Bird of the Day: Black-Crowned Night Heron (Palm Springs, CA)
Author: Martin Smith
Bird of the Day: Barn Swallow (Los Angeles River, CA)
Bird of the Day: Red-winged Blackbird (Stateline, NV)
Bird of the Day: Steller’s Jay (Mountain Center, CA)
Bird of the Day: Dark Eyed Junco (Mountain Center, CA)
Bird of the Day: Violet Green Swallow (Mountain Center, CA)
Part-Time Vegetarianism
Always willing to join a conversation about (or over) food, I’ve been reminded by recent posts by Timothy and Crist of an interesting dietary strategy I discovered while living in Singapore: Meatless Mondays. I watched it as a news story over a year ago, around the same time I watched a TED talk by Graham Hill entitled Why I’m a Weekday Vegetarian. Both of these programs helped me to find a compromise that reconciles the cognitive dissonance I have as a meat-eater aware of the environmental implications of the livestock industry. 
It’s simple: Eat less meat. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Lesser Goldfinch (Rancho Mirage, CA)
Bird of the Day: Cassin’s Kingbird (Newport Bay Conservancy, Newport Beach, CA)
Bird of the Day: Say’s Phoebe (Coachella Valley Preserve, Thousand Palms, CA)
Bird of the Day: Northern Mockingbird (Rancho Mirage, CA)
Bird of the Day: American Coot (Palm Springs, CA)
Golf Course Wildlife
From Scotland and South Africa to Scottsdale and South America, certain destinations draw countless visitors whose singular recreational motivation is golf. Few other sports or activities require the amount of terrain that golf does, so its environmental implications go further than most sports. But when considering golf’s land use, it is refreshing to recognize how many courses end up being preservations of rich natural areas and contribute to conservation as places of refuge for wildlife and plant life.
Bird of the Day: Western Bluebird (Rancho Mirage, CA)
Bird of the Day: Red House Finch Male (Palm Desert, CA)
Bird of the Day: Greater Roadrunner with Lizard (Rancho Mirage, CA)
Gotta Love a Good Reserve
The Periyar Tiger Reserve is one of those places that gets your adrenaline flowing just a little more than usual, because you’re always on the verge or the high of an interesting sighting or sensation. A good reserve does that. It fosters enough of a preserved environment that exploring it brings you back to a pre-industrial state of awareness.
Today I visited the Newport Bay Conservancy in Newport Beach, California. It’s not quite as wildly invigorating as Wild Periyar, but it was a beautiful day and the birds were hungry.
Bird of the Day: Cooper’s Hawk (Rancho Mirage, CA)
Bird of the Day: Snowy Egret (Rancho Mirage, CA)
Bird of the Day: White-crowned Sparrow (Palm Desert, CA)
Organikos 