Earth Day - Easter long weekend, day 1

Couple of items of business today.

Matt and I checked out Mud Lake...it was so nice outside, and I even got a little sunburn. It was really busy with everyone having the day off and the sun shining. What attracted me there was the gold crowned kinglets, but of course I didn't find one. The first thing we saw were lots of swallows zipping around. I didn't look too carefully but definitely saw barn and tree.

Witnessed something of a kerfluffle between two tree swallows.

Love the forked tail on the barn swallow.

Not far off, we saw this bird, and it looked like it was all wet or something, and maybe trying to dry off. It kept fanning out its tail, and a chickadee was really playing with fire by hopping around really close. Soon after, some gulls came by to harass it until it finally flew off. A few other birders that were there and I concluded that we thought it was a merlin.

Horribly backlit...what can you do?

On the ridge, a yellow-rumped warbler was hanging around and singing loudly.

Lastly, just before leaving, we caught a black-crowned night heron. Such great birds!

I missed this when it originally aired, so I was happy that they were reshowing Saving Pelican 895, an HBO documentary about the rescue response for birds after the oil rig explosion off the gulf of Louisiana (it's on again May 1 and 15 if you missed it). Also, here's the trailer to check out. I was watering up within 60 seconds...I'm so soft. While the story tried to focus on the positive and really focused on the birds, the whole situation makes me so ANGRY. Everyone is complaining about gas prices, but I have no problem with them at all because I hope that MAYBE it will finally force people start looking at the problems with the system and start seriously looking at viable alternatives. Ok, happy Earth Day!
Some stats from the movie:

• 3400 oil rigs off the gulf coast of Louisiana
• 7000 birds dead (seriously...does this not make you feel dead inside?)
• 1200 birds rehabilitated and released into the wild

You may also want to check out this short Cornell video on Youtube: Deepwater Horizon: One Year Later.

Another amazing rehabilitation item: I was amazed, inspired and incredibly jealous to find out that a childhood friend of mine is now working with Kakapo in New Zealand. If you don't know about Kakapo, just watch the first disk of David Attenborough's Life of Birds. They are a flightless parrot and there are only 120 left. Anyways, this girl does seriously cool stuff...she also worked with wolves in Texas. She even has some pics of wolves licking her face.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that I'm seriously questioning my career choice and wishing I was doing something meaningful/wonderful like that. Should have studied biology....