When it’s a Weka (pronounced “wehkkah”, Gallirallus australis), a biggish flightless endemic NZ rail.

If you’ve ever tried to see a rail in the US, you know it can be an exercise in frustration, since our rails are furtive and well-camouflaged wetlands birds.  Designed to slip secretly through reeds and sedges (as in “thin as a…”), they are far more often heard than seen.

Not so in Ulva Island NZ (a small refuge islet just offshore of Stewart Island), where the Weka is common, and emerges from the bush in broad daylight to forage the low tide line on the beaches of the Island, where it looks like a chestnut-colored chicken with a project.  In this habitat, Weka function as diurnal Kiwi birds, because they occupy roughly the same niche as the Kiwi, who also leave the forest for the small-invertebrate-rich strands, except usually at night.

In fact, the indigenous name for the Stewart Island Brown Kiwi is Tokoeka, which according to some means “Weka with a Walkingstick” (the wooden kind, not the bug kind) in reference to the long bill of the otherwise similarly-shaped Kiwi bird.  One beach we visited had four in the vicinity, but if you should by chance miss the Weka, look for the undulating lines of big-toed footprints leading out of the bush.

(Photos by A. Shock)

Yes, and we did!  Also very large eels that live in very small streams, and giant crickets called Weta.  Moreporks (New Zealand’s only native owl) made themselves heard, although not seen.

The kiwi on the right is carved from Kauri, the huge New Zealand tree which isn’t like any other tree I’ve ever seen. The photo below is a Kauri, and not one of the biggest.  There aren’t many left on North Island — they were too tempting a source of building material for the folks clearing the native bush for homesteads and pastures, and it’s a mixed experience to visit the Kauri Museum, which is as much a glorification of the Kiwi Bushmen (loggers) of the late 19th and early 20th centuries as it is a memorial to the great trees they harvested.

As I mentioned previously, there are two pieces of mine in the NCECA “Potters as Sculptors; Sculptors as Potters” show currently up at Mesa Community College (see the Three Star Owl Events page for details).  One of them is the long-evolving “Toadstack” (the other is Venomosity which can currently be viewed on the Home page.) As promised, here is the entire Toadstack story in pictures, culminating in the final state of the piece.  They go from L to R and Top to Bottom; don’t forget you can click on an image to enlarge it:

and the finished piece, Stacked Toad Teapot Effigy (Toadlier than Teapotly):

This show is associated with the annual NCECA (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) Convention, which opens in town tomorrow (Wed 8 April).  From now until Saturday, Phoenix will be popping with potters, sculptors, and ceramic arts educators.  The downtown Phoenix Convention Center is the main venue, where the discussions, demos, lectures, and exhibitors will be located.  There’s a fee to attend that part of the conference, but there are many many galleries, museums and other display venues which have shows up featuring the work of both nationally known and local clay artists, and these shows are FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

So if you like looking at the broad range of contemporary ceramic artwork and what’s being made in America today in clay, check out the NCECA website for lists of and maps to the concurrent shows and outlying venues which are all over the metro area.  Principal show clusters are located in Tempe, in and around the ASU Campus; Mesa, at both the Community College and the Arts Center; downtown Phoenix in the hotels around the Convention Center; and Scottsdale, in the Old Town Arts District, a fun and stimulating place to visit anyway.  It’s a great time in Phoenix to Get Out and See Art.

And they’re not just for birders.

Brightly colored, biologically faithful yet spirited portraits of native birds, reptiles, and mammals, Three Star Owl Magnets will stick firmly to your fridge or your uncle’s steel cranial plate.  Celebrate a life-bird, a yard-bird, or a favorite bird, insect, reptile, amphibian or mammal — if I don’t have it in stock, request your species of choice, there’s no extra charge for special orders.  They’re easy to pack or mail because they’re small and sturdy, so they’re great as gifts, stocking-stuffers, or thank-you gifts for people who let you stay with them, your favorite birding guide or trip leader, the birder who put you on to the the Lesser Nighthawk you thought was a branch, or yourself.  You get the picture.

Each magnet is a brightly glazed stoneware tile with a strong magnet on the back, with deckled edges and the species name on the back.  The tiles vary in shape and size, but are approximately 2″ x 3″ and have lively, irregular outlines. They’re the most affordable item in the Three Star Owl repertoire, yet each one is a unique, entirely handmade and signed tiny Work of Art.  $16 each, or 3 for $45 (Shipping and insurance additional.  No bulk orders or wholesale, please).  More details (or, lots of the same ones all over again) on the Shop page.

For those who require a bit more item for their needs, be sure to check out the Hanging Wall Tiles — bigger, more detailed, and ready to hang with hand-made beads on faux-leather or copper wire hangers.

Please be aware that the magnets shown here are samples only, not all are in stock.  Inquire for availability.

Important note for birders: Three Star Owl is not responsible for jinxing people who purchase items with species they haven’t seen yet.  Like, you don’t see my fridge rocking a Great Gray Owl…

(For you unstoppable ID-ers, the magnets above from left to right and top to bottom are: Lazuli bunting, Lawrence’s goldfinch, Barn owl, Western tanager, Vermilion flycatcher, Blue grosbeak, Coralsnake, Costa’s hummingbird.)

Late post (Sunday 8 March 2009):

Hello from San Diego, where today is the last day of the San Diego Audubon Bird Festival.  Things have been busy here, and I haven’t had a chance to post until now.  The Festival is at the Marina Conference Center right on Mission Bay — here’s a shot of the Three Star Owl booth.  It’s nice to be in a room with windows and a view.  So many facilities are completely interior and have things like accordion walls with scotch tape holding up a leftover honeycomb wedding bell that was too high for the cleanup crew to reach.  This room is wood-panelled and bright, and looks out onto a marina.  Nice!

E was able to come along and help, which is a treat because then each of us had an opportunity to go on a field trip.  He’s doing a San Diego River outing as I write this, and yesterday I joined a pelagic trip out to the Islas Coronadas, a small grouping of islands in Mexican water within sight of San Diego.  The room is still swaying a bit this morning, although by Pacific standards the seas weren’t rough. My little camera doesn’t do distant birds well, so I don’t have a picture of what was for me the highlight of the trip, several pairs of small alcids (a type of sea bird) called Xantus’s murrelets, which, although we had great looks, would never be more than little black and white blobs bobbing on the waves in my photos.  There were many excellent sea birds to be seen, but also mammals, including close looks at Gray Whales migrating north, and four species of dolphins: Risso’s, Common, Pacific white-sided and Bottlenosed, who larked under the bows, close enough so that we could hear them exhale when they surfaced. Above is a photo of something my camera can handle — a California sea lion beach-master with his harem.

In case you’re a non-birder, and don’t know what birders do at bird festivals, the main events are organized field trips to local hot-spots, led by experts, to look at birds.  The exhibit room has exhibitors like state Fish & Game people or the American Birding Association giving out info, and vendors with bird and nature related supplies, photos, and art for sale (like Three Star Owl).  Optics manufacturers have reps there, so that attendees can check out scopes and binox.  Occasionally impromptu viewings break out, such as when a Merlin was spotted atop a mast in the Marina, and the line of demo scopes was commandeered for viewing.  Pretty heady times!

Stay tuned: on the way home E and I stopped at the Mud Volcano site on the Salton Sea for a spot of sampling and marvelling at gloopy mud-blorping “gryphons”.

This is the week of the San Diego Birding Festival at the Marina Conference Center right on Mission Bay.  The keynote speaker will be David Allen Sibley, the artist and author of the Sibley field guides to the birds of North America, which are considered some of the top field guides available.  Many of the field trips are full, but there are spaces left and last-mintue cancellations, plus there’s lots to do at the Festival besides field trips: lectures, workshops, local self-guided birding, and shopping — come by Three Star Owl and say Hi!

I’ve got the usual assortment of owls, non-owl birds (!), and reptiles, plus I’ve included some coastal and California species for the occasion, like the Eared Grebe hanging tile pictured here.  Also, this show marks the West Coast debut of “rat-dogs” — generic mammal-form pieces that look like they might bite, or communicate a disease.  Take one home if you dare.

For more details, see here and here.

In the last post on scoters, I forgot to add that there is a surprising Arizona angle to these sea ducks. Some years, one or two are found wintering or in transition on desert lakes around and about the state.  They are categorized as “casual” here.  This winter (Dec. ’08), there was a handful of female or immature-type Black scoters (white cheek patches) seen along the Colorado River near Parker Dam, and a White-winged scoter at Kearney Lake east of Phoenix (Jan. ’09; white cheek patches and white on the wings).

Arizona lakes and rivers contain populations of what are locally called “mussels”, both native and non-native bottom-dwelling bivalves.  Presumably these are what these wayward scoters are living on.

The bird above is a well-documented female Black scoter (Melanitta nigra), photographed at Butcher Jones Recreation Area on Saguaro Lake NE of Phoenix in October 2007.  Find more info and photos at the Arizona Field Ornithologists page.  If you’d like to check out the view or hike or kayak from Butcher Jones beach, here is a link with a map and other info.  Saguaro Lake is an excellent place for birding and hiking Fall through Spring.

Etymology

The etymology of the word “scoter” is obscure, with no satisfactory concensus. The scoter genus, Melanitta, is a Greek compound from Gr. melas, black, and “nitta” which Choate says “appears to be a misspelling for Gr. netta, duck”.  Most scoters are mostly or entirely black, so the choice is apt.  The Black scoter species, nigra, is the feminine form of Latin niger, black, which makes it a black black-duck.  The Surf scoter species, perspicillata, is from Latin and means “conspicuous” (like the Spectacled owl, Pulsatrix perspicillata).  They should just get it over with and say “clownlike”, right?

Photo: A. Shock/Three Star Owl

Great news!  Sharon Stiteler of Birdchick.com fame ran a contest for guest-bloggers while she’s out of the country, and Three Star Owl is her selection for Friday’s guest post!  Regular Three Star Owl readers will recognize the entry as a post from this web journal, Vertical Napping Bark, which is one of my favorites because of the lucky shot of the Great horned owl with downy chick in a snag, demonstrating the beauty of Owly Invisibility very well.

[The image to the right is a digitally-altered photo of the breast feather vermiculation (= Latin for “wormy pattern”) that makes Great horned owls so invisible.]

If you’ve found your way to Three Star Owl from the Birdchick site, Welcome (Cranky Owlet says Hmph!), and take a look around: there’s lots of birdy art in the Gallery and Shop, and posts at the Journal on a variety of topics like birds, clay art, natural history and more!  Make yourself at home, and come back any time.

Thanks, Sharon, and have a great time in Guatemala!

Oh, and in my excitement, I forgot to mention that Swarovski Optik, makers of excellent binox and scopes, and beeooteeful crystal, is helping Sharon sponsor the contest.

Internet emailing list services — “listserves” — are an excellent way for birders to spread the word about what’s being seen in the area, and useful information about how to get there, which tree it was sitting in last, and which landowners show up with cookies and which with a shotgun.  But a birder cannot live by list-serve alone.  Sometimes I forget this, or get too wrapped up in the “art birds” in the studio, and not the real birds that are out there which inspire them.

So Sunday, though it was very wet at times because of a robust late winter storm that’s bringing snow to Arizona’s peaks and rain to its deserts (=wildflowers!!!), E and I went to view Da Boids at the Salt River east of the east end of Tempe Town Lake, otherwise known as “Tempe Marsh”.  We went with friends who get out more than we do, which was a good thing because there was a surprise there I wouldn’t have given a second look at without a knowledgeable nudge in the ribs.

For those who aren’t familiar with it, Tempe Town Lake is a stretch of the Rio Salado (or Salt River, the jugular of Phoenix) on the northern edge of the city of Tempe, just east of Phoenix and south of Scottsdale. In the late 1990’s, engineers took the unusual action of damming the Salt at two places with huge black inflatable rubber tubes stretched from bank to bank.  (The fall of the river is so flat here, that putting in just a downstream dam wouldn’t create usable depth.)  The dams take advantage of a “gaining” stretch of the Rio Salado.  At this point underground river water is naturally forced to the surface by bedrock (ASU’s A-Mountain and other visibly hard features jutting up out of the flatlands) and the dam slows this water and pools it together with added recycled water.  The combination of human engineering and natural geology enable what on the surface often appears to be a feeble desert river to create a body of water significant enough to allow the public to fish, boat, scull, and reflect on the unappealing commercial buildings the City of Tempe has blighted A-Mountain with.  If you remember the area from earlier days, it’s quite a change to the scenery to drive by downtown Tempe on the elevated Loop 202 freeway and see its bridges and buildings reflected in sun-catching wavelets.

One of the activities enhanced by this sudden advent of standing water is birding.  Or, to be less anthropocentric, the new lake created habitat which has attracted a good number of waterbirds, waders, and shorebirds, as well as raptors and some landbirds (in the willows and cottonwoods that seem to spring up nearly overnight).  All these in turn have attracted birders.

It’s drive-up birding, and definitely not pastoral.  It isn’t quite as gritty as birding the landfill or most sewage lagoons, but it’s not wilderness.  It’s very….suburban.  With the sun at your back you stand at the edge of the parking lot for the mega retail complex called Tempe Market Place (hereafter TMP).  It’s necessary to block out the piped-in pop music drifting across the asphalt from the shops, and to try to ignore the inviting odors of grilling carne asada telling you that your breakfast was only oatmeal, and really early in the morning.  On an afternoon visit, you may vie for parking with movie-goers, and Fridays are the worst — the scene includes local bands playing at “the District”, the “lifestyle” part of the outdoors retail vortex.  The most obvious features of the landscape, though, are the roads: the Mill Avenue bridges, placed at the historic Rio Salado ford and Hayden Ferry crossing (for many years the only crossing on the Salt in Phoenix), and the the raised causeway portion of the Loop 202, the Red Mountain Expressway, looming over everything.  The sound of traffic is sometimes hard to hear birds over.  And bring a scope, because most of the birds are at a distance.

But there are birds to see.  Double-crested and a few Olivaceous cormorants are everywhere: flying in and away in skeins, hung out to dry in drowned snags (photo right), swimming with just head and neck exposed.  An Osprey cruises by, then a Red tailed hawk, and a Belted kingfisher barrels thorugh, rattling.  There are sandpipers, and killdeer, and coots and their more colorful cousins, Common moorhens; red-winged blackbirds and grackles; grebes of two species; egrets and herons; a group of Rough-winged swallows passing through.  And there are ducks: Gadwall and Mallards, tons of Shovellers, and teal.  This morning a pair of ornately plumaged drake Wood ducks (one seen in photo left) are floating together in and out of the cattails, looking exotic although they are not uncommon in the winter here, and breed elsewhere in the state.

What keeps birders coming here, though, are the occasional surprises.  Sunday’s surprise (at least, to me — the others were looking for it since it’s been observed in this location at least since January) was a long-distance visitor hanging with the local Green winged teal: a Common or Eurasian teal, Anas crecca.  This is a bird that should be in Japan in winter, or in Turkey, not Tempe.  Remember Bugs Bunny’s “I shoulda toined left in Albuquoykee?”  These things sometimes happen with migratory species; they get blown around, or take a wrong turn.  But I was glad our friends were on top of things, and pointed out the different field marks, because they’re subtle enough so that at a distance I easily skipped over them. Our bird was too distant to photo, so to the right is a photo by Michael Moore of an individual seen last year at the Gilbert Water Ranch, not too far from Tempe Marsh.  Since a picture’s worth 1K words, I’ve also included below a photo by ASU prof Pierre Deviche of a local Green-winged teal for you to compare: note the prominent vertical breast bar on the side of the local teal, and the more prominent white head lines on the Common teal.

For you sticklers for accuracy, I should note that although I’ve called this a “life bird” sighting for me, technically it isn’t: the two birds, our local Green-winged teal and the Common teal, are currently considered by American authorities to be sub-species of the same species, Anas crecca.  But the taxonomists may be about to split them, so I hear, and I’ll be ready!

Until then, I’ll just have to be inspired by seeing the two together, and add Green-winged teal to my “list” of birds-I-make-art-from, which is low on ducks at the moment.  Because who can resist that cinnamon-and-green noggin?

Photos: Top, Tempe Marsh and the Loop 202, by E. Shock.  #2: Great egret in the cattails, Tempe Marsh, E. Shock. #3, Cormorants drying, Tempe Marsh, by E. Shock.  #4, Wood duck drake in cattails, Tempe Marsh, A. Shock. #5: Common teal at Gilbert Water Ranch, by Michael Moore. #6, Green-winged teal at Gilbert Water Ranch, by Pierre Deviche.