kisa, a Peregrine Falcon. Handler Carolyn.

We’ve got a project in the works with Eyes in the Sky. More info on that to come.

Great-Horned Owl Mom and Chick waiting for Dad to return with food. Photo by Ken Bosma

The Great-Horned Owl dad puts in an epic effort every nesting season. Great-Horned Owls are one of the earliest breeding birds in North America. They start nesting in January or February, meaning that in many places the eggs could freeze if left unattended. Mom needs to stay on the nest and Dad needs to bring home the squirrel, or mouse, or rat, or even skunk! Great-Horned Owls are the only bird that regularly feeds on skunks. Yum!

But it doesn’t stop there…

Feeding his mate is no small task. Unlike humans, female owls are larger than the males. This is true in most owls and raptors (hawks and eagles) as well. So dad starts the nesting season hunting in the winter to feed himself and his mate, who is about 25% larger than he is.

When the two to three chicks hatch, he has to hunt even more. For the first few weeks he has to feed all of the hungry mouths back at the nest by himself. This is because the chicks can’t maintain their own body heat and would freeze to death if mom were to leave. After the first month, the chicks are finally large enough that mom can help with the feeding too. She really needs to help, the chicks can eat as much as a quarter of their body weight every single day.

Once the babies are old enough, usually around 6 weeks, they leave the nest. They can’t really fly for another month, and even after they do, they keep bugging mom and dad for handouts. Young Great-horned Owls have been seen begging for food as late as October, 5 months after leaving the nest!

This Father’s Day, we’d like to thank all of our hard working fathers who kept us fed and took care of us after we left the nest, just like the Great-Horned Owl.

Adapted in part from The National Wildlife Federation. Photo by Ken Bosma

Does the Great-Horned Owl remind you of your dad? Let us know your favorite Dad story in our comments below!

Jason Bittel begins with a sentiment we can agree with:

Getting kids into nature is a tough sell today. Inside, we have computers, televisions, video games, and climate control. Outside, there are mosquitoes, sunburn, and poison ivy. Of course, these two worlds are not inherently incompatible, and smartphones are starting to provide a link between them.

After that point, children completely fall out of the article. There are no children with smartphones running amok destroying birds with their apps. The article becomes a discussion over the ethics and environmental impacts of playing bird songs in the field. This is an important issue, one recently highlighted by the Dorset Wildlife Trust regarding the struggling Nightjar which nests in England.

This problem for birds arises because adults play bird songs with apps to attract birds, often to take photos. This disturbs birds’ regular activity, impacts their ability to feed and can be especially harmful for endangered and nesting birds. An important lesson for everyone. But why title this article as a children with apps vs. birds?

Because conflict and accusation sell.

I don’t think we can blame Mr. Bittel for this lying title, as the URL for the article is likely it’s original title: Do_Bird_Song_Apps_Confuse_the_Real_Birds. Seems perfectly reasonable and descriptive of what the content of the article. But one his editor probably didn’t like. “Bird Apps vs. Birds” isn’t as controversial as “Kids with apps vs. Birds”.

If you are tempted to defend the title because of it’s question mark should realize that it isn’t a question but an accusation. It is the same as writing the question “Did [Famous Celebrity] Cheat on [Other Famous Celebrity]?”, where the implied answer is “yes”. If the answer was “no” there would be no story. This is especially important because most people won’t ever read the entire article, instead absorbing the headline and it’s implied answer and moving on. Bird apps, good for children, bad for birds. Kids win, birds lose. But this is just wrong.

Why do we at Birdeez care so much about this lying title?

Because with bird apps like Birdeez both the children and the birds win.

Today it is so hard to get children outside and learning. Schools have drastically cut the budget for anything that doesn’t have to do with state or national standards, including field trips. Additionally, children spend less time outside than at any other time in history, almost none without organized sports. Richard Louv coined the phrase “Nature Deficit Disorder” to describe the problems children experience when they spend little to no time outside.

We believe that Birdeez can help address Nature Deficit Disorder by being an approachable way for parents and children to learn about the natural world. Birdeez is designed to be bird identification for the video game generation; a bird identification app that appeals to digital natives like children growing up with iPhones and iPads at home and school. Apps like Birdeez can nudge children to go outside and learn about the natural environment.

Some of our most rewarding experiences with Birdeez have come by working with kids on with NatureTrack. While taking children on nature focused field trips we give them the app to identify birds. Sue Eisaguirre, founder of NatureTrack, recently said to me “We’ve seen how children really own the identification when they do it themselves with Birdeez instead of only being shown and told the birds.” And we’ve seen this ourselves every time we work with kids.

We believe that Birdeez will help create the next generation of bird lovers, which is essential for the long term health and protection of birds. In order to foster life long interest in the natural environment, we need more kids to have access to applications like Birdeez and programs like NatureTrack, not less. The next generation of bird lovers are needed to carry the torch of bird conservation into the future. These children will be the people who know how to use their apps responsibly to enjoy the birds and protect them for generations.

This is something Jason Bittel and many of the folks at Slate probably agree with, but instead of spreading that message they created a false conflict and mislead their readers hoping to make a headline more clickable.

Think I went too far? Not far enough? Let us know in the comments.