dogs and chickens

A few years ago when he was caught for illegal dog fighting, the world turned on Michael Vick.  He left football and went to jail.  For most people it unearthed underground dog fighting that happens everywhere in the United States.  It also reinforced the fact that 99.9% of people think that dog fighting is wrong. 

In the United States, cock fighting is also illegal.  Much like dog fighting it is inhumane and cruel to the animal.  Like dog fighting, 99.9% of people find it wrong.  However, that’s not the only inhumane thing that happens to chickens everyday and almost all of us do nothing about it.

Most Americans, every time they eat chicken, don’t know how the chicken was raised, fed, and treated from birth until mealtime.  The chickens can be injected with different hormones and fed food that fattens them rather than food that is healthy.  The chickens are kept in confined dark places with no opportunity to walk.  Many of the birds are even unable to walk.  After the chickens are finally ready to be processed and slaughtered they are transported, again in confined spaces, crammed into a semi by the hundreds. 

It’s a quick overview of the inhumane manner in which chickens are raised to be eaten.  The chickens are not raised as chickens, but are processed more like a bag of Doritos on the grocery store shelf.  Why, as a people, do we find cock fighting immoral and illegal  – where only a small number of chickens die each year - but find it okay to treat thousands of chickens each year inhumanly through the way they are raised?

It is not a question of finding cock fighting as something that is good, because it is not.  It is a question of this: why are we sitting around and letting our chickens be treated so inhumanly without considering it to be immoral?

For more information on the treatment of chickens and other animals I recommend Fast Food Nation and Food Inc (book & movie).

hummers

The hummingbird is really small – like really small. And their nest? It’s small, too. In a recent discussion over the weekend over how big a hummingbird feeder is, no one could quite figure out how big the nest was. Well, YouTube comes through. Below is a (lengthy) video of a hummingbird (and babies) and its nest. Quite fascinating. Take a minute to watch a little bit.

the echidna

I’m often stated as loving squirrels. And that statement is true, but only because of my love of all animals. When I go for a walk or look outside my window there is usually a squirrel doing something at some point. There is an encounter. I don’t get to see penguins or anteaters everyday; and not surprisingly since they are only at the zoo. And although I see a fair share of deer, groundhogs, and opossums they are usually only glimpses, not encounters. The squirrel represents my fascination with all animals. It helps that squirrels are interesting creatures (check out the Youtube video below) and not mundane.

But seriously, how often am I going to see a long-beaked echidna (only found in the area of New Guinea)? In a recent article in the NYTimes they honor this shy creature. Usually the platypus gets all the publicity as the weird animal and the joke of the animal kingdom, but I have to say that the echidna is fairly weird looking itself. The popularity of the platypus may be because you can see a platypus swimming down a river in Australia, but you may never come across an echidna in the jungles of New Guinea.

I’m sure if I could follow one of these creatures around I would drop everything to do so. For now I have the squirrel to watch.

birding in chicago

You don’t usually think about there being a lot of species of birds in the city. Or at least I don’t. I’ve recently started to get into birding after receiving binoculars for my birthday. I’ve been interested in birds for years, watching many of the birds coming to the feeders at my parents’ house. But, that is only a small amount of birds and only a select few even go to home feeders. So, in May when I went on a North Park Nature Center migratory birding walk, I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw.

They gather early - the bird watchers. At eight o’clock in the morning on Saturdays they gather for two to three hours to see (and hear) all the birds they can. I wasn’t sure how many people would show up. I mean, it is eight o’clock on a Saturday morning and it is birding. I was surprised by the amount of people each week (probably around thirty). We had to split into two groups each week. From there we would walk around the grounds with our binoculars and search out what we could find.

I saw about forty-eight different species of birds. Many of them common to the area, but many more I’d never seen before. Here’s what I saw:

Permanent Abundant
Canada Goose, Mallard, Mourning Dove, House Sparrow

Permanent Common
Ring-billed Gull, Downy Woodpecker, Northern Flicker, American Crow, Northern Cardinal, Song Sparrow, American Goldfinch

Permanent Uncommon
Red-headed Woodpecker, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Hairy Woodpecker

Summer Abundant
Chimney Swift, Tree Swallow, American Robin, Red-winged Blackbird

Summer Common
Green-backed Heron, Black-crowned Night-Heron, Eastern Wood-Pewee, Willow Flycatcher, Gray Catbird, Brown Thrasher, Red-eyed Vireo, Blue-winged Warbler, Yellow Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, Indigo Bunting, Brown-headed Cowbird, Baltimore Oriole

Summer Uncommon
Eastern Phoebe, Scarlet Tanager, Rose-breasted Grosbeak

Summer Rare
Cooper’s Hawk, Veery

Migrant Common
Magnolia Warbler, Palm Warbler, Black-and-white Warbler, American Redstart (warbler)

Migrant Uncommon
Solitary Sandpiper, Brown Creeper, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Northern Parula, Chestnut-sided Warbler, Blackburnian Warbler, Wilson’s Warbler

Migrant Rare
Black-throated Blue Warbler

The Saturday mornings brought adventure, thought, and a birding community. One of the best things I learned from this birding experience is that identifying birds is a skill and it takes time and practice. I hope to do more in the near future.

at the zoo

Here is a compilation of our recent Lincoln Park Zoo visit.

tilting for worms

Oh my gosh! I just confirmed the coolest thing today.

So at work this week I’ve been watching the robins outside my window. As most people know, robins aren’t like many other birds in that they will not sit at a bird feeder and eat seed. No, they like a challenge each day so they hunt worms on the ground.

As I was watching them I noticed that they kept tilting their heads toward the ground. It looked as if the robins were listening for the worms. Well! After looking it up, indeed the robins are using their hearing to find worms. How cool is that?

Next time you see a robin looking for worms check to see if it tilts its head toward the ground.

i don’t have a woodshop, but I do have a milk carton

I’ve created a two minute video on a DIY birdfeeder. If you are interested take a look.

Bird feeding diagram from the video
Some other DIY bird feeding ideas
Bird feeding tips from Cornell Lab of Ornithology

deer in chicago

On a recent hike in a preserve in Niles/Morton Grove I came upon an unexpected surprise - 40 deer. Here is a few pictures of what I saw.

my favorite bird

There are a lot of different types of birds in the world. Some are exotic, some are plain and boring, and others are normal. I am not quite sure how people come to love certain birds and not others. Some people I think like the majestic colors of certain birds. Other people may like the call of a particular species. Of course, geography plays a role in having a favorite bird. While I think a roadrunner is an interesting bird, I have never seen one and know nothing about it. I know much more about a blue jay or a cardinal. I think how a bird acts also contributes to liking it. Some birds, much like the mourning dove seem to be much more docile while others like the nuthatcher are much more energetic. Other birds stand out because of the fascinating qualities that are unique to that type of bird. Great examples include a hummingbird’s flight or a woodpecker tunneling a hole.
I, along with many other bird lovers, have a favorite bird. I like this bird in particular for many reasons. The first is its distinguishable call. The second is its color. The third is its body size and the size of its beak. And lastly, the unique way the bird fishes for its prey. My favorite bird is the kingfisher. The kingfisher lives along ponds and rivers fishing for its prey. It spots a fish in the water and dive bombs into the water to fish for it. Every time I get near a pond or river with trees that are near the edge I always try to spot one of these unique birds.

penguins and love songs (the morning news)

This morning I had a couple minutes to spare before I went to work. I sat down and turned on the news. I wanted to see the results on the Michigan Primaries that were the day before. I wasn’t very hopeful. I’ve tried watching the news in the morning before. It just does not work for me. I seem to be able to turn the tv on between 6:10 and 6:30. Between that time all I seem to catch that is kind of news-worthy is the weather and traffic (twice). The weather is never dependable. That is not a knock on the weather person or the weather service. When you try to predict something like weather you are just going to be wrong a lot. The traffic is no help for me either. I ride the Kennedy expressway everyday. The only ‘traffic’ they give about the Kennedy is downtown. They forget to mention the miles of back-up beyond that.
So weather and traffic only take up about two minutes of that twenty minute interval in which I can watch the news. You’re wondering “what could they possibly fit in the other eighteen minutes that seems ‘news-worthy’ but isn’t news?” My answer to that is that they fit in eighteen minutes of tv time, but not newsworthy time. I get to hear about different trendy stores to shop at and a daily top 10 list. Today’s was best love songs. I may not know who won the primaries yesterday, but at least I know what love songs are the best. The best part of the twenty minutes of news I get (and by best I mean worst) is the “surfin’ the web”. If you go to the WGN News website what I got to see is this! No, you’re not mistaken. That’s a yeti hitting a penguin for points. So, that’s my news for the day – a penguin and love songs. What a disgrace. I hope in the future news stations will begin to look more like news stations and less like celebrity gossip tv programs and useless facts shows.