Sometimes when you're in your 20s you do very stupid things

This is from the Seattle Times:

Student lifts falcon egg, faces charges

By Ashley Bach

Seattle Times Eastside bureau

Booth Haley speaks in exclamations and explains his yolk-related legal problems with a certain flair, including diatribes about living off the land and society's reliance on store-bought food.

The 22-year-old Haley is from Mercer Island, attended Mercer Island High School and is about four weeks from graduation at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. He was arrested April 7 for taking a special kind of egg from a nest sitting on a railroad bridge near campus.

To hear him tell the story, he was just a college student in search of a unique meal. To hear state environmental officials tell it, Haley was endangering a rare species, and maybe worse.

Haley was canoeing with a friend on the Connecticut River when the two men came across a metal ladder rising from the water. They decided to climb about 80 feet to the bridge, where they saw a nest sitting on the edge of an old iron control booth.

Inside were four small eggs, dappled brown, and Haley, a longtime climber and outdoorsman, decided to take one. To eat. "Probably scrambled," he said.

But a state conservation officer happened to be in the area and witnessed the grab. Haley and his friend were arrested and charged by Middletown prosecutors with third-degree trespassing, a misdemeanor, for walking on the bridge.

And the egg, it turns out, was from a peregrine falcon, an endangered species in Connecticut, state officials said. Only six pairs exist in the entire state, including those nesting on the bridge.

The two men could face up to three months in jail on the trespassing charge, and state officials are considering charges related to the egg pilfering. Federal officials are trying to determine if Haley planned to sell the egg on the black market.

Haley, described by friends and family as "mischievous," "careless" and "unusual," but no egg trafficker, says he was just hungry. He has been a longtime proponent of finding food in the wild, from oysters to snails, and the egg was something new.

"I thought, 'Wow, what a great opportunity! I'd like to try one and see what it tastes like,' " he said.

Haley said he thought the egg was from a pigeon or seagull, and his only question was whether the mother bird would mind the missing egg.

Connecticut wildlife officials aren't sympathetic. They understand how young people can sometimes do crazy things, but messing with the peregrine falcon is altogether different, said Dwayne Gardner, spokesman for the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection.

"Mischief is mischief, but when it threatens an ... endangered species, we have to take it seriously," Gardner said.

It is illegal in the state to take eggs from any wild bird, Gardner said.

Wildlife officials returned the egg to the nest, and it is developing normally, Gardner said.

Haley's friends have started a Web site in his defense www.freebooth.org. They sell T-shirts with Haley's head coming out of an egg, reading, "Free Booth!" The site's front page says Haley faces criminal charges "for basically just being an idiot."

"It was a foolish mistake with consequences far greater than the actions deserved," said Ben Rogovy of Seattle, Haley's childhood friend.

Haley said he regrets taking an egg from a rare bird, but not the act of taking an egg in general.

The arrest generated a lot of media interest in Connecticut, and Haley still hears comments about it.

"Anyone who knows me has come to expect these playful adventures," he said, "and they think this is not at all out of character."

But, he added, "People who don't know me think I'm crazy."

How to Find an Ivory-billed Woodpecker

It will NOT be easy! I have had questions floating in my mind all day. Are the communities near the ivory-billed sighting prepared for the influx of birders? Is the area going to be restricted? Are there going to be companies offering ivory-bill tours? Of course many are saying right away the best thing is to not go see this bird, but that's not going to stop people from going to see it. Here are answers to some of those questions from Mike McDowell:

For Immediate Release – April 28, 2005
Media Contact: Kyla Hastie, cell: 770/329-1697
Refuge Contact: Dennis Widner, 870/347-2074

Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Discovered on Cache River Refuge Background

The ivory-billed woodpecker, considered to be extinct by many birders, has been
rediscovered on Cache River National Wildlife Refuge. The discovery is the
result of a collaborative effort by The Nature Conservancy of Arkansas, Arkansas
Game and Fish Commission, Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission and the
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, working together with Cornell University as the
primary researcher, to determine if the ivory-billed woodpecker existed in the
bottomland hardwood habitat of the White and Cache River basins.

Questions and Answers: Access to Cache River National Wildlife Refuge

What laws protect the ivory-billed woodpecker?
The ivory-billed woodpecker is an endangered species and is afforded protection
through the Endangered Species Act, the Refuge Administration Act, Migratory
Bird Treaty Act, National Wildlife Refuge Improvement Act of 1997, and other
federal and state legislation.

Is the Service restricting access to the location where the bird was found?
Beginning immediately, the Service has established a managed access area of
approximately 5,000 acres within the Bayou DeView drainage from Highway 38
southward to Dagmar WMA. Only researchers will be allowed access into this
area. A map is provided on the refuge’s website and is available through the refuge
office showing the designated managed access area.

Is access limited to the entire refuge?
No. Over 55,000 acres representing the majority of the refuge is still open to the
public for all permitted public use activities, including hunting, fishing and boating.

How can I see the bird?
The Service expects an influx of birders from across the country and beyond to
come to see the bird. The best opportunity for birders to add this bird to their life
list is on the adjacent Dagmar Wildlife Management Area, managed by the
Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. Good viewing areas are designated on
the associated map. The Service is working with Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission, and The Nature Conservancy to provide additional viewing sites, which are expected to be available in early May.

Can I use recorded, mechanical or otherwise artificial calls to draw in the
bird?
No. Any means to artificially call the bird is strictly prohibited.

Scott Weidensaul's Involvement

This showed up on BirdChat from Scott Weidensaul:

I was going to wait until after noon today (when a press conference
is going to be held in D.C. on the subject) to post anything about
this, but with the NPR broadcast following several days of email
chatter on the Web, I guess the cat is out of the bag: The
ivory-billed woodpecker has indeed been rediscovered in the vast
bottomland forests of eastern Arkansas, an area known as the Big
Woods that includes Cache River and White River NWRs.

Unlike the 1999 report from the Pearl River in Louisiana, which was
never confirmed despite several attempts, this time the search team,
a cooperative effort of the Nature Conservancy and Cornell's Lab of
Ornithology, has documented the presence of at least one male
ivorybill, thanks to multiple sightings, videos and audio recordings.
The Lord God bird lives.

I was incredibly privileged to have been quietly invited last
winter to join the search team for a week in order to write an
article announcing the find for TNC's magazine. More than 60 people
were in the field for 15 months, operating under such strict secrecy
that in many cases, their own families didn't know what they were
doing. The secrecy was in part to protect the bird while
documentation was gathered and management plans were being crafted,
and in part to give TNC time to buy up land to further safeguard the
ivorybill. In that short time, the conservancy spent more than $10
million on land acquisition in the Big Woods.

The area in question is in the Mississippi delta, forming a
corridor of swamp forest 15 miles wide and 130 miles long -- big,
deep, and difficult to penetrate except by canoe (and even then,
you'd better know how to use a GPS). Over the past 20 years, TNC and
others have protected more than 120,000 acres there, bringing to more
than half a million acres land that's in conservation protection,
largely within the two national wildlife refuges and state wildlife
land. It's been a largely unknown conservation success story, and
this news is an incredible validation of that work. TNC has plans to
buy and restore an additional 200,000 acres of bottomland hardwood
forest there, including land that was cleared for soybeans in the
'70s and '80s and will be reforested. Things should only get better
for the ivorybill. In fact, things have probably been getting
steadily better for decades, as the once-cut forests of the South
have recovered.

Later today, there will be a lot of information about the events in
Arkansas posted at two web sites: www.ivorybill.org, and on the web
site of the journal Science, which is publishing an article
documenting the sighting, including a frame-by-frame analysis of the
video www.sciencemag.org/sciencexpress/recent.shtml.

In a nutshell, the initial sighting came in February 2004, when a
Hot Springs kayaker named Gene Sparling was exploring a remote part
of the Big Woods, and had a close, unmistakable encounter with a male
ivorybill. Gene, a birder and experienced outdoorsman, understood the
significance of what he'd seen. Two weeks late, Gene escorted Tim
Gallagher, editor of Cornell's Living Bird magazine, and Alabama
photography professor (and longtime ivorybill hunter) Bobby Harrison
to the same area, where Gallagher and Harrison both saw the bird.
Cornell and the Arkansas chapter of TNC were informed, and
immediately launched one of the most intensive wildlife searches I've
ever encountered, all while keeping it almost completely secret. The
plan was to announce the findings next month, coinciding with the
publication of the magazine article, but someone blabbed over the
weekend, and as the ripples started spreading, the decision was made
to announce today at the Department of the Interior.

The sightings were all of a single bird, always a male (though
there was one undocumented sighting of a possible female). It appears
the search team was not operating near the bird's normal home range,
since the sightings averaged only about one per month; this is a huge
area, and there's lots of room for even a duck-sized woodpecker to
disappear. No one thinks it likely that this bird is the very last of
its kind, so it's likely there are more out there in the huge Big
Woods region, or in other bottomland forests along the Mississippi
Delta.

Interestingly, in contrast to the noisy, fairly tame behavior Jim
Tanner recorded for the species in Louisiana in the 1930s, this bird
has proven incredibly shy and wary, always vanishing at the first
hint of a human. Many people -- and I include myself in this -- had
long assumed that if ivorybills survived in the U.S., someone would
have found and documented them decades ago. The fact that so many
people, backed up with technology like automated recording devices
and cameras, had such a hard time getting documentation in the Big
Woods, suggests we've been underestimating the difficulty of finding
this species. The "intensive" Pearl River search, for example,
involved six people for 30 days; most times that a sighting has been
followed up, it's been someone in a canoe poking around for a day or
two at most. One lesson from the Big Woods is that we cannot easily
dismiss any of the reports elsewhere in the species' historic range,
especially those in South Carolina and Florida which have been
persistent for many years. I know scientists are following up on some
of those reports even as the news is trumpeted from Arkansas. Let's
all keep our fingers crossed.

This is one of the most hopeful stories I've ever had the privilege
to report on, and it comes at a time when conservationists need some
good news. It shows how incredibly resilient nature can be if we give
it a chance. And it's a second chance that, frankly, America probably
doesn't deserve, given our treatment of Southern forests.

My part in this was very small and very secondary, as much as I
treasure the opportunity. I want to close this by expressing my
gratitude and admiration for the folks who pulled this off in an
incredibly professional, collegial manner, including Arkansas TNC
director Scott Simon; John Fitzpatrick and Ron Rohrbaugh at Cornell;
and Gene Sparling and Prof. David Luneau.

The ivorybill lives. It makes the sunshine just a little sweeter,
doesn't
it?

Scott Weidensaul
Schuylkill Haven, Pa.

Ivory-billed Woodpecker Video

Here's a link to a report about the ivory-billed woodpecker and even has the 4 seconds of footage that confirm the sighting. You need Quicktime to view it.

Ivory-billed link

Here is a link to a report by the discoverer of the ivory-bill.

Ivory-billed Woodpecker Found in Arkansas

I always thought that Cornell actaully knew where an ivory-billed woodpecker was but was keeping it under wraps. How many birders would come from not only the United States, but around the world to see this bird. Looks like I wasn't just another conspiracy theorist after all, this is from NPR:


Morning Edition, April 28, 2005 · A group of wildlife scientists
believe the ivory-billed woodpecker is not extinct. They say they have
made seven firm sightings of the bird in central Arkansas. The landmark
find caps a search that began more than 60 years ago, after biologists
said North America’s largest woodpecker had become extinct in the
United States.

The large, showy bird is an American legend -- it disappeared when the
big bottomland forests of North America were logged, and relentless
searches have produced only false alarms. Now, in an intensive
year-long search in the Cache River and White River national wildlife
refuges involving more than 50 experts and field biologists working
together as part of the Big Woods Partnership, an ivory-billed male has
been captured on video.

"We have solid evidence, there are solid sightings, this bird is here,"
says Tim Barksdale, a wildlife photographer and biologist.

For an NPR/National Geographic Radio Expeditions story, NPR science
correspondent Christopher Joyce joined the search last January along
Arkansas’ White River, where a kayaker spotted what he believed to be
an ivory-billed woodpecker more than a year ago. Many other similar
sightings over the last 60 years have raised false hopes.

But this time, Joyce reports that experts associated with the Cornell
Laboratory of Ornithology in New York and The Nature Conservancy were
able to confirm the sighting. They kept the find a secret for more than
a year, partly to give conservation groups and government agencies time
to protect the bird’s habitat.

The Nature Conservancy has been buying and protecting land along the
White and Cache Rivers for years, along with the state and the federal
Fish and Wildlife Service. Since the discovery, they've bought more
land to protect the bird.

Feeders at the Arboretum

Today was one of the fun days to have my job. The bird store is sponsoring two feeding stations at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum and I had to install them today. The arboretum is beautiful and while I was putting together feeders and screwing in brackets I was serenaded by ruby-crowned kinglets. I really enjoy doing this, it's kind of artistic putting different feeders together. Below I tried to go with a natural/wood theme.

I put raccoon baffles on both setups so I shuldn't have to worry about unwanted critters.

I'm worried that I may have gone overboard with the decorative feeder area (below). But I really wanted to show that feeders don't have to look traditional and that there are some really beautiful and sturdy feeders that with proper placement from raccoons and squirrels work very well.


Now, let's keep our fingers crossed that blackbirds won't take these over. That's going to be a challenge. I figured the arboretum didn't want birdseed growing all over the place so I used shelled sunflower mixes in the feeders. I'd like to avoid using safflower if I can.

We have chicks!

Saturday I checked the house finch nest and found that there are five chicks. I think they hatched Thursday which is pretty amazing considering how chilly it's been in Minnesota the last few days. It's a testament to how hardy house finches are and demonstrates one of the many reasons they were able to spread across the eastern United States so quickly.


A check of the hooded merganser nest showed the female was out for the morning and kept her eggs well covered in the 34 degree temperatures. I felt around the nest and 11 eggs appears to be the final total of eggs.

New Birdzilla Segment

There's a new radio segment at Birdzilla Radio on my visit to Kearney, NE. I was really pleased with how well the bird calls came out when I recorded it.

Biggest Chickadee box in Wayzata

Yes, folks, that hole in the wall of our strip mall is a chickadee nest box. I noticed a chickadee the other day with a bill full of nesting material but as long as I was watching the bird it wouldn't go anywhere.

Today, Denny said, "I know where there's a chickadee nest!" I asked him where I could find said nest and he told me to go out to the dumpster behind the store and look to my left. There's a small hole in the wall and he watched the chickadees go in with nesting material. I investigated with a flashlight and sure enough there is nesting material inside. How on earth will we ever clean that nest box out in the fall???

On another note, the merganser must have been chilly today, she wrapped the cedar shavings and her down around her:

Crouching Bunny Hidden Cooper's Hawk

Tonight as I was leaving the bird store a noticed a Cooper's hawk sitting in the feeding area. I waited for a few minutes so as not to disturb its hunting and then it dove down to the ground into some cat tails where song and house sparrows hide out.

I snuck out the building and tried to get closer. I got to within twenty feet and I could see the grass moving where the hawk was but couldn't see the hawk. From under my parked car came the resident wild rabbit hopping out to see if I was putting out any food. The rabbit took a leisurely hop in my direction then noticed the rustling sound in the cat tails. I hopped straight for the cat tails and more importantly straight to the Cooper's hawk. Now, the hawk looked to me to be a male and a full grown cottontail is a little much for a Cooper's to take on, but it's not out of the realm of possibility. As the rabbit continued on it's path, I said "You really don't want to go that way." but since when do rabbits listen to anything I say.

Finally, the rabbit and the hawk came face to face, both were incredibly surprised. The hawk darted straight up, the rabbit put on the breaks, the hawk hovered a moment about to dive on the rabbit. The rabbit flung itself sideways into the thickest part of the cat tails. The hawk flew to a nearby branch. It wasn't particularly graceful on either creature's part but a moment in nature you rarely see: the "oh crap" moment.

More Wood Duck Box Photos

Here are some great photos from Tammy Wolfe. She has some great behavior photos on her website of various bird species.

Below is a photo of a female hooder merganser removing an unwanted egg from her next box? I had no idea they were capable of doing that. For some reason I can't get my head wrapped around how they are able to grasp an egg with that thin bill. She must have pierced the egg.



In the spirit of checking the nest box, here is a photo of wood ducks that hatched from one of Tammy's boxes last year. Look close at all the young in the box.


Notice the little guy on the right with rosy orange cheeks? That's a hooded merganser chick. Somebody dumped and egg when the woody hen wasn't looking.

Great photos, Tammy, thanks for sharing!

Mergansers 11

I think incubation formally started Monday. I had thought that it started Friday or Saturday, but there wasn't a lot of down and nine eggs at the time. Non Birding Bill and I stopped at the store last night and I took a photo in the box, there's LOTS of down which is a sign of serious incubation and now there are 11 eggs!


Note the gray downy feathers to keep eggs nice and toasty. I wonder if it's uncomfortable for hens to incubate on hot, humid days while crammed in a box? The anthropomorphic side of me makes me wonder if hens complain to their offspring, "I sat in a dark box in 100 degree weather for four weeks for you!" Much the same way my mother likes to remind me I was three and a half weeks late during July weather when she was pregnant with me.

Merganser Nest Box

The female merganser left the box today and we now have nine eggs all the same shape. It looks as though this is officially a hooded merganser box.




When I walked over to the box, a pair of wood ducks flushed and I wonder if the female woody might dump eggs in the box. We shall have to wait and see.


Here is another photo of the female hooded merganser.

Great Gray Release

We released two great gray owls at Carlos Avery for The Raptor Center this morning. The larger one on the left that Judy was holding was found with an eye injury in Duluth, the one I'm holding on the left was recovered in Iowa and had eye damage and a concussion.

Doing releases is one of the tougher parts of the job. The birds are still wild and unpredictable. All the birds in clinic have bands on their legs so when they are taken out of a flight room you can tell them apart. Since great gray owls have such thick feathers down their feet and their belly feathers hang low, there' no possible way you can ever read the bands. So TRC vets put a dab of nail polish on their bills to tell them apart (blue, purple, green, etc). So before they are released we have to use nail polish remover to clean off their bills.

Now, birds do not like to travel in cars. All the traffic zooming by really freaks them out. Normally, we transport birds in flight cages that are covered so they can't see what's going on. For releases, it's too difficult to put the bird in a cage, without risking it injuring itself by thrashing around. Plus, at releases the birds are handed off to a donor who gets to do the honors of letting the bird go. It's much easier to just hand the bird over. So, I had to go to TRC, pick up the bird and get in our car while someone drove the bird and I to the release site.


This is me with the great gray. We put a sheet over it's head so it won't be able to see what's going on in the car. Interestingly enough the bird wiggled enough a few times to get the sheet off its head. Bill was driving and couldn't help so I had to try and grab the sheet with my teeth and pull it over the head. You could feel the difference when the sheet was on and off the head. When the head was covered the bird breathed at a normal pace and you couldn't feel a heartbeat. As soon as the sheet came off, I could feel an increase in the breathing and feel a heartbeat so it's important to keep them covered and relaxed.

We got turned around a little bit, but we found the crowd and the tv cameras ready for the release. Non Birding Bill snapped this photo as one of the birds took off. I love how he not only got the bird in flight, but the excitement of the people watching.


After the bird was released, something odd happened. Bill asked for my binoculars and began pointing out where the owls went to others in the crowd. I'm so proud!! Down below he looks like an actual birder...it's only taken me ten years.



He looks so dreamy!

Hey, that's not a wood duck

Today we were talking with some customers about the eggs in our wood duck box. Denny and I were describing how we are able to check on the eggs that are being laid. It was kind of slow at the time so I walked the ladies out to our box to show them our set up.

Before I open the wood duck box, I always pop my camera in the entrance hold and snap a photo to make sure the female isn't sitting in the box. I can immediately see the photo on the camera's view finder. If she's in the middle of laying eggs, the last thing I want to do is open the side door and freak her out. So far we hadn't seen the female in the box. We'd seen a female wood duck flush from the area near the nest box when taking out the trash and there has been a pair of wood ducks feeding under the feeders, so naturally we assumed a wood duck was laying eggs in the box.

Today when I snapped the photo I discovered there was a hen in the box, so we left it alone. Here's the photo:

I explained to the ladies that we wouldn't open the box but showed them the photo on the view finder. After they left, I studied the photo closer.

I thought to myself that the top of this hen didn't look like a female woody to me, but then again I have never really looked at a hen wood duck from this angle. I zoomed in the photo on the view finder and showed it to Denny. At first he thought wood duck, but then noticed that this bird doesn't appear to have a white eye ring.

Tonight after closing the store Denny, Ron and I went out to check the box one more time. I stood near the box and heard some hissing, the hen was still inside. Denny found a male hooded merganser swimming in the stream near the nest box. When I downloaded the photo and looked at it on a larger screen, there is no doubt that the hen in the box today is a female hooded merganser.

What does this mean? Is this really a hooded merganser nest--they normally nest ten feet or higher and our box is only six feet high. Are two different species putting eggs in the nest box? We will have to wait until the female is away from the nest to compare eggs. The eggs have been laid every other day since we found them in the box which is more characteristic of mergansers, however there should already be a cup of down around the eggs when the first two were laid and no down has been in the box so far. Since the female was in the box all afternoon is she finished laying eggs and now incubating? That would mean there are only six or seven eggs in the box. Oh, why didn't I pay closer attention to the shape of the eggs when we had the box open?

I don't know if I have the patience to find out all the answers.

It's a waterfowl soap opera, it is.

Come to a Great Gray Owl Release This Saturday!

This just in from Mark Alt the President of the Minnesota's Ornithologists' Union:

Our good friends at the Raptor Center have invited the MOU to take part
in the release of a Great Gray Owl in Carlos Avery this Saturday,
4/16/05, @ 9:00 AM, directions in the email below. I apologize if this
is inconvenient for many MOU members who do not live in proximity to
this area just north of the Twin Cities, but rest assured you will be
represented by those who show up. Please come if you can, and my thanks
to each of you for being a part of this year of the Owls; so many people
who have done so much. It makes me aware of the potential positive
results a group of people can produce when they work together. This
tribute is for each birder in the state, whether they be MOU members,
Hawk Ridge, Audubon Society, DNR, Raptor Society and many others. The
best part is one more Great Gray goes wild in the state, what better
tribute!

Take 35W to Lexington ave exit take Lexington ave all the way to county
road 18 (the same way to DNR offices or Wildlife Science Center at Carlos Avery).
Take county rd 18/ county road 2 East off Lexington (right turn) .
Take take county rd 18/ county road 2 East To Zodiac.
Take Zodiac north or left to the T intersection.
The ranger house/station will be directly in front of you at the T, go right it is a dirt road, a few hundred feet up is a good release spot (Sharon has directions).
If you go around the bend with all the mud to the open water pond area you have gone too far.

Mark Alt
MOU President

I'm very excited, I will be one of the owl handlers. What a great way to start the day, releasing a great gray owl and then off to work at the bird store and then to top it off with one of Non Birding Bill's Bad Movie Night Parties (we'll be watching Death Wish III a real stinker of a movie). Sounds like a perfect Saturday.

Come on out if you can and watch some great gray owls and then bird Carlos Avery the rest of the morning.

House Finch Five

I was concerned because I hadn't seen the house finches around the nest cup in front of the wild bird store. Last year when she nested in there you could always see when she was incubating. After the store closed, I set up the ladder to look at what was going on. As I poked my head over the cup, the female flew out. Apparently she nested deeper in the cup so she hunkers down when incubating. She now has five eggs!

Swallow Update

INCOMING!!!!

This is one very angry tree swallow.

I went out to check our tree swallow trail and discovered that some of the swallows have selected their boxes. Our Peterson bluebird box on top of the hill had a half complete nest inside and the above photo is the male diving at my head trying to get me to keep my nose out of his nest box.

Two of the the other boxes were empty and the last house I checked, our Gilbertson bluebird box had a feather inside indicating that a male had selected this house as his own and was waiting for a female's approval.



Here is the feather inside the Gilbertson box.

When males are setting up their territories they will leave an object inside to distinguish that this is one of their possible nest sites. Females make the final decision as to whether or not it gets used. In early spring you can tell what bird species are considering your next box by their "calling cards". Here's some hints as to who has chosen your nest box:

Tree Swallows - a feather
Eastern Bluebirds - a piece of fine grass
Chickadees - a piece of fur or moss
House Wren - a twig
House Sparrow - piece of plastic or cigarette butt

I checked our wood duck box, there are now six, six eggs in the wood duck box (insert Sesame Street Count laugh here).

Work for the Birdchick!

On the off chance anyone is looking for part-time work (mostly weekends) I'm thinking about hiring. The requirements:

Must be at least 18
Must be able to lift 50 pounds
Must be familiar with Windows 2000
Must enjoy talking to people about birds

This would be for the All Seasons Wild Bird Store in Wayzata. If you're interested, drop me an email.

I forgot about chipmunks

While enjoying all the nesting around the bird store, I completely forgot about the mammal uprising that we have in the spring. Squirrels have taken up residence in an outdoor storage area we affectionately refer to as the crib (or more to the point "Denny's Crib" because he's my employee who keeps it organized). On occasion other critters move in like mice and rats.

Today brought a cute creature who vexes me in warmer months: the chipmunk.


This little guy fell down into some PVC tubes we use for pole storage. As I leaned over to get a photo he tried in vain to hide himself in the bottom of the tube. It's been so busy at the store that we've sold so many poles that the normally full tubes are empty. This little guy presumably went in looking for seed and couldn't quite jump out. He now has a new home far away from the store (don't worry when I dropped him off in his new location I gave him a good scoop of seed to get him started).

Alas, there are more chipmunks. This is a guy hiding in our drain pipe outside the store who keeps trying to get in whenever he hears the back door open.



They wait for deliveries when we have our doors open and make a break for the inside of the store. Some people think that it's got to be cute and great for business to have a little chippy in the store, however, they are a tad destructive on the inventory. They get quite brazen once they figure out how slow we humans are in comparison to them. Some days one will leisurely eat peanuts out in the open while we help customers. Again, if that was all they did I could see putting up with that, but they rip open bags of seed and aren't nearly as litter trained as a rabbit. Plus the way they zip around really startles the cookies out of you.

Nest Cams Around the World

I just got this email:

Hi Sharon:

You may have already come across this web site, but thought I'd pass it on just in case.

http://www.pitt.edu/~dziadosz/

I love bird cams, and this one has many from around the world, all linked up on one site.

Enjoy!

Nan Wilson

Nan, dear, Nan, if only you knew how much time I spend on the internet already, this wonderfully cool site will no doubt keep me at my iMac well into dawns early light. Thanks for sending it!

Xcel Energy Bird Cams

Great shots from the Xcel Energy Eagle Cam. These are from the eagle news page at the Xcel Bird Cam site:

Marrch 13, 2005 A snowy late afternoon in the eagle nest. The adult's feathers are good protection from inclement weather. Notice that within a few minutes (and probably a good shake), the feathers have repelled the snow.

These are only from March 13 when the eagle was incubating. The chicks hatched late in the month so with the blizzard that just happened, the eagle has to protect them once again. You can watch the current progess at the Xcel eagle cam.

The great horned owl cam shows that their chicks hatched over the weekend and the falcon cams show that three of the four females are incubating. So if you can't go birding outside you can at least do some birding on the internet.

Hawk Owl Nest Found

A northern hawk owl nest has officially been documented in the Sax Zim Bog area. You can read about it at Mike Hendrickson's Journal.

Wood Duck

I'm a proud wood duck landlord, here's a photo of the four eggs thus far (I'm now wondering if my own landlord is sneaking into my bedroom and posting photos on his blog of what he finds).

Trip to Grand Rapids

Wednesday I headed up to Grand Rapids (birth place of Judy Garland) for another wildlife tourism meeting. I drove up through Aitkin County hoping to find some owls but they have appeared to returned to normal hunting times. I drove through the area about 4pm and found no owls, but I did find a field full of rough-legged hawks. Rain clouds darkened the sky to the east as the sun started to lower in the west and the effect on the dried grasses was beautiful. In an area of about 2 miles I saw about 22 rough-legged hawks hunting the fields.

On the way home I lolligagged a little to see if I could pass through Aitkin closer to sunset in the hopes of finding more owls. I passed a strange scene, an eagle nest above some fishing cabins:

There's a young eagle on the right of the nest and an interesting shiny object. Any idea what it might be?



It's a tv antenna (obviously they are trying to get KARE 11 so they can watch my segments--okay, that joke even made me want to gag and yet I couldn't resist it). I think one of the birds tried to add it to the nest but it got caught in the tree. On the upside, I think they can get some great reception with it.

You can't see the head at this angle, but there was an adult bird sitting in the nest. It kept giving a whining call to the younger bird sitting on the branch. I wonder if the younger eagle was raised in the nest two or three years ago and the adult is scream, "Get outta here, do something with your life. Get a job!" I got a little closer and digi scoped the young eagle's photo:


"I am a lonely asparagus."

My lolligagging paid off, on the way home in the evening I found two porcupines and four great gray owls. Here's one:


Owls here this late are a sure sign that they are nesting. I think our record year is still going to continue.

Signs of Spring

Spring has really hit in Minnesota, the store is busy and birds are popping up all over. Denny predicted today that with the strong south winds there would be a rarity reported in the state in the next day or two.

Yesterday morning I checked our wood duck box behind the store and it looked as though the cedar chips had been moved around. I didn't see any other signs of activity and felt disappointed. I put the box up last year and mounted it about eye level to me with a raccoon baffle and according to wood duck society guide lines. I had no takers last year and after finding the box looking empty I contemplated moving it another part of the wetland. After we closed the store yesterday, Ron our home delivery guy rushed back in and said, "Sharon, there's three eggs in the box!" I went out with Ron and told him that I had check the box that morning and didn't see anything. He said that didn't see anything at first either so he put his hands in the chips and felt three eggs.

Panic suddenly set in...were these eggs from last year? The cedar chips looked unused last fall and fairly clean in March and I didn't bother changing the chips, were these old. Should I take the eggs out? I decided to sit on it for 24 hours. If these were recent eggs the female would for sure lay more by tomorrow. This afternoon I went out to the box and found four eggs, one of them still fairly warm. I'm so excited, I've not managed a wood duck box before and now I'm very hopeful to get bluebirds on our trail and not just tree swallows.

Ducks and the Secret Service

A fun story about ducks at cnn.com. Now if only we could get the Secret Service to spread that around to all wetlands and ducks!!

More posts coming soon, lot's of birding excitment about!

House Finches

The house finches have completed the nest in the cup in front of the store and laid three eggs. I noticed that the female lined the inside of the nest cup with some of the nesting material I put out for her that we carry in the store. I wonder if I will have to pay her an endorsement fee?

Cooper's Hawk in the Neighborhood

Today was action packed! I knew I was going to be running around like crazy today and I didn't get off to a good start last night. Bill took me to see Sin City (very good, although a bit more violent than Kill Bill). Anyway, a movie that doesn't make you want to fall asleep right away. Then I had A Balanced Breakfast with Ian and Margery Punnett at 5:45am (I need to get a later gig). Yesterday my KARE 11 segment got bumped because of the Pope's funeral, so it was rescheduled for this morning and then right after that I had a meeting with the bird store owners. I think the combination of the movie last night, writing deadlines, getting up early and having to go to a meeting with the owners and a tight schedule just made me get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. I was so nauseous.

Anyway, while getting ready for work, I sat on the couch with Non Birding Bill applying some finishing touches to my makeup. Our couch faces window and shows the apartment buildings behind ours and beyond that are trees from a park. I glanced out the window and saw some movement from a large bird. My first reaction was that the bird was a crow, then it dawned on me that the bird was moving it's head up and down like the hawks at The Raptor Center do when they are feeding.


The view out our apartment window, the circled area is where I noticed the raptor feeding.

I went to grab my binoculars and realized my good ones were in the car (it's migration and it's best to have the binos in the car at the ready). I grabbed my old pair and they revealed an adult female Cooper's hawk eating something with feathers. I thought she was eating a robin and Non Birding Bill thought she was eating a pigeon (Bill was even interested in watching this one, he even used binoculars--I'm so proud). Whichever it was, it was large and I figured I had time to run down to the car and grab my Stokes binos. I did and digi scoped this image:


Look at those big red eyes! I think accipiters are my favorites.

I got so caught up with the Cooper's hawk I completely lost track of time so my hair was a mess as I raced off to KARE--but the upside was that my nausea was gone. Nothing like a raptor ripping the heck out of some songbird to settle your nerves.

Weird Thing My Rabbit Does

Somebody shot my bunny!

Seriously, when rabbits are completely relaxed they will throw themselves over and sometimes even lay on their backs with their paws in the air. If you have never seen it before it looks like you dear sweet pet bunny has just suffered a coronary or that someone shot them. Of course when you see this, your first temptation is to poke them in their cute white bellies, but this is ill advised.

Speaking of bunnies, due to popular demand we have added a second page of Disapproving Rabbits.

Wetlands Rally

I went to the Wetlands Rally at the Capitol yesterday. I was excited by the number of people who showed up. Mostly duck hunters but a few recognizable birders were there also. I don't have too much camo and it was too warm to wear Non Birding Bill's army jacket, so I bought a camo Wetlands Rally Cap. I carried my binoculars to identify myself as a birder though. You could tell everyone was really making an effort to work together. I was disappointed that more birders weren't there, I suppose some still aren't ready to work with hunters which I think is a small minded attitude to have when working together can really help solve our shrinking wetlands. I'm always amazed at how well hunters have their stuff together. I'm seriously considering getting a Ducks Unlimited Membership. Don Young, executive vice president for Ducks Unlimited, said his organization was pledging $10 million to spark a $30 million campaign to restore 500 shallow lakes in the state.

I learned that there are other organizations as well:


Coots Unlimited??? Who knew? I'm not sure if I want coots to be unlimited. Can they be trusted? I know for sure that they aren't good eating (and this is from someone who grew up in Indiana and isn't opposed to roadkill possum stew).

Though, I'm not a hunter I did enjoy the energy of the crowd and I did bond a little with someone who has bird tattoos like myself, those are really nice blue bills on his bicep!


Not real sure what the antlered bit in the middle is about, although I kinda like it. For some reason it makes me think of the Black Rabbit of Inle from Watership Down.

Governor Pawlenty was there and made some promises for money, but he didn't make clear on where the money was going to come from, so I think there's still more rallying to come. I know some birders didn't show because of their discomfort with hunting but I heard that some people weren't trusting hunters getting together with environmentalists because it was part of a secret leftist agenda to eliminate hunting. Weird.

The bottom line is that I think this rally is an important first step to a better future for Minnesota's Wetlands.

Signs of Spring

Spring was really on the way today. This morning I was awakened by the sound of tundra swans migrating over the neighborhood and when I was leaving the bird store tonight I noticed a bird sitting on top of one of our bluebird boxes. I help up my binos and what did I see:


A tree swallow staking his claim.

We also had a male goldfinch who looked like he was almost completely done with his breeding molt. Woo Hoo!

Rally in St Paul

I'm off to the wetlands rally. Can't wait to see what happens when hunters and birders get together. If you want to come out, here's the schedule.

Don't trust people over 60...

My employees are so evil. I have been feeling so unfocused lately and I'm not sure if it's not getting out to bird enough or if it's that I'm too busy but all day I felt as if I couldn't get focused.

Yesterday my assistant manager wanted to know if she would mind if she worked on the next schedule. Grateful for the extra help, I said yes. When I came to work this morning, I looked at the schedule and noticed that I was working all the Saturdays by myself. I had tentatively scheduled in dear, sweet, over 60, avid birder and author Bob Janssen to work the Saturdays with me in the next schedule and he wasn't there. On top of that, sweet Lori had even left a note about a schedule snafu that she had. Of course, as soon as I saw this I began to fume and whisper profanity under my breath. I know all of my employees get busy in spring because of migration. I have top bird people working for me but the downside is trying to get us all to work during migration (alas). I had a fairly full plate at work and the last thing I needed to do today was track down other employees to fill in gaps in the schedule.

I immeadiately tried to call Melissa to find out what the scoop was before I tore into Bob who I assumed had planned merry bird adventures instead of working at the store. She wasn't at home and I tried vainly to convey to her son how much I wanted to speak to her. Bob was helping a customer when I got to the store and I didn't want to interrupt him until he was finished, but at the same time I wanted to get to the bottom of the schedule quandry. When Bob stopped in the back room I asked him into my office trying as hard as I possibly could not to sound angry. I asked, "Hey, Bob, I noticed you 're not on the schedule for the next three Saturdays, what's going on?" Bob looked at me innocently, I could tell he was trying to carefully formulate his answer.

I consider Bob to be the nice birding grandpa I never had and it's very difficult for me to get angry with him. I hate to bring up this kind of stuff because he's so sweet and again, it's like trying to tell your grandpa that he's causing a problem.

Bob looked at me sweetly. I figured he was going to have some great birding excuse, but instead he handed me a file folder. I opened it and discovered a big read sheet of paper that read, "April Fools!! Here's the real schedule!"

I felt a sudden urge to slug dear, sweet Bob but managed to channel that energy into a hug. You know, your employees have to love a lot to pull a prank on you on April Fool's Day and boy did I fall for this one hook, line and sinker.

A fem moments later Melissa called. Her son had informed her that I just called the home sounding very upset. Melissa was knew right away that I had fallen for the joke. Melissa informed me that Lori's note was part of the prank too. Even though the two of them are not over 60 like Bob they are about as sneaky as a senior.

They got me good, they know where my goat is tied. Which is a good thing to keep in mind as I work on their performance appraisals that are due before April 15.

Update on the Exotic Species Law

Well, I spoke with Steve Hirsch from the MN DNR about the exotic species law change. First, though the number that was on the Bluebird Recovery site is incorrect his number is 651-297-4918.

I've still been struggling with this issue the last twenty four hours. I think part of me feels bad for disagreeing with the Bluebird Recovery Program of Minneapolis. That organization has done wonders to educate the proper bluebird house maintenance and all the people involved have really helped bring up bluebird numbers. I have heard some very persuasive argument for rehab centers to not take in house sparrows in starlings like why waste all the funding you get on exotic species instead of native ones. That makes some sense, but I still think that the number of people who are going to bring in house sparrows and starlings and not understand why the hurt creature they have isn't worth enough to help and release. Or we are just going to start a craze of people keeping sparrows and starlings as pets.

Steve said that the information on the Bluebird Recovery Site is not his direct quote, he said the DNR is very neutral right now, they are just looking for information to see if the law needs to be changed. If they decide to propose the change there will still be time for commenting. So we have time to think this issue totally through.