Guess What? Pigeon Butt

On cold mornings, one of the pigeons on my ledge likes to press its vent (ornithology term for butt) up against my window for warmth. Is it a good omen to be mooned by a pigeon first thing in the morning?

FYI to those owling this weekend

Birders visiting Sax-Zim this weekend should exercise extreme caution. We had an ice storm today, and all side roads are covered with a slick layer of ice. Travel is possible only at very slow speeds (it took me 15 minutes to drive the 2 miles between hwy 53 and my house in Melrude this evening), and other drivers will have a difficult time avoiding parked vehicles or birders standing in the roadway. I would advise against stopping on 52 (Arkola/Comstock Lake) road at all, and be advised that shoulders on other roads (Hwy 7...) may well be ice covered even if the roadway itself is clear. Owls will likely have a much more difficult time finding prey with the thick layer of ice now covering the snow, so any birder/photographer activity that interferes with hunting behavior should be avoided at all costs.
Thanks, and please be careful!
Ben

Ben Yokel

NBC Nightly News!!

I'm so excited! Thanks to Carrol Henderson I'm going to go out with a film crew from NBC Nightly News and look at owls next week. They're going out on Tuesday with me (to get the birder perspective) and Wednesday with Jim Lind (to get the scientific perspective).

I have to give a big thank you to Rachel at Denny Kemp Salon. Being female the first thing I worried about this was my hair. I don't want to look like the usual birder, I want to sassy up the color. On this short notice and with what I want done it didn't fit with my schedule or Rachel's work schedule, so bless her heart she's going to come in on her day off to color my hair.

I also just learned that my sister Terri and my mother are coming up for some of the owl action next week. What an exciting year. Neither have ever seen a great gray and so this will be a real treat. I just thought, my mom is only 4'8", some great grays are 3 feet in length, that's over half her length, they will seem very big to her.

Important Reminder

This is just a friendly reminder for anyone who is planning to look for
owls in the Sax-Zim Bog--please be safety conscious while birding! If
we get ice on the roads this weekend from possible rain, the area could
become dangerous to those who are looking at owls and not paying
attention to traffic on the roads. My DNR colleagues who work in the
area have asked me to relay this reminder to birders. The people who
live in the area are concerned. Please spread the word. Enjoy the
owls, but don't stop in the middle of the road, and pay attention to
traffic so there isn't an accident.

--Pam Perry, DNR Nongame Specialist, Brainerd

Varied Thrush

This morning as I was getting ready for work I saw on mou net that a varied thrush was in Falcon Heights (not too far from where the St. Paul great gray owl was seen). I had an hour before work and figured since it was after rush hour I could get to Falcon Heights in 15 minutes, look for the bird for ten minutes and then have about 35 minutes to get from there to Wayzata--it was doable, I could get a new Minnesota bird.

The directions were easy, the bird was out in the open in plain sight hopping around under someone's feeder. You can view the varied thrush on the Recently Seen page of the MOU website.

I love getting a cool bird before work, it's better than coffee.

Pale Male Nest is Back Up

The nest is back in the same spot. Read more at New York Daily News.

Owls just don't stop

I took a group of two non-birding friends and my husband out to Cotton to see a few owls. We were in Duluth looking at used book stores and antique stores (looking for old fountain pens). Around 3pm we headed out and after getting some coffee we made it to Sax Zim at about 4:15. It was funny because one friend, Jody, had never seen an owl and within 45 minutes she saw 14. Not only that, she saw three different species: great gray, northern hawk owl and one far off barred owl. Even my non-birding Bill got in on the action, he was taking photos. It was fun to watch my regular non-birding friends point out owls.


One of non-birding Bill's photos of a great gray owl on a sign as we drove by.

Well, the KARE segment went great and lots of people are signing up for our impromptu owl tour through the bird store. It also looks like our owl prowl classes in the Twin Cities through The Raptor Center are filling up quickly too.

So many owls are flooding into the state and now owl stories are popping up. One birder thinks that he may have caught someone illegally killing a great gray up at the bog, but it turns out that the person is legally setting out leg hold traps for fur bearing animals. Great grays that are hungry are flying down for the bait and getting caught in the traps. Because they are legal traps, it's illegal to interfere with them. Most of this is just rumor but it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Another interesting rumor through the rehabber grapevine is that the great gray owl that was seen in the St. Paul area is dead. Someone called and reported that they had an owl carcass (they're not sure but possibly a great gray) from that neighborhood. That bird most likely starved to death since that neighborhood wasn't the most ideal habitat for an owl. The bird also received much more harassment by local corvids than it would up north. Up north crows and jays have learned that the great gray owl's feet are too tiny and the owl to slow to give them any trouble. In the metro area the corvids just see an owl of some sort and mob it constantly. Excessive mobbing by corvids may have been a factor). Again, this is rumor at this point.

Someone who lives up near the bog asked on the birding lists how they can avoiding hitting the great gray owls with their car. Apparently they have hit two already this winter and both times the owl swooped down off the perch at the last minute. I have no idea how to solve that problem. That's one of the reasons why tossing mice to the owls from your car is frowned upon. It gets them used to the road and a little lax about flying in front of or around vehicles. Owls typically drop from a high perch and fly low to the ground and many times when they are hit it's a result of poor timing on their part and not the result of reckless driving.

In other news, we do have nine great gray owls and at least one northern hawk owl recovering in the clinic at The Raptor Center.

Merry Christmas

Birds on the Radio

If you listen to radio shows, around the holidays guests hosts start filling in. I always wondered how they pick the hosts and get the poor suckers to work...now I know, I'm guest hosting A Balanced Breakfast with Ian and Margery Punnett. I'm incredibly excited, I love Christmas Eve it's a fun day (if you approach it with a relaxed sense of humor). I'm excited, hosting a radio show, getting the message out about birds on a mainstream station and then working at the bird store for a few hours and then dinner and a quiet evening with my husband, what a great way to spend the day. At the bird store, either regulars who are just grabbing a little extra seed for the holiday are in, or men in a panic looking for last minute mom gifts. You are the light in the dark, helping them find something you unique and insure that mom gets a good sturdy bird feeders (if she's not into birds, she will be after she sees one of these babies).

And the answer is...

Immature goshawk.

Note the hawk has a very long tail in relation to the body, suggesting an accipiter. There's also the white eyebrow and the fact that the bird is about the size of the mallards.

Cool Yard Bird

We love a good mystery at the bird store. When customers come in with bird descriptions, it's fun to try an puzzle out what bird they are seeing. My favorites are the blurry, grainy photos or even bird parts that people bring in and we try to figure out what species is there. Customer Maria Hafner had a mystery bird and turns out to be a great photographer so this is our latest mystery at the bird store.

Hafner is very good to her ducks. She feeds them lots of corn and even keeps water open for them in the winter. Last week she slowed down her order of corn and said that she had a hawk eating the ducks. Denny and I were intrigued, and asked how the hawk was getting the ducks. The first thought was that the only hawk in the area big enough that could take down a mallard would be a red-tail, but duck isn't their usual fare. Hmmm.

Hafner described how the hawk sits in the tree and watches flock of mallards in the pond. The mallards are so used to her feeding, that as soon as she opens her door they fly up from the pond towards her. The hawk then takes off from the tree and grabs one of the ducks from the air and goes down into the wetland and presumably eats the catch. This had happened three days in a row and Hafner was tired of setting up a situation for one of the ducks to be taken out. She described the bird as brown on back, light with streaking on the front. This narrowed the hawk id a bit, a goshawk was possible, but Denny felt it was too early for one to be seen in the metro area. I thought maybe an immature peregrine since it was catching ducks on the wing, but a mallard is awful big for a peregrine to take down. We asked if she had photos, and she did. She emailed them and the hawk id was revealed. Here are the photos. Can you id the hawk visiting her yard?


Note the large hawk in the on the large snow covered tree branch right above the mallards. The photo has been cropped, there are at least 60 mallards in the original photo.


Great shot of the hawk taking out mallards--my favorite part of this photo? The hint of blood on the tip of the tail.

Owl Page

For those interested I have had the webmaster create a where to find owls page in birdchick adventures.

Also, it looks like we are going to put together a day trip through the bird store on January 22. It will be a one day trip including lunch. We'll probably start selling tickets next week, and I already have a list of people to call as soon as tickets are available. If you're interested, drop me an email. I think this is one of the few trips where I can include in the advertising, "Great gray owls guaranteed or your money back!"

Just Another Day in the Bog

I went up to a meeting in Sax Zim Bog with Amber Burnette, Mark Martell, and Carrol Henderson about how to make the area more birder friendly. It's very exciting to see the community start to realize that there's some economic potential for them in this. Also, the guys in charge of managing the area for timber are genuinely interested in helping to manage the area for birds! This place is really going to blossom in the next few years--I'm so jazzed.

Of course you can't have a meeting near the infamous bog without looking for owls. We got to the area around 10am and birded for an hour and a half. After the meeting we birded for another hour and a half and we saw 1 barred owl, 1 northern hawk owl and 19 great gray owls--what an amazing year!!!!! Photos of a couple of the great grays are below.





Again, if you have been reading this blog and have been thinking, "I've always wanted to see the owls in this area..." THIS IS THE YEAR TO DO IT! We always have a few or even some great grays in the area, but it will probably not be like this again in this lifetime. Do what you have to do and experience seeing over twenty owls of three different species in one day. For those interested boreals are starting to be reported. One was found in Duluth yesterday.

One other note, if you are visiting the bog, please practice common sense with traffic. Avoid parking your vehicle in the middle of the road, setting your scope up in the middle of the road, backing up along curves and hills, etc. This area is remote, however it is well traveled by the locals and things are a tad icy. We'd hate to lose anybody to owl watching under dangerous conitions.

Doh! Pigeon foiled by its own hubrus

It's not a secret that I battle the rock pigeons on my bedroom window ledge. I have had to resort to various weight sensitive feeders in order to keep them from eating everything in an hour. The pigeons have figured out just about every feeder, including some weight sensitive feeders (they flap their wings while sitting on the perch to keep their weight off).

I finally have a system down that seems to keep all the critters happy. As part of my daily routine, as soon as it's dark outside I toss a couple handfulls of Sweet Tweets ( a sunflower, mixed nut, pumpkin seed, dried fruit mix) for the flying squirrels. Well, I never know exactly how many squirrels are going to show up, so I always put out extra and there are always some leavings on the ledge in the morning. Over the summer one pigeon has figured out that if it gets to the window early enough it can have the leavings. Eventually, other pigeons have caught on, but this particular pigeon has started coming earlier and earlier every morning. Its loud thump has awakened us as early as 4:30am as it comes in to feed before anyone else.

Tonight, the pigeon has thought it has found the ultimate solution: sleeping on the window ledge! Alas, I cannot open the window without freaking the poor bird out, and it will wake up in the morning to an empty ledge. I have been watching for the squirrels to see how they react to the pigeon or if they wake it up. The squirrels have access so some of the sunflower chips left in the feeder and the suet feeder is full of mixed nut suet, so they will not be deprived. But I do kind of feel bad for this bird that thought it had the anti pigeon system figured out.

Pale Male Nest going back

There's a tentative deal to get pale male's nest replaced. The weird thing is that some. like the folks at palemale.com are not seeing this as a victory because the nest is probably not going to go back in the exact spot it was due to safety reasons. People are so weird when it comes to birds.

The Birder and the Hunter Should be Friends

In an alarming article by Dennis Anderson of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, it's pointed out that duck numbers are frighteningly low. People who hunt are decreasing and with that the money that goes for duck conservation is decreasing as well. Birders and hunters need to find a way to unite their voices and money to help solve this problem. Many birders are very anti hunting so I'm not sure if this gap can be bridged.

If you're a birder, you need to buy a duck stamp and maybe even a hunting license. You don't have to hunt, but the money will help duck conservation.

Why bird watchers are viewed as odd

As if birders don't have a reputation for being a little strange, now there's this circulating the internet: people gleefully watching red-tailed hawk porn on a sunny New York afternoon. No wonder some of the building tenants wanted the nest removed.

This whole nest removal of the Pale Male in New York is not bringing the best out of some people. Emotions are taking over and misinformation is all over the place. I've read more than one editorial that talks about red-tailed hawks being endangered, they are not endangered! They're are one of the most common hawks in the United States. Granted, it is a charismatic bird, and I'm upset the nest was removed, but come on! These are adaptable creatures, they will rebuild.

Pale Male the NY Red-tail

If you haven't heard yet, the red-tailed hawks that nest in New York City across the street from Central Park have had their nest removed. The red-tails have gained noteriety from the book "Red-tails in Love" and the movie "Pale Male". It's been one of the newest tourist attractions in the Big Apple.

Many people are up in arms at the nest removal and the part of me that enjoys the hawks is a tad bummed out but there's more to the story than that.

The red-tailed hawks nesting on the building is a true testament to their adaptability, they have learned to live and thrive around us. That said, they will survive their nest being removed, this is no different than if a storm had blown it out of a tree or is the nest had become so large over the years the branch it was built on fell down. What would the birds do in the wild? Rebuild. My guess is that if they don't try to rebuild the nest on the building they could rebuild right in Central Park. I love that birds are getting so much publicity but in the long run these birds are equipped to deal with this type of situation in the wild.

I think the real reason why the nest was taken down in the first place had more to do with the people who live in the building not being thrilled with having groups of people with spotting scopes, binoculars and camerals with large lenses outside their building.

St. Paul Great Gray Owl

What an exciting bird day!!!!

First, I planned on going into work late today because Time Warner was coming to install our new digital phone line. They got everything done very quickly and I had an hour and a half before I went to work. The great gray in St. Paul is just a hop, skip and a jump from The Raptor Center so I decided to go for it! I packed Cinnamon up, along with my binos and digital camera. When I turned off of Cleveland onto Hendon, birders were everywhere. There were so many MOU board members combing the streets that we could have had a meeting and voted on a few issues (nothing gets a quorum together like a stake out bird). I walked towards the front of my trusty Saturn wagon and low and behold were copious amounts of avian dejecta--owl sign!


Owl whitewash in front of my car, a good omen (at least for birding).

One of the neighbor ladies was walking her dog and offered her suggestions of where the great gray owl had been spotted. We followed her down the allies looking in every possible tree. We got excited when we heard some mobbing of blue jays, chickadees and a gray squirrel, but it turned out to be a sharp-shinned hawk cruising the hood.

We turned the corner and ran into the neighborhood mail carrier who excitedly asked, "Have you seen that owl? I saw it four times on my route yesterday!" Bob Janssen (bird author and hard core state lister) good naturedly grumbled, "I've been birding and listing birds all my life and the mailman has a great gray owl in Ramsey County before I do!"

One of the neighbors poked her head out her window and asked the lady walking her dog and trailed by six people with binos in hand, "Did you see the owl yet? This morning it was in Sadie's yard about 2 blocks that way." A car pulled up and another helpful neighbor pointed to the house she had observed the owl two hours previous--we were closing in!

Sure enough, Bill George called us over and there was the great gray in full view sitting about 15 feed above the sidewalk. It sat for a few minutes trying to hunt and then flew across the street--I don't think it was afraid of us, but we were making such a racket that the birds was trying to hunt in a quieter spot. For those concerned, the owl was observed at least once taking some prey by Tami. Another good thing is that the bird is being watched by all the neighbors and is mere blocks from The Raptor Center. If it needs help, it will get it quickly.


My photo from my digital camera of the Great gray owl in a St. Paul neighborhood.

Other exciting news includes two goshawk sightings (one out behind our store). More on that later. And an almost complete albino red-tailed hawk is hanging out in Eden Prairie. It was spotted today hunting the marsh behind Buca di Beppo!

The birding is great in the Twin Cities right now, so relieve some stress and chase some birds!

Great Gray Owl in St Paul

Okay, if you're in the Twin Cities and you have been thinking about seeing the owls mentioned but you weren't sure if you wanted to make the trip north, a great gray owl has been spotted in St. Paul!

Here's the email and directions:

A Great Grey Owl was seen in the St. Anthony Park neighborhood in St. Paul
on Sunday afternoon, December 5. It was near the intersection of Hythe and
Raymond Avenues. I don't know if it's been seen since then - I went
looking for it today but haven't been able to locate it. Many people got
to see it, and several took photographs.


It's just west of the St. Paul Campus of the U. From I 94, go north on Hwy
280 to Larpenteur Ave. Go East on Larpentuer to Cleveland Ave. South on
Cleveland to Hendon. Right on Hendon.

The owl was still on Raymond, just north of Hendon at about 11 this
morning. I walked by there a few minutes ago, and didn't see it, but it
would be worth walking around and searching the area. So far it has been
seen on either Hendon, Raymond, or Hythe. These are all streets with a 2
block area.

Good luck.

Here's a link to the yahoo map for the area.


Marcie O'Connor
St. Paul

Feeders on Ebay

If anyone is looking for some cheap and beautiful feeders for the Holidays, I have a couple of feeders for sale on ebay. They only have five hours left...I'm having rejection issues, no one is bidding on my feeders. I don't want to make money I just want to get them out of my storage. One's a real steal, it's a hand made feeder that was started out at $249.

Minnesota Made Feeder
Big Tray Feeder with Roof

Great Book for Kids!

Me and my nephews Mike and Sam visiting with the education barn owl at the University of Minnesota's Raptor Center. These brave little soldiers sat through a bird banding class that Amber and I taught on Sunday...and I think they may have even enjoyed it.



Yesterday at the MOU Paper Session book sale I found several copies of a book I was given when I was about 8 years old. I was already mildly interested in birds and this book helped seal the deal. It was produced by National Geographic and is called "The Wonder of Birds". It is full of wonderful up close photos of North American birds. This book is also where the infamous Mad Bluebird Photo debuted.

There are sections on migration, bird banding, conservation, bill shapes, nesting and just a little bit of everything. One of the essays is by my personal favorite ornithologist, Paul Johnsgard. My original copy of this book is well worn and beyond repair so I bought a new copy and enjoyed looking at photos of birds that I dreamed of being able to see as a kid and marveled at how many of the things in the book I have been fortunate enough to witness like visiting a peregrine nest box on a skyscraper, seeing a pelican colony, watching prairie chickens dance and fight, and seeing adult bald eagles feed on a snow goose carcass--all these great photos are in here. I can't recommend this book enough for kids.

Anyway, if you are looking for a great (and inexpensive) gift to give to a kid you would like to try and hook into birding, this is a great book. I looked at the photos in this book until I was 12 and that's when I actually read it. Even though it's 20 years old, much of the information is still relevant.

It's out of print and incredibly cheap on the internet.

"the Wonder of Birds at Amazon.com

Endangered Species Act is Under Attack

Well here's something disturbing. There's a group that's trying to change the endangered species act. Read more at Seattle Times.

MOU Paper Session

Yesterday was the annual Minnesota Ornithologists' Union Paper Session. An annual event where birders from around the state come to party. How do we celebrate? By sitting around and listening to people talk about bird research, I tell you, we birders know how to kick it off right.

Interestingly, Ruth Hopkins did not sneak out of the group home to visit the paper session this year. Most of my staff was at the paper session (the other two were cursing our names for having to work the bird store alone on a busy Saturday) so I was not able to introduce them face to face to Ruth. I did have a couple people ask if I was hiring but I am now putting further limits on new hires. Not only do you have to be able to lift 50 pounds and be familiar with computers, but you also have to have no interesting in going to birding festivals and mou functions.

The two big highlights for me were Carrol Henderson's Birding 100 Years ago and the Lost Study of Oology and Andy von Duyke, Joan Galli and Steve Kittleson's report on the mystery of why the great blue herons have abandon their nest colony for the last few years.

Carrol Henderson did a power point presentation on an egg collection that was discovered boarded up in the house from the early 1900s. Many of the eggs had been collected in the late 1800s and some interesting things were learned. There was a clutch of white-winged scoter eggs that had been collected in North Dakota. Apparently there had been a small population in the United States, but is no longer there. 100 years ago, there were no binoculars, field guides or bird clubs so the way to study and enjoy birds was to take their eggs. It's fascinating stuff and I can't wait to learn more--Plus Carrol is a great and engaging speaker.

The big event everyone was waiting for was the lake Peltier heron colony report. It had been published in the newspapers that the colony was disappearing and herons abandoning nests. Several fingers were pointed and quite a few at the obvious conclusion of human disturbance. However security cameras on the nest revealed that the culprit appears to be raccoons. This was some of the most gruesome footage I've watched and probably not going to show up on too many animal shows. Some raccoons (the number isn't known for sure but it's definitely more than one raccoon doing it) are swimming out to the island, climbing 85 feet into the trees and killing and eating the young herons--and these are not small downy chicks. These young birds are about 5 weeks old and almost as tall as the adults. Most are taller than the raccoons and so it takes awhile for the raccoon to take down the heron. When I first heard about this I imagined the raccoons were the large 40 pound males, not these are smaller females and even some young of the year doing it. What was also interesting was that the footage we were watching was during daylight hours, generally raccoons are nocturnal, but two to of the attacks that were shown occurred during daylight hours. One was 10:30am and the other was 8:30pm.

There is no possible way to remove the raccoons and anyone who has tried the trapping and removal method of raccoons from their yard knows what a futile practice it is as more raccoons quickly move into the yard. So, they are going to test out putting metal flashing around some of the trees--like the way people do to protect wood duck boxes and bird feeders. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Aggressive Downy

I have the butchest downy in town. A hairy woodpecker keeps trying to eat at my suet log and usually that's no problem, but the smaller male downy is having issues with this. Every time the hairy starts to peck at the log, the downy dive bombs him and swooping at his head zooming from right to left, left to right. Now the hairy just flew to another tree with the downy in hot pursuit. I'm sure there's a small pecker joke to made in there somewhere.

By the way, I need to set up my FAQ and I have an idea of what questions to answer, and I'm going to try and compile it this weekend, but does anyone have a question they need answered? Start emailing them. I have gotten few questions about a crow proof suet feeder, this photo is about the closest one out there. It's called a Suet Sandwich and is on the pricier side, but in the long run you save lots of money as the crows can't eat out of it and squirrels and raccoons have a tougher time with it as well. It's two pieces of (fake-yet oh so durable) wood held together with screws that leaves about a quarter inch opening. You can buy presliced suet to put inside or you can mush in your favorite suet flavor. The opening is large enough for all the regular suet eaters (up to an including the ill named pileated woodpecker). Crows have a tough time clinging to the feeder and cannot get their big bill inside. Here's a photo of the feeder with an unpestered hairy woodpecker feeding at it: