Great Backyard Bird Count 2011 #GBBC #birding

Mark your calendar now for February 18 - 21, 2011!

Are you seeing pine siskins this winter?  You need to report them!

The Great Backyard Bird Count is coming up and is an easy way for you to help track winter bird populations in your yard.  Anyone with a remote interest in birds can participate.  It doesn't matter if you live in an urban area or a suburban backyard or out in the middle of nowhere--you can document birds. This 4 day event is an attempt to create a real-time snapshot of where the birds are across the continent. Anyone can participate, from beginning bird watchers to experts. It takes as little as 15 minutes on one day, or you can count for as long as you like each day of the event. It’s free, fun, and easy—and it helps the birds.  You tally the highest number of birds of each species seen together at any one time. You can fill out an online checklist at the Great Backyard Bird Count website.

A black-capped chickadee chowing down on a deer rib cage.  As the count progresses, anyone with Internet access can explore what is being reported from their own towns or anywhere in the United States and Canada. You can also see how this year's numbers compare with those from previous years. Participants may also send in photographs of the birds they see. A selection of images is posted in the online photo gallery.

So, take a look at your calendars and see if you can set aside at least 15 minutes to count birds for 4 days in February, the 18th through the 21st.  Maybe make it a fun get together with friends!  Invite kids to sit and count with you, make it a fun game.  Or make it an early afternoon Birds and Beers with some of your buds to count birds.  Whatever, but give it a try this winter.

It's This Cold...Again

I knew it was going to be below zero this morning.  But I woke up to -18 degrees Fahrenheit this morning.  I'm supposed to lead a Moonlight Snow Shoe tonight at 7pm.  If it's this cold then, I wonder if I should take a squirt bottle with me?  This is what I did 2 winters ago when it was -21: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8Hy1Pxyk-Y[/youtube]

Stupid Hipster Crows

Non Birding Bill and I drove by Loring Park tonight and expected to find this:

But when we arrived there, the crow roost was bare!  The roost has moved.  As I let loose a stream of profanity as to how this affects Birds and Beers, NBB said, "You know what happened, they arrived around Thanksgiving and said, 'Oh, we were here last year, this place is all played out,' and then another crow said, 'I know this other little spot that's much quieter that no one knows about and is so cool.' See your problem is that you have hipster crows."

Indeed, the roost has officially moved to Elliot Park, not too far away, but we will not get the same view we had at last year's Birds and Beers.  We should still see crows fly in but they will most likely not stay at Loring outside of Joe's Garage.  Perhaps after it gets dark, we can caravan over to Elliot Park to see the sleeping crows?  So Birds and Beers is still on at Joe's Garage for Saturday at 4:30pm.  Sounds like we'll have more beer than birds.

RiffTrax Takes On Prairie Chickens

RiffTrax (some of the dudes who were part of Mystery Science Theater 3000) have added their special brand of humor to an Attwater's Prairie Chicken short.  I must admit that I bristled a bit when I saw this.  I mean, it's one thing for them to make fun of shorts that warned of the dangers of using gasoline for dry cleaning, but my beloved prairie chickens? I took Bill Corbett to task for this and then he looked at me and said, "Booming?  Really?  Do they have to call what they do booming?"

Non Birding Bill then said, "You don't understand, she has like been to festivals about these birds.  She gets up before dawn and then sits in a cold box in the middle of some abandon prairie in freezing weather to watch them."

I got the feeling that Corbett was siding with NBB.

Here's one of my lesser prairie chicken videos, are these birds really that funny and worthy of riffing?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvyjRmHoqfg[/youtube]

And my favorite video of prairie chickens...the prairie chicken cock block:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ETLhZ1JueQ&feature=channel[/youtube]

Okay, RiffTrax, you may win this round.

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.

Bird Show In Atlanta

Well, it's January and that means that I check out a birding trade show.  In the past, I was at Bird Watch America, but this year I'm in the Birding and Nature Show at AmericasMart.  I'll most likely be tweeting up a storm on (hopefully) new and interesting product.  If you're interested, you can follow that on Twitter under Birdchick.  I'm sure some of it will work it's way here but mostly it will go to Twitter and eventually Birding Business. Oh and speaking of Twitter, if you didn't see my link to One Lazy Duck, follow that link, you will chuckle.

Turkeys Chasing A Laser Pointer

What more do you need to know? [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_czuaykWPw[/youtube]

Metaphor For Marriage?

Below is a relative approximation of me getting out of bed to go birding while Non Birding Bill is still sleeping.  I'm the gentoo penguin and bill would be the seal: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdPGXClOE5g&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Twin Cities Snow Shoeing

I have accepted the snow and have taken to snowshoeing.  Partly because my park got a whole bunch of snowshoes this winter and I'm doing some programs one on January 21 and the other on February 19.  I need to practice because I have a tendency to walk with my toes out, which inevitably leads to me stepping my shoes and tumbling ass over tea kettle into the snow.  I was out with a bunch of rangers at the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge last week and it was so cool.  We found just about every textbook thing you could find on a snowshoe hike: coyote tracks, otter tracks, rodent tracks that end with feather prints and...

...even a fresh antler shed!  That's a couple of my fellow rangers in the photo.  The antler had six points on it.  That's pretty incredible when you consider how deeply this refuge is embedded in the urban Twin Cities.  This shed was so fresh, it hadn't been chewed by any mice yet and it still had a bit of blood on the spot where the antler was attached.  Too cool!  I think it wasn't even an hour old.

After the snowshoe, I hung out at the feeders at the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge.  Check out all the spots of red, the cardinal activity was off the charts.  There were even more in the above photo, but at least three were cropped out.

I find comfort in watching the steady stream of activity at bird feeders.  Little things like blue jays filling their crops so full with peanuts that you can see the overflow in their open beaks.

I was surprised to see a white-throated sparrow hanging out at the feeders, but for whatever reason, this bird didn't go further south.  It's got a good food supply and cover at the refuge.  If it can dodge the local sharp-shinned hawk, it just might make it.  Here are some other birds visible in the falling snow around the refuge:

Female cardinal (with a female house finch down at the bottom).

Male house finch.