You might hear: I finally traded in my old porros for a new pair of roofs.
I’ve never really stopped to think how odd this statement must seem to non-birders, but honestly I hear it or something similar often. They are referring to the prism system in their binoculars, porro prisms are the more traditional type with the large lens spaced wide apart and the barrels take a little jog before the eyepieces to get them close together to match your eye space.
Roof prisms have a more straight through design. It used to be considered that you could get a better binocular for the money if you chose porros, but technology has changed and roof prisms are greatly out numbering porros both in purchases and models offered by companies. Roof prism are more compact, tougher and they are able to be made with extremely close focusing options; it’s common to be able to focus at 4 feet, some models even less. (More on why you would want that a little later.)
Having said this, I still feel that the low end porros are better than low end roof prism, generally speaking, that would be under $195 but there are exceptions, you need to compare for yourself. A good roof prism will have “phase corrective coating”, and just because they say, “fully multi-coated” they don’t necessarily have the phase corrective coating.
You might hear: I stuffed some suet in a snag and the woodpeckers went wild.
Again, I not lying, I’ve heard this on several occasions, in bird land a snag is a dead tree that is still standing, aka a woodpecker magnet.
Suet, technically speaking, is the big chunks of fat around the kidney of cattle. Also a woodpecker magnet, so if you combine two magnets you get one really powerful one. I know more than one person who has a large bore drill bit on a cordless drill to make even more stuffing holes in snags.
In bird land though suet has become fat with any and all kinds of mixtures added, there is berry, dried fruit, insects, meal worms and all have some seed thrown in to make it look even better to the buyer, not necessarily though to the end user. Remember, if a woodpecker won’t eat the seed on a feeder he is unlikely to eat it in the suet mix either. Most suet mixes have cheap seed like millet or corn added as filler, so make sure the $5 a pound “Premium Insect Suet” you are about to buy isn’t half full of 13 cent a pound corn.
A little more on suet versus fat.
You can get fat from almost any source, you can drain the fat off you meat when cooking, lard is the fat around the kidney of a pig, shortening is vegetable fat and all these can be mixed with seeds, peanut butter, corn meal, oat meal even a little flour to stiffen it up. But, you have to watch that it isn’t melting in the summer, the way woodpeckers feed, with their breast pressed against the holder and even up-side-down under the holder to get the last pieces, the melting fat will drip into there feathers and is very hard to get off in the bird bath. It can hinder flight and the insulation value of feathers.
Even raw suet, which is great to feed in winter will drip in summer. If you want to feed suet in the summer it should be real suet and “double rendered”, that is, cooked then strain off all the bits and let it harden. When you heat it up the second time, (the double part) you can add your secret ingredients and pour it into molds. The longer the mix “ages” the harder it gets, so if it’s a little soft, keep it in a cool place for a few days.
You might hear: It’s just another LBB.
What they mean is little brown bird, some birders just skip over all little brown birds without even trying. I’ve heard, “It’s just another LBB” while the bird was still scratching up seed 20 feet away, a quick look and there was a striking White-throated Sparrow. There are many LBB’s around, but each species is different and quite beautiful. I’d find it acceptable to say, “There’s an LBB in that birch tree at three o’clock”, if you are calling it to the attention of other birders and I might not push you in the river if you right it off as an LBB if it got away before you had a good look.
I’ve also heard LBJ and I used to think it was American birders confusing the term with their former president, but apparently it stands for “little brown job” which, to me, is even more annoying.
You might hear: I built a roosting box for chickadees.
The first time I printed labels for my roosting boxes I slipped in an “a” for an “o” and was trying to sell roasting boxes. I was getting weird questions and the odd dirty look until I noticed my mistake.
A roosting box is a place for birds to spend the night, it’s similar to a bird house but larger, the hole is on the bottom, there is no vent holes at the top and the inside is lined with numerous perches. This design allows groups of birds to safely get into one cavity and share the trapped body heat.
You might hear: There wasn’t much bird activity in the heat of the afternoon so we decided to do a little dragonflying.
Sound exciting? It is, New Brunswick has enough dragons and damsels to keep you hopping for several summers. I found and incredible website called Odonata of New Brunswick, (there’s a link on our blog) it lists the damselflies and dragonflies found in our province, complete with species profiles and pictures. This is better than the books and you might see some familiar names who have contributed to the many pictures. Get ready for this...New Brunswick has 37 species of damselflies and 97 species of dragonflies. I think I can identify about 4.
Another similar activity to keep birders busy on the hot days when their prime focus are keeping to themselves, is butterflying. Again New Brunswick has a whopping 85 species of butterflies to challenge your identification skills. Once you get hooked on dragonflying and butterflying you’re going to want one of those close focusing binocular I mentioned earlier. Some species require very close looks to get positive identification, but mostly they are just incredibly beautiful and you are going to want as good of views as possible.
If your binoculars are 8x42 and they have a close focus of 3 feet, that means the object appears 8 times closer or 4 and a half inches away. I don’t know about you but my eyes won’t even focus on objects that close.
If anyone is interested in New Brunswick checklists for dragonflies and damselflies or butterflies contact me and I can e-mail it to you.
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