I Gave A Talk!

Though I've been birding and guiding the past couple of weeks in Brazil, last night's event was foremost on my mind almost the entire time – the joint meeting of Oregon Field Ornithologists and the Western Bird Banding Association, at which I was invited to give the key note talk on the second night.

Despite my worries and not having a polished, rehearsed presentation, it went as well as I could have hoped, and I had fun. I presented sound recordings of a bunch of species that incorporate songs and calls of other species in their vocalizations, and there's lots to talk about there. It's a topic I've been fasciated by almost since I started birding 28 years ago.

Earlier in the day I led one of the field trips, taking the four birders with me to the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge and a bit into the Lava Beds National Monument. Our first stops were actually in Oregon where we saw an irrigated field full of White-faced Ibises and Ring-billed Gulls with one California and six Franklin's Gulls mixed in, and later a colony of Tricolored Blackbirds in a blackberry hedge. Our first stop on the California side of the border was a the monument's Petroglyph Cliffs where we saw hundreds of Cliff Swallows, one White-throated Swift, a pair of Prairie Falcons, and these young Barn Owls.

We finished with a drive through the auto tour route of the national wildlife refuge after  lunch at the headquarters picnic tables. Two surprises there were a Vaux's Swift well-spotted by Anne Heyerly as it dashed through hundreds of Cliff Swallows and a very out-of-place Swainson's Thrush foraging on the lawn with a pair of American Robins.