Another Day On The Job, Another Animal Part In The Tree

I honestly thought yesterday was going to be the strangest day on the particular job assignment I have here in the southern Midwest. It apparently wasn't quite over. Another day on the job, another day of animal parts in trees!

As I was walking my point, something in the trees caught my attention. Do you see anything? If you have colorblindness, you may not. Basically, I noticed a red bird not moving.

Closer inspection revealed an eviscerated male cardinal wedged and pinned to branch.  I don't think this is a case of a sharpie or Cooper's hawk dropping some prey after eating from up high in a tree.  The body of the cardinal was really wedged into the fork and hooked well on the branch. I suspect the body was cached here by a shrike, but dang on, shrikes are only 9 - 10" long and a cardinal is about 8.5" long.  That's some fancy beak work to kill a bird that size. Since shrikes don't have the talons for gripping and killing that hawks and owls do, after they kill their prey with their beak, they try to wedge it into a branch or in the case of small prey, impale it on thorns or barbed wire as a larder for later or as a way to hold it still while they hack off strips of meat.

I imagine it was a nice meal for that shrike!

Kind of excited to see what sort of dead stuff I'll find in trees today!

Yes, I've Seen The Golden Eagle Attacks Kid Video. Yes, It's Fake

If you were not on social media last night, you may have missed this discussion.  But if you are remotely into birds, especially birds of prey, someone will send you this video: WARNING IF WATCHING THIS AT WORK. THERE IS A SWEAR WORD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE0Q904gtMI&feature=youtu.be

Yes. Fake.

And in case you still don't believe that this video is as authentic as Kenny Rogers's face, here's an article on the golden eagle attacks kid hoax video that identifies the makers of the video.

So, please everyone who keeps sending me an email or text saying, "I told you an eagle could grab a kid,"...stop.

Dead Stuff In My Office

FYI: No podcast this week.  I got called away to work in Missouri for the week and well, we just don't like Skyping in for the Podcast.  We'll be back next week. Also, kinda gross photos ahead.

I have a weird lifestyle.  I don't often know where I'm going to be from day to day. Most recently that came to an extreme level when a quick phone call Wednesday afternoon turned in to me on the Illinois/Missouri border on Friday afternoon to help with a habitat survey.

As I travel, I frequently post to social media what I call Today's Office, which is basically a shot of what my outdoor office looks like that day.  Often, it's beautiful.

Then there are these sort days like I had yesterday:

Look close...that's not a bird in that tree...I think it's some sort of way to let nature clean off of a deer skull.  Apart from the weirdness of suddenly noticing a giant deer head with an amazing rack suddenly appear out of the branches like a magic eye puzzle is unsettling.  But then you just tell yourself, "Oh, those hunters." And press on.

Then you find another one:

And you note the rotting and shuttered farmhouse surrounded by goats and how it looks like something Jason would live in on the property and think, "Maybe I'll step a little livelier on this survey."

But deer decapitation wasn't the only fun body parts I found in today's office!

My field partner called me over to see "something cool" and he's not as into birds shouted, "You have to see this, it's so cool!" And he was right.  It looked like some sort of cache, possibly a fox had left a large, dark wing wedged into some trees.  Hmmm, what could this be? I had noticed some large black feathers as we were walking and took mental note.  I was trying to resist the temptation to explore the wing further because I have a completely different assignment to this survey and it doesn't involve CSI Special Bird Unit. But I couldn't help but take a photo and notice a familiar smell...mmmm...vulture.  And I wondered given my location if it was black or turkey.

We soon found the rest of the carcass...yep, turkey vulture based on the light gray edging on the underside of the wing.

As if that weren't proof enough, we found the head!! And that totally sealed the deal for turkey vulture based on the nose opening--look how huge it is! Black vultures do not have the sensitive aroma sniffing abilities that turkey vultures have.  Definitely a cool find and one of the things I love about my super wacky unpredictable schedule lifestyle.

I can neither confirm nor deny that this head is in a make shift field envelope tucked away in a back pack in my hotel room (yes, I do in fact have a permit if I did choose to pick up the decomposing vulture head). I'm more worried about recriminations that could be suffered when a particular cohabitant finds out.

TV Show Is Casting Birders!!

OK, kids, it's time to polish those bins and put on your Sunday best convertible pants! A national cable network is looking for birders to appear on a new television series about birding.  If you are an avid birder – bordering on obsessive – we want you.  You do not need to have a degree in ornithology or a book coming out (although if you do, we want to hear from you). Please send your contact information, a short description of your birding experience (where you bird for instance) and a photo (if you have one) to natgeocasting@gmail.com.  (Please put “Bird” in the subject line.) 

Send it now. Because, after all, the early bird...  well, you know the rest. I personally hope that this morphs into an Amazing Race style show with Kenn Kaufman, David Allen Sibley, Richard Crossley and Lillian Stokes all sharing the same vehicle. But this is probably what we'll get:

The Lonely & Quiet Of Winter

I have been surveying the same patch for on and off for the last three years in southern Minnesota. I really enjoy watching how the patch changes during the seasons: seeing when certain birds arrive, listening to all the birds on territory, noticing when certain birds leave and when winter birds arrive.

But every December I'm always surprised at how lonely I find myself during my many hours in the field. Oh sure there's still some crows and bluejays around and there are the bald eagles which I'm watching for but it's still so quiet compared to what it had been the several months previous.

This year I'm getting a bonus. I've had such delights as the above common redpolls and a few white-winged crossbills too. And they're large flocks of Lapland longspurs all around and they're now being joined by large flocks of snow buntings. But these birds are predator wary and not like feeder birds. However, these birds are different. They are wary and distrustful of someone watching them. It's not like the birds that were singing on territory that were so focused on proving that they were the best male for breeding. These birds are constantly on the alert for predators. I don't blame them, I've seen plenty of merlins, northern harriers and Cooper's hawks around here even make me worry for their safety.

But combined with the wind, these fields are now a lonely place.

Because I Love Bird Camouflage

I was recently at the Rio Grande Valley Bird Festival in Harlingen, TX. If you can't tell by how often I talk about South Texas, it's one of my favorite places to visit not only for the birds, but also for the great friends I've made at the festival. Next year is the 20th Anniversary of the festival, it should be a wild time and if you have never been, you should have it on your bucket list.

I have an odd checklist when I visit, I've seen almost everything I can possible see there but getting the key valley species as soon as I arrive is always fun (like the above great kiskadee). This time I went with a new friend that I made at the Biggest Week In Birding Festival in Ohio last May. She had never been to the valley so showing someone all those great Texas specialties for the first time is as fun for me as seeing them the first time.

I could spend several days at Estero Llano Grande (and have) and this photo though not the best on the planet is a great cross section of the amazeballs birding that can happen. In one scope view I have green kingfisher, American bittern and great kiskadee.  I ask you, where else would you get such a great birding trifecta in the same field of view? South Texas, it's hard to beat.

I swear there is a bird in the above photo.

Estero is where the nightjar known as the common pauraque is relatively easy to find. I've posted about their camouflage before. And though we were able to find them easily in that same spot, we were pointed out more parauques by field trip leaders that were hunkered down in yards of people who live next to Estero.  There's one in the above photo...can you find it (even Non Birding Bill was able to find to find it in the photo).

Yep. I swear there's a bird in the above photo too.  That's the pauraque in the "usual spot" at Estero.  There are actually about two or three in this spot (but only one in the above photo). I know brown birds aren't for everybody. I know that I can seem unreasonable in my love of things like native sparrows and pipits but you have to give it to pauraques as a brown bird. They at least stay in one spot for several hours to give you a chance to find them.

iPhone Digiscoping Adapters

All sorts of adapters for digiscoping using an iPhone and a spotting scope are cropping up. I can barely keep up with testing them. This post covers two different adapters that are very similar and work well with my Swarovski ATM scope.

From left to right we have the iTelligent iPhone adapter, Kowa iPhone adapter and my Mophie iPhone charging case. My only complaint with these adapters is that they do not work with the Mophie case. The iPhone 4s has a crap battery life and if you are going to use your phone to take photos and videos, that battery life is going to get eaten up quickly. If someone could find a way to make an adapter that would work with a Mophie case or if someone could create a digiscoping adapter that is also an iPhone battery charging case, I'd be one happy little clam.  And I don't want to hear about how that would be cost prohibitive when Mophie cases run $79 - $99 and digiscoping adapters run $65 - $199.  I don't think my dream is unreasonable.

But enough of my battery charging rant.

The iTelligent adapter is a case that goes around your iPhone and works with the Swarovski DCA adapter using the M37 ring. I know Swarovski is changing their digiscoping adapters but quite a few of us have DCAs already so this can be a good solution to holding an iPhone steady up against a scope eye piece. I've used the DCA adapter for years to slide a point and shoot or SLR camera over my scope eye piece. It's fast and easy to use. It may seem awkward to have the DCA on an iPhone, but if you are used to having the DCA on a camera in the field, it's easy to adjust to toting it with your phone. The DCA easily screws on and off the case, so you don't have to have it on all them time.

I usually have one of those Women of the Cloud Forest totes with me and this fits easily in there.

The Kowa adapter works without the DCA adapter and is a little skinnier. The Kowa adapter is the one on the right with my finger on it. It wedges on to the scope's eye piece and doesn't have the locking mechanism that the DCA has, but stays firmly in place. I wouldn't leave it unattended, a good bump to the scope could cause it to fall (but that's just common sense with any sort of camera when digiscoping). You do have to do a little futzing to get the full image, but it does the trick and fits in a pants pocket. You can take the ring off of the case too.

I played around with both the Swarovski  20-60 zoom eye piece and 25-50 zoom eye piece. The 25-50 works best with an iPhone 4s. Above is a shot I took with the 20-60 and you can see that there is some serious vignetting which you can get rid of by zooming in the image on the iPhone (not zooming in with the scope eye piece).

But if you start with the 25-50 zoom eye piece you have very little vignetting.

When you use the video feature with your iPhone 4s, you do not have the option of zooming in.  If you use the 20-60 eye piece you will have vignetting which you can edit out using a program like iMovie. Or you can use the 25-50 eye piece and have not vignetting in video mode.

I took a couple of short videos with each adapter and the 25-50 eye piece so you can see how they work.

Here is the iTelligent adapter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-KIjEAn-oc

Here is the Kowa adapter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6JTKhc5C1U

Both work well and are fun way to digiscope. And with both of these adapters, you can still actually use your iPhone to text and you know...phone calls.

Turkey Dubstep

[youtube]http://youtu.be/WIv-qsH40m0[/youtube]

Brown Birds

Even though autumn is winding down in my part of the country, the color still tried to pop as in one last hurrah before our white and gray pallet of winter arrives. Bird migration still has a big push going and and though it may not be about warblers any more, it's sparrow city in most of my field work or even around the office. These are a sample from the last week, most of these were taken on the same cloudy day with my spotting scope and either my SLR or my iPhone.

And this last ditch effort at color seems to make all the sparrows even prettier. Now, for all you non-birding/casual birding, the sparrows I'm about to post are all different birds--I swear. Above is  swamps sparrow, a native sparrow and not one usually found under bird feeders. I love that pose, the bird had popped up when I pished to see what sparrows were around.

Brace yourself, this is a completely different brown bird that the one above.  This is a Lincoln's sparrow that was in the same loose flock with the swamp sparrow. Note how this one is streaky on the sides and the swamp is not? I love the way this bird is highlighted by the yellow grasses.

Here's a junco that popped up to remind me that it's still representin' as a sparrow.

Beefy fox sparrows flush up on wooded arrows when I approach my field survey spot.

Robust Harris's sparrows are all over the place in the Twin Cities.  I even had one show up at the bird feeder outside my office window, but they're all over on my field surveys too...though my non birding coworkers are dubious that this is different from the house sparrows.

This wasn't seen on my surveys, it's a cool sparrow that with its pumpkin coloring is so appropriate for Halloween.  This is a Nelson's sparrow. And as much as I love getting a photo of one, I'd rather have it on its breeding grounds and not foraging on mud during migration. But a sparrow's got eat what a sparrow's got to eat. Wish these guys would learn to love millet. I'd wet myself if a Nelson's ever showed up under my bird feeder.

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."