Blog Carnival Love: I and the Bird (and the Great Blue Heron)

I love birds. They are an important part of my daily life: I listen for robins and towhees when I wake up on Spring mornings. I watch for night hawks at dusk in the summer. Juncos nitter and nest in my strawberries and thyme. The sweep of raven’s wings overhead seems to follow me year-round.

Birds also keep my gardens alive and interesting (thank you to all the birds whose purple poops have borne new volunteers to my flower beds). Wherever I live or travel, I discover new birds whose calls and silhouettes are inseparable from my favorite memories.

Today I’d like to draw your attention to one of the longest-living blog carnivals, which celebrates the ornithological: I and the Bird. Blog readers and writers alike share a true friend in blog carnivals. These online periodicals consist of collections of links to many different articles, photos, videos, podcasts, and other online media, all of which illuminate a single, special topic (such as trees, plants, or invertebrates).

If you enjoy the company of feathered friends and have a few hours to spare this summer, Mike of 10,000 Birds welcomes you to volunteer as a host for a future issue. You don’t have to be a birder or keep a birding blog in order to participate – just a desire to look up, listen, and share what you learn.

Even if you don’t have time to volunteer, you can help keep I and the Bird alive and soaring with three easy steps:

1)   blog about birds

2)   send in the link

3)   spread the word

In this spirit I share the following images of the Great blue heron (Ardea herodias) at Big Beef and Seabeck Bay, as seen last Wednesday. I might have a diligent amateur’s success with tree photography, but I’m hopeless when it comes to birds (or anything else that doesn’t stand perfectly still for a photo shoot). Luckily for me, these herons were hunting for breakfast, and were not planning to move until the perfect catch swam by.

Wouldn’t it be awesome to sport a great, sweeping beard like this one?

Or to have the endurance to stand still for hours in the chill water beneath these mountains, waiting for lunch?

And herons aren’t the only birds dining in the estuaries…

Click here to read the latest issue of I and the Bird: “A few of my favorite wings” now online at Madras Ramblings, or submit your links today for the upcoming issue to be hosted at Twin Cities Naturalist.

Mike over at the Pacific Northwest Slugyard has some nice photos of nesting Great blue herons.

Looking for more bird resources? Check out the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the annual Great Backyard Birdcount, and the National Audubon Society.

Know a better (or more interesting) resource? Tell us in the comments.

And remember – blog birds, send in the link, spread the word – I and the Bird!