The Autumn Office

Well, here we are with another report directly from the field as I do a blog post with nothing but my iPhone and my spotting scope.

Every autumn when I'm fortunate enough to have fieldwork, I can't believe how lucky I am to have this landscape as an office and that my duty is to do nothing but watch birds or for a specific type of bird. Wearing sensible convertible all weather clothing is far preferable to wearing tights and a skirt in a cube farm.

And even when autumn is supposedly Pastor Pete my surrounding office is the most gorgeous thing that I've ever had the privilege to work in. Admittedly, the bathroom situation is getting more dicey as every day farmers continue to mow down the fields of corn and soybeans that were my safe haven to a private bathroom. But you can't have everything.

Eagles are certainly out and about this morning here's one and again I got this photo with my iPhone and my spotting scope. It's not the best photo in the world, but keep in mind I was handholding my phone up to my scope and I wasn't using an adapter.

I love watching how bird coloration mingles with the autumn landscape.

Sparrow migration is still in full swing. And though they are nothing but brown birds, it's fun to look into group of brown and pick out one who is very different from the others. We seem to be having an influx of Harris's sparrows in the Twin Cities right now and how can you not love a sparrow with a beard?

Well back to counting birds. I tried to catch as many typos as I could that AutoCorrect thought I meant, but there may be more. I love that it thought "Harris's sparrow" was "harasses Spero."

Winter Surveys

I'm still doing some of my bird surveys. And up until this week I was having a cheery time in the field, but now it's so incredibly silent. I can't believe this is the same spot that was chock full of bobolinks not so long ago. It's so strange to suddenly have a spot that was so vibrant with sound from breeding birds then switch to crickets then to chips of secretive migrating sparrows and then to nothing.  It makes those hour long point counts feel like a long time. And though the landscape is beautiful, it's bleak and lonely...and not nearly as much fun to scramble under electric fences as the snow piles up.

We've even been able to squeeze in another aerial waterfowl survey this week. Half the Mississippi River is frozen and reminds me a bit of a lunar landscape.

It snowed lightly while we were flying and the ending result made it seem as though we were flying right through a holiday card.  I suggested the pilot attach a bright red nose to his plane and I'm not sure he found that nearly as funny as I did.

Swans fly like shimmering ghosts through the snow.  The numbers of swans has dropped on the Mississippi and I'm not entirely sure that a majority of them are tundras.  In early and mid November, I watched huge strings of swans fly over while I did my eagle surveys.  I could hear their calls well before I saw them and knew they were tundra swans heading to the staging area on the Mississippi.  Last week, I had smaller groups of swans using the exact same route, but listening to them, they were distinctly trumpeter swans.  It's hard to tell the 2 apart in a plane at 100 miles an hour.

They are easy enough to count and id on the open water...

But much harder on ice and snow.  This was as we were doing a high pass to see if there was enough open water to warrant a fly by.  At fist, I though there are a few swans but not many...then I noticed how many of the whiter spots were moving on the ice, there were still hundreds of swans to be counted.

Canada geese are in large numbers, the biggest numbers I've seen all season.  Considering all the waste corn in farm fields and all the places that have open water along the river, it's no surprise.

Here's part of a flock of bald eagles, there are at least 29 in this photo.  I saw some very interesting behavior that I've not seen bald eagles do this week.  Common mergansers are in huge numbers on Lake Pepin, but I was able to get a shot of them.  Where ever we had huge flocks of mergansers, we had sizable flocks of bald eagles hunting them.  It was crazy, we would have 10 bald eagles actively trying to nail a mergansers over open water.  One spot was so active and dicey with mergansers and eagles, our pilot skillfully dodged around the flock.  Our pilot doesn't like eagles to be directly over head because they can suddenly drop, through in a few thousand panicked ducks and barely freezing water and you have a dangerous situation.  It was cool to get a fleeting glimpse of the behavior.  Lake Pepin is so huge, it's not something easily viewed from shore.  I'd be curious how successful this technique is and if any bald eagles ever end up drowning after catching a merganser on water.  I know eagles are capable of swimming some distance to shore by paddling wings, but I don't think an eagle could make it from the center of Pepin.

Not as many ducks, but what a treat to get to view the bluffs in Minnesota and Wisconsin on either side of the Mississippi River.  This was our last flight for ducks.  I might do one ground survey next week, but that depends on if Pepin stays open.  To view our waterfowl numbers check here.  If this week's numbers aren't up yet, they will be up by Friday.

Turkeys In Trees

Man, that is a bleak landscape.

I went out the other day with Non Birding Bill to look for golden eagles. I know, NBB going birding?  What??  Well, we've both been busy doing shows, he went to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show and then I went to Atlanta for AmericasMart  We're basically just two spousal ships passing in the night this month. He was so desperate for my company that he willingly offered to go driving around with me to look for golden eagles.  Since it was mostly in the car, he was cool with that, it wasn't like being pestered by bugs looking for sparrows. The landscape was overcast and covered with snow. When we got to the road, we laughed and I asked, "Where is the horizon?"

I was checking for the Golden Eagle survey conducted each winter by The National Eagle Center. We checked the same area where I found goldens last year.

Alas, no golden eagles on the route this year, but lots of bald eagles. After we finished our survey route, we headed to Colville Park in Red Wing, MN and found this bird.  See the eagle in the upper left corner? People were practically driving under it.

It appeared to have something wrong with its eye that's facing my camera. It never moved and the bird usually kept it closed.  I wonder if it had gotten in a territory battle and got a talon in  the eye? Colville is a good place for this bird. There's open water all winter, lots of waterfowl and the nearby power plant stuns fish, leaving an ample food supply. I'm not sure if this bird will recover but it's possible.  We've seen healthy one eyed birds come into Frank's banding station.  It's not always gloom and doom.

We saw a ton of wild turkeys on our travels, that's NBB grabbing some turkey footage from the car. Turkeys are supposed to be one of the reasons we now have a wintering population of golden eagles along the Mississippi River on the Minnesota/Wisconsin border--the goldens have been observed taking turkeys as prey. We saw quite a few turkeys in trees, you'd drive along and wonder why there were a dozen black garbage bags in the trees and then realize it was a flock of turkeys feeding on sumac berries.  Check out this turkey:

Waaaaaaaaay at the top of that tree!  That turkey looks like she's surveying her kingdom. There were several turkeys in the tippy tops of the trees, I think something on the ground flushed them up.  It's weird to see a turkey so high up. I've seen them in the tops of trees around the beehives, usually after a fox or coyote has moved through. I took turkeys in the tops of trees as a sign that a golden eagle was not actively patrolling this patch of sky.  Still, I love the picture of this huge bird balancing on a high branch, watching the surrounding snow covered bluffs.

Here's that same turkey but this time what she looked like through my spotting scope.  I may go back to look for goldens again.  One day of no birds could just mean they were tucked in the bluffs somewhere.

Golden Eagle To Be Released With Satellite Transmitter

Tuesday, January 18th at 4:oo pm, the National Eagle Center and Audubon Minnesota will  release a golden eagle with a satellite-linked tracking device. The release will take place outside Wabasha, MN (along Wabasha County highway 32), near where the bird was captured. This release is part of an on-going project investigating golden eagles that winter in the blufflands region. By tracking, golden eagles known to use the blufflands in winter, researchers hope to better understand migration patterns and breeding origins for these birds. The Golden Eagle Project has already released two golden eagles with transmitters, and hopes to release up to six golden eagles, during this multi-year project. The eagle released in 2009, migrated from western Wisconsin and spent the summer north of the Arctic Circle. Maps detailing the migrations and location of these birds are available here.

“It’s exciting to have the opportunity to track this golden eagle because so little is known about them and their presence here in the blufflands.” Says Project Co-coordinator, Scott Mehus. “That’s why the National Eagle Center is involved in this pioneering effort to understand and protect these amazing birds.”

This release also comes on the heels of the 2011 Wintering Golden Eagle Survey, which took place on Saturday, January 15th, when volunteer observers combed the blufflands looking for these majestic birds. Results are not yet tabulated, but this year’s survey covered several new areas, so there is a good chance the total could top last year’s survey high of 100 golden eagles in southeast Minnesota, southwest Wisconsin and northeast Iowa.

The Golden Eagle Project is a partnership of National Eagle Center and Audubon Minnesota, with support from Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Non-Game Division, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, as well as United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Winona District.

Random Immature Bald Eagle