January 2020...Birding Unfettered

I this meme posted on social media and it took me a full two minutes to realize that people were making a joke that one shouldn’t 30-40 olives directly from a jar for dinner. I’ve done this more than once and have no regrets. It’s kind of the same way I feel about popcorn for dinner. Don’t get me wrong, I love to cook, but I hate doing dishes.

Possible dating profile picture…one should know what they’re getting into with me, deer rib cages and sub-zero temperatures and all.

I make jokes on social media using #DatingInYourForties is weird. Although, I’m sure I’ve probably inspired a few #DatingABirderIsWeird after someone found a frozen blue jay in my freezer when they went to get some ice. It is very hard for my brain to process that birding can now be a potential romantic activity. I have been a great compartmentalizer my whole. You are my birding friends. You are my sci fi friends. You are my friends through Bill. You are my travel birding friends. You are my comedy writing friends. And so on and so forth. After being with a non birder for a couple of decades, birding just never fell into the romantic category of activities. “Life pie” can have a whole new meaning.

Of course, birding in winter in Minnesota is a strange test because your clothes for single digit temperatures aren’t exactly what I would call “sexy time clothes.” But good birds can make even the most awkward date a good time.

I know I’m not the first person to find themselves unexpectedly in a completely new life circumstance where none of the old routines apply and you can make up completely new ones. I decided for one thing to say yes to all the invitations. It’s great to only check with myself before I do something. It’s a liberating feeling to just say yes to a birding trip without checking to see if something non birding had been planned or that I’ve not been spending enough time at home.

Want to go birding tomorrow morning? I’m not working, yes.

What to go to Texas next month? I have lots of frequent flyer miles, yes.

Want to go to a cabin this weekend and do some birding? Oh, hell yes.

View from a cabin.

In Minnesota, many people have cabins for the weekend. You have to get used to a different schedule when you have a friend with a cabin. They generally are unavailable for city plans on the weekend from spring until autumn and forget holidays. Sometimes you can get invitations to cabins, either staying in them or pitching a tent outside. Cabins run the gamut from very basic with no shower but all the fishing tackle you could ever want and can be grand lodgings with air conditioning and hot tubs. Some are closed down for the winter, but a few have good heating and insulation and can be fun winter getaway.

When I moved to Minnesota I got a real education on cabin culture when I ran a wild bird feeding store. The company even came up with a seed mix just for cabin people called, “Cabin Mix” that people could grab on their way out of town and into northern Minnesota. We also carried rustic looking houses and feeders to match cabin decor, but honestly, the people really need something strong enough to withstand being knocked down by bears.

Friends with cabins have been gracious hosts when I learned that they have a cabin near a public blind with a lek. I’d rather roll out of bed and drive twenty minutes in the dark to get to a sharp-tailed grouse blind than leave the Twin Cities at 2am.

Fresh pileated woodpecker work outside a cabin.

I had an invitation to visit a cabin with some friends in January for snowshoeing on frozen lakes, birding and maybe some fat tire biking. These are fun weekends that generally involve cooking together as well. There was some very visible pileated woodpecker activity around the cabin and the next morning a pair took turns wailing into a tree.

The bird was so close…so photographable…except for the storm windows.

The cabin was fun for me—warm winter foods and nonstop pileated woodpeckers. Even if we never made it outside, I could watch my spark bird all day long. Although, I did feel super taunted by the bird. It was a great digiscoping opportunity, however storm windows keep your place snug and warm, but they can blur the heck out of photos.

However, the next day the cabin owner had removed the storm window and even carefully opened it when the birds returned so I could take all the photos. That is one trusting cabin owner to let out precious heat for a bird photography opportunity.

A clearer view of the pileated. There’s still a bit of heat shimmer from the heat escaping the cabin through an open window, but I still dig this picture.

The next day we headed to Sax Zim Bog for some birding. It was such a great time, not only for the birds but because I ran into so many friends who were birding up there for the day. Some were guides and when I’d pul over to watch birds, I’d find text messages that said, “Hey, did I just pass you over by the goshawk?” Yes, yes they had.

Hoar frost in the bog.

If you’ve never birded the bog and you have lots of lifers to get, especially owls then hiring a guide is a must. But if you have mostly seen the birds or only need one or two lifers, you can get by on your own with a stop at the visitor center and eBird. I knew of a reliable northern hawk owl and that was our first stop. The crowd of birders on the side of the road alerted us that the bird was indeed there.

A lovely way to start the day with a northern hawk owl who gives very little care to the birders below.

A female black-backed woodpecker (was a lifer for one of us) found on the way to the Sax Zim Bog visitor Center.

We were getting all the bog birds fairly easily, except for boreal chickadee, but that’s ok. Canada jays, rough-legs and barred owls are a nice consolation prize. We continued to run into people throughout the day, including one of my fellow park rangers who had just retired last fall. We ran into him at Wilbert’s Cafe and ended up having lunch together.

From there we headed out to a spot to look for three-toed woodpeckers. And I ran into John Jonas, one of my favorite wildlife photographers. He saw me driving my Prius around the bog, pulled over and asked, “You brought a Prius to the bog???” I smiled and said, “That’s how badass I am.”

We had quite a bit of hairy woodpecker activity and Jonas found the three-toed, but it was camera shy for me. I paused to get a slefie of all of us in the bog and it was at that moment a three-toed flew over all of us.

Beardy men at the bog.

What we lacked in three-toeds was made up for with a cool mammal experience. We did find a snowshoe hare hiding near the trail. I’ve seen them here and there, usually hopping away. But this was one of the closest encounters I’ve had with one and what a treat to see its winter camouflage in action!

We tried to finish the day with a great gray owl, but no one was having any luck. At sunset we drove the usual hangouts and it seemed that every ten minutes we’d pass one of the Sax Zim guides in their vehicle with clients trying to find a bird. We’d already seen many great grays and headed back to the cabin at dusk for some celebratory beer and whiskey. I have never seen so many ruffed grouse in the trees and bushes. It was clearly a bumper crop year and it explained why goshawks were easy to find in the bog this winter.

Craptastic owl photo!

We did manage one more species of owl that day. We drove past a snowy owl as we headed back towards Aitkin County. Not a lifer, but a cool bird.

Sunrise at the cabin.

On one page, a cabin just seem like a second home that you have to take care of: extra cleaning, yard work and other maintenance. On the other page, cabin life is seductive when you watch the sunrise over coffee while bacon sizzles on the stove a fox darts through the yard. You feel like you could give up work and just live hand to mouth up there forever.

But work calls. And friends in the city call insisting on lunch plans.

iPhone Video With A Spotting Scope

Here's an experimental video of a a red-bellied woodpecker (and some red-winged blackbirds) I took using my iPhone 4s and my Swarovski Spotting Scope.  I'm using my 25 - 50 zoom eyepiece on this one and I did do a wee bit of cropping to take out a small amount of vignetting. http://youtu.be/qwh6nhE9FdY

Merlin vs Red-bellied Woodpecker

Non Birding Bill and I were over at Mr. Neil's to do some fall beehive prep (for those who follow, the bees seemed to take my Ned Stark speech well and all but one of the hives actually bumped up production).  After we finished checking the hives we were back in the house surfing the net, dealing with emails when I heard a heard a sound. "Distressed woodpecker sound," my brain noted as I read an email. Then my brain kicked me, "DISTRESSED WOODPECKER SOUND! RAPTOR! ALL HANDS ON DECK!"

Then it sunk in--"Holy cow, look out the window, stupid!"  I turned to look out the window and saw a small raptor gliding away with a red-bellied woodpecker.  I figured the raptor was most likely a male Cooper's hawk or a female sharp-shinned hawk--both a fairly regular bird in Mr. Neil's yard, especially during migration.  I dashed to the front room and was shocked to see...

...a small dark falcon killing a large woodpecker.  "Holy crap! It's a merlin," I shouted...well, I'm sure there was more profanity than that but you get the idea.  Falcons have a notch in their bill that they use to sever the spine from the head and kill prey fairly quickly.  The merlin went in for a bite, but she had to go in for a second to really put the woodpecker out.  While she did that, I scrambled off for my digiscoping equipment.

Look at that face!  She's so adorable--Nature's Perfect Killing Machine! You can even make out those little malar stripes under each eye that all falcons have! I digiscoped this photo of her after she killed the woodpecker. It's not as in focus as I would like, but I was shooting through an old farmhouse window and my scope picks up imperfections in window glass.  I didn't want to open the window because this small falcon had worked hard for her kill and I didn't want to risk flushing her off her food.  This is the first time I've seen a merlin in Mr. Neil's yard.  This bird is possible for the area, but mostly as a migrant.  If she was on a long journey to migrate south, she needed a good hearty meal and my need to get a perfectly in focus shot was not as important as her need to get nourishment.

She was fairly close to the driveway with her kill and I noticed a car coming down.  She mantled a bit over her kill but didn't fly away from it.  I heard voices and noted that Non Birding Bill, Mr. Neil and the newly arrived Steve Manfred hadn't followed me into the front room to watch the merlin.  I shouted, "Hey, you guys really need to come see this, this is a really cool bird!"  Again, the "really" in the previous sentence was most likely profanity.  They soon followed and had to concede a merlin with a red-belly was pretty badass.  Cameras started clicking and both Neil and I got photos.  I immediately called this bird a "she" and Neil asked why.  First, in raptors females are larger than males. Based on this bird taking out a red-bellied woodpecker I knew she was female.  Now, merlins are one of the few raptor species where you can tell male from female apart based on plumage.  Females are brown on back and males are blue:

These are a couple of males that we trapped up at Frank Taylor's banding station in Duluth.  See the blue on the wing feathers?  That's male.  This gets tricky in young birds.  Merlins hatched this year will be brown on back--both male and female.  That's where size comes in handy.

Here's a shot that Mr. Neil took of the merlin.  Note how all the feathers on the back are uniform?  They all look like they grew in at the same time--that's something you would only see in a bird hatched this year.  Adults would still have some molting going on and you'd see worn, older feathers mixed in that would be a slightly different color.  The tail has some light colored bands through it.  The look tawny or buff.  If this were a male, those bands would look gray.  Again, females are larger than males and this small falcon took out a red-bellied woodpecker--it's large, she's female.

This is another shot Mr. Neil got with his camera. I had to chuckle because the woodpecker looks almost "cartoon dead."  See the tongue hanging out of the beak?  The only thing missing is the little "X" over the eye.  Note the size of the red-bellied woodpecker next to the merlin--I've had both in hand and always thought of them to be similar in size.  I decided to do a little digging on the Internet on merlin size vs red-bellied woodpecker size.

According to Cornell Lab of Ornithology's All About Birds red-bellied woodpeckers are about 9.4 inches long, have a wingspan of 13 - 16.5 inches and weigh about 3 oz.

Merlins are 9.4 - 11.8 inches in length, have a wingspan of 20.9–26.8 inches and weigh 5.6 - 8.5 oz.  Figure that the smaller numbers are males and the larger numbers are females.

So according to Cornell, a male merlin could be about as long as a red-bellied woodpecker.  This is another photo taken by Mr. Neil from the second level of his house.  Here you can see that the merlin is larger than the woodpecker, again identifying her as female.  What was interesting was that most of the birds left her alone.  There was some mobbing noise from a hairy woodpecker and goldfinches, but no blue jays came in to scold. A few crows did and the merlin did not like that at all.

She stopped eating and watched them.  The crows didn't caw like crazy at her like they would an owl or larger hawk. They cawed but not as frantic, as if not wanting to provoke her but let each other know, hey Nature's Perfect Killing Machine Down here.  I've seen merlins chase the heck out crows and even heard of accounts of merlins killing crows to take over a nest site.  They will go for something larger than they are and if any small raptor is capable of getting the job done, it's a merlin.  She watched them for several minutes and then to my surprise, took off with the woodpecker in her talons and dove at the crows.  I watched her bank to some trees and tried to go out to follow where she landed to eat but lost her completely. 

I had hoped if I found her that I could see the woodpecker carcass she finished eating to see if the woodpecker was banded.  Sometimes friends of mine come out to band birds here and have ringed a few red-bellies.  It would have been to fun to have that as a banding record.  If the woodpecker was banded we would had an idea of her age and a notation of the really interesting way to die.  I mean, getting killed by a merlin is one of the coolest ways to go.  As I was editing photos for this blog entry, something caught my eye:

In one very crappy photo that I took, I noticed that the merlin was banded.  Noooooooooooo!  Why didn't I get more photos of her foot to id the band number? BLARG!  Based on where Mr. Neil lives this is most likely a bird banded at Hawk Ridge this fall.  She was hatched this year so there are only so many raptor banding stations north of here.  There is a chance that my buddy Frank Taylor banded her, but I'm not sure if he's had a merlin in the nets yet this year.  Most likely a first year female banded on her migration south.  Without the number we will never know for sure but I'm curious of my buddy Frank Taylor or Hawk Ridge has banded any hatch year merlins because chances are good, she is one of their birds.

Man I love unexpected merlins but to have one make such an interesting kill and be banded just really made my Thursday.

Flicker Shenanigans With A Kestrel

I was out and about doing bird surveys yesterday and I got to watch an interesting interaction between a small falcon and a large woodpecker.

Here's an American kestrel, minding her own business, hovering and looking for mice with leaky bladders or whatever to eat.

There were lots of northern flickers moving through during my survey. Most tried to avoid predators.  Multiple visits to Hawk Ridge during the hawk migration has taught me that at the end of the day, flickers have a body built for food that many hawks like to eat.  I guess this flicker was feeling his Wheaties and went in to hassle the hovering kestrel, vengeance for fallen and eaten brethren?

After getting properly buzzed, the kestrel did an about face and went for the flicker.  Both are about the same size and I think if the kestrel had been a Cooper's hawk that the flicker wouldn't have engaged in any mobbing shenanigans.

Again, these aren't the best shots in the world, I digiscoped them at 400 meters.  But had fun watching the behavior.  The birds chased each other for at least five minutes (could have been longer, but I had to move on to my next survey point), sometimes the flicker was chasing the kestrel and at other times, she was chasing the woodpecker.  Periodically, both would perch on the same wire--sizing the other up?

Fledging Flickers

I saw some flickers learning the ways of the world on my bird surveys the other day. Even though that baby looks full grown, he's still hoping to be fed by the adults. Old habits die hard.

This appears to be a little bit of some father son bonding (they are both male, they both have a mustache).

The adult male didn't feed the younger one, but flew off, presumable to teach the younger bird where to forage for food on its own.

Random Red-bellied Woodpecker

Male red-bellied woodpecker coming in for some suet dough.

Random Lineated Woodpecker

Going through photos of last year and I found a Panama woodpecker that I didn't post:

This is a Central American cousin of the pileated woodpecker and about the same size.

I ended up seeing them on field trips based both from Canopy Tower and Canopy Lodge.  They weren't super common but, like a pileated, if you hang out a bit in the places they are most likely to be found, you'll see one.

Blue Jay & Hairy Woodpecker Interaction

Well, we're about to get Snomaggedon in the Twin Cities this weekend (12 inches with blizzard conditions).  The birds are going bonkers at the feeders so I set out the Wingscapes camera to grab some images.

The jaunty blue jay is loving the crumpled up peanut suet mixed with black-oil sunflower seeds.

And then he is joined by a hairy woodpecker.