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CreekBed.org's Venture Outdoors |
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Welcome to the Birding section of Venture Outdoors. We’re a new website and I’m counting on user input to keep these topics alive. We would love to hear your stories and ideas so by all means, send them to us and we’ll post them here. If you have any suggestions, comments or questions about birding, you may also post them under the "birding section" of the CreekBed Websites Forum page. We are pleased to be receiving input from Joe Marshall of Birdland in Jacumba. He is a self described “bird nut” who plans everything around birding. “My home, my job, my life. Bought a house in Jacumba California about 2 ˝ years ago and named it "Birdland". It's quite fitting as everything in my yard relates to birding. All vegetation, structures everything.”
My name
is Joe Marshall and I'm a member of the Salton Sea International Bird Festival
committee. We are a non-profit organization that wants to get people interested
in the Salton Sea and the thousands of birds that the sea provides a sanctuary
for. I was wondering if you would be willing to post information on our next
upcoming bird festival. We're trying to get the information out as many ways as
we can and if you could post this information on your web site it would really
help us out.
Updates from
Joe Marshall August 17, 2002 My wife and I went camping in Laguna for about 5 days and enjoyed some beautiful weather and beautiful surroundings. It was a little unnerving though to see the smoke from the Pine fire even though it was many miles from us. This was not as unnerving as the smoke we saw a couple of years ago when Laguna had a fire 4 miles from us. On that fire just about everyone on the mountain was evacuated but us. We were camping with a group of people in a group campground on the south side of Laguna and the fire was on the north side but only 4 miles from us. We had a hard time sleeping at night. In the day we sang songs to drown out the sound of the fire fighting planes fighting right above us.
Animals seen while we were there; Fox, Deer and squirrels and here are some of the birds we saw this time:
August 1, 2002 - Visit Joes website at http://www.birdlandtours.com/ Hey JoeMama here and I'm back after a long break. Saw a White Breasted Nuthatch yesterday after insects in one of the hundreds of plants Birdlands yard. Several residents have reported seeing a Summer Tanager in their yard, nothing in mine yet though. Man is there ever a lot of bats around my house. I sit in my yard almost every evening watching them. These guys are amazing fliers. It's hard to believe that's a mammal flying around. A couple of Lesser Night hawks come in about the same time as the bats. They're much smoother flying than the bats although they can be just about as agile when they have too. THE RUFOUS HUMMING BIRDS ARE IN!!!!!!!!!!!!! The little buggers are fighting over the feeders at all times. I mean there's dozens of them. They're a real trip to watch. Keep an eye open for them you won't regret it. Toads, zillions of them. All over the yard and even in the house. They're so darn loud that when you're sitting next to my ponds you can't talk over them. You can't even get a word in edgewise. They're not the loudest though, the frog's are much loader but there's not as many of them. Had a great experience the other day on a hike. I'd been walking on a deer trail just north of Jacumba and decided to lay down and rest for awhile in the shade of a bush. I'd been there for about 15-20 minutes and I heard something go snap. To my surprise there was a deer about 4' from me just standing there. He stood there for about a minute then wandered off. It was really cool. Birds seen in my yard at the present:
Tri-color Blackbirds Well I gotta go but hope to be back soon. Let's go birding. 5-14-02 I was sitting on my front porch Saturday watching the many birds that come in and a bigger than usual one shows up and lands on a tree limb above my larger pond. Looking closer at it I realize that it's a male Green Back Heron. This is a water bird that's usually seen at beaches, lakes, the ocean or even in the Imperial Valley wetlands but not in Jacumba. He sat there looking down at my pond hungrily and flies down and landed on a branch about 5" about the water. He was there for a few minutes and he looked motionless but he was actually moving very slowly. He moved like a clock, ever so slowly inching his was toward the side of the pond. It took him about 10 minutes to move 10". Slowly he crept toward his goal with his head coiled like a snake then bam down shot his head to the water and up he came with a fish. It was too cool. 5-2-02 Western Tanager Alert: Well the Western Tanagers have arrived. A flock of them were in my yard this morning. I attract them with oranges and nectar feeders. I made what I call an orange log. Using a small log about 2" in diameter and 2' long I put about twenty 16P nails in it to stick the oranges on and also to make perches for the birds. It seems to work very well as they come back to my yard every year. There are whole families of Tanagers and Black Headed Grosbeaks in Birdlands yard. I'm going through about 6-7 oranges and 2-3lbs of sunflower seed a day. Not to mention 2-3lbs of wild birdseed mix and ˝ lb or so of Niger seed. The Niger seed if for the many Goldfinches the frequent my yard and the birdseed feed the 50-100 ever present Tri color Blackbirds and of course many other birds too. Last weekend I added another water feature to my yard. I was given a small 4' satellite disk so I put it to use as another small pond. I filled it with water put some sand, rocks, moss, tadpoles in it and put dried grapevine branches on top of it for the birds to land on. This weekend I'll add a water dripper to it to attach more birds. I got the tadpoles from my other ponds. There are hundreds of tadpoles in the two other ponds along with goldfish and mosquito fish. If you want to build a pond and need info email me birdlandtours@yahoo.com and I'll help you as much as I can. Jacumba Days: Want to have some fun well Jacumba Days are coming May 25th in beautiful downtown Jacumba. There'll be a parade, crafts, food, a dance and live music. I may even be playing a little music you never know. I play the guitar, harmonica and love to sing. Come one come all and have a great time in Jacumba Day Ball. See you there I hope. Did you see a bird and want to know what it is well you can contact me birdlandtours@yahoo.com or go to http://www.imperial.cc.ca.us/Birds where you'll find one of the best birding information web pages on the net. It was created by a good friend for mine Eldon Caldwell who has logged hundreds of hours inputting information about birds and birding. Go there you won't regret it. See ya for now. Love those birds.
4-18-02 -
BIRD ALERT: Saw a Lazuli Bunting this morning in the yard. He was a
beautiful little male. I've had pond fever lately and so I upgraded my pond. I found another smaller (4') satellite dish and have placed it right next to my larger (8') dish. Now water is going from the 8' - 4' to the oblong slew where the water supplies my reed garden. The birds love it. They seem to like the smaller dish even more that the large one. These things really attract the birds. Looking for something to do this Saturday April 20th? Come to the Imperial County Fairgrounds from 9a.m - 2p.m. and enjoy the "Earth Day" celebration. There's going to be lots of activities going on. You can enjoy birding, fishing and photography tours. Also there's lots of booths with info on how to help your environment and enjoy the great outdoors. I'll be leading a tour to the New River Wetlands project near Imperial. For more info you can contact me at birdlandtours@yahoo.com
I hope to see you there. 4-11-02 -
It's bird time folks. This is a wonderful time of year for
birding. Put out some birdseed, humming bird feeders, suit cakes, peanut
butter, cut some oranges and sit back and wait for the birds because they will
come. There are many birds on their way north and south stop in
Jacumba, some briefly and some stay. This week flocks of Black Headed
Grosbeaks, Bullocks Orioles, Scotts Orioles, and Hooded Orioles have arrived.
The Rufous Humming Birds are in. They're a lot of fun to watch as they always
chasing each other and other hummingbirds. Brewers Blackbirds have made their
way to Jacumba. There should be flocks of Western Tanangers in any time. I
love those guys they're beautiful. Articles
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4-22-02 - Bird
alert: The Western
Tanagers are here. Saw one at a friend's house on Snob Hill in Jacumba. If I saw
one then the flocks are coming. Look for them.
