Birdchick Blog
Snowy owls are showing up in big numbers for the third winter in a row. Don't freak out. Enjoy them responsibly. Check out Project SNOWstorm.
FYI same sex pairing is kinda natural.
What? A bird watching presidential candidate??
Are Eurasian cuckoos and North American cowbirds involved in an exchange program?
Operation Migration is having some issues. Check it out and make your voice heard.
Insert the Ned Stark joke here: winter is coming, juncos are in full force in Minneapolis. My patch is full of them right now and always taking a moment to observe even a common bird like this can imprint their shape and behavior on your brain.
I was recently on Jekyll Island for the Georgia Ornithological Society annual meeting and I had a blast. What really impressed me was not only the diversity of birders but the mix in ages. I met Evan who runs the Georgia Young Birder Club and he asked me what is the one piece of advice I would give new birders. I had to resist the smart ass part of my brain that wanted to answer, "never drink scotch under 15 years of age" or "avoid the clap" but I managed to retain a modicum of adulthood and gave what I hope is a better answer.
My initial advice is always to try and find a place and do your own informal bird survey. Whether that's picking a spot or a few nearby spots and doing weekly 20 minute point counts or visiting it as much as possible. You learn so much about about the birds that visit, pass through and breed there. That's been my big takeaway doing bird surveys over the years. I've now adopted that with my local patch.
My patch on a brisk fall morning. Thanks to a hard overnight rain, the air was thick with the aroma of wet autumn leaves.
I discovered my patch not long after we moved a year ago. I ran into a fellow eBirder not too long ago and they said, "You're always turning in lists from this spot when you should really do this other spot, the birding is better."
That may be, but I love my patch because it's in easy walking distance from my home. If I find myself with a spare hour, I have time to not only bird my patch but add over 5000 steps to my step tracker app. It's a win/win.
One of the hundreds of white-throated sparrows lurking about in my patch today.
My other advice is that if you do not have children and you have a choice between birding and responsibility...choose birding. Always. I've never regretted that decision (my credit cars maybe have, but me personally, no). My classic example that I've pointed to before is the time years ago when I random day off of the bird store and though I should have used that day to do things like clean the kitchen and tackle the piles of month old laundry, I decided to take a day trip up do Duluth to see Hawk Ridge. The winds were supposed to be perfect for a good broad-winged hawk flight, right out of the northwest. Even as my car reached the outer suburbs, I almost turned around, "You're an adult now, you should really do laundry," but my bird side won out.
It ended up being a record day for Hawk Ridge and over 100,000 broad-winged hawks were tallied that day. It was magical. And I would have hated myself had I chosen to stay home and do laundry instead.
Palm warlber.
And unless I'm just home for a very hardcore birding trip or survey, I generally try to avoid laundry, vacuuming, cleaning out the fridge, etc as much as possible and go birding. Last night I was biking through my patch and almost hit a Harris's sparrow that flew in front of me. I knew that if I went to bed before midnight and got up at 6:30am (or about) I'd have enough time to walk my local patch, get some birds and get cleaned up for a day at the park service. I was hoping to digiscope the Harris's sparrow but also I just like looking for sparrows in the fall. All those lovely combinations of brown, rufous, gray, buff and heck if I'm lucky enough to find a Nelson's sparrow, even pumpkin color.
I did get some yellow-rumped warblers and palm warblers but there all kinds of great sparrows: Harris's still (though none were obliging enough for a photo, swamp, fox, white-throated, Lincoln's and quite a few song sparrows.
First winter chipping sparrow.
At first glance, I really wanted to turn the above bird into a clay-colored sparrow when I first saw it but my patch isn't really clay-colored habitat. After a bit more observation showed the bold eyeline of a chipping sparrow and it lacked the white "muttonchop" look of a clay-colored. Chipping sparrow makes way more sense for this habit anyway. A bummer to not add a new species but I do enjoy sorting out tough species. If you've never noticed how similar these two sparrows can look in the fall, check this out from the Sibley app:
First winter chipping sparrow is on top and non breeding clay-colored sparrow is on the bottom--they're practically twins! Mercifully, they are way easier to separate in summer.
If you are 62 or older you already qualify for a Senior Pass which for $10 gets you into any federal park (NPS, BLM, US Fish, etc) for free but Thursday, October 8 you'll be able to get the lifetime pass for free.
The Migratory Bird Treaty Act is being reinterpreted which could have devastating consequences for birds.
Guess what this is!
Bay City, MI is one of the top ten drunkest cities in Michigan and you should also check out the Saginaw Bay Birding Trail.
An unfortunate ad showed up in some mailboxes in New York. Word on the street is that the owner of the company has since learned this ad was insensitive, the image used was stolen and he's very sorry and will never do it again.
The best articles about boobies every written.
Congrats to Noah Stryker for seeing the most birds in the world in a year and still has a couple of months to go.
Wilson's warbler subspecies feather study.
Cornell Lab of Ornithology is hiring but you have to move to Ithaca.
I want this job on a remote Irish island.
Support a bird coloring book Indiegogo project.
Once again birds are caught in the 9/11 Tribute in Lights. The video is mesmerizing. Don't worry, the lights were turned off so the birds could move on.
The title is in reference to an unfortunate post that showed up on a birding Facebook group. Pro tip: if something offensive shows up on a Facebook page, do not comment. If it's a public page, your comments will show up to your friends in your news feed.
Every bird has a dark side...this week we tell you about the Eleonora's falcon.
Migration is nuts right now. BirdCast is a great site to follow.
This is hilarious.
Every Kid In A Park aims to get your kid into federal parks for free.
Nature as an erectile dysfunction commercial.
Did John James Audubon make up birds?
The article we could barely talk about: Kelp Gulls Tear Out the Eyes of Baby Seals to Feast on them Later.
Is Putin in a flock of birds?
Have you heard about the Every Kid In A Park initiative? Starting September 1, all fourth graders are entitled to a free national park pass.
Remember the girl who got "gifts" from crows, her neighbors want to sue.
What? We podcasted last week? So we did. On our sunroof with chimney swifts and jets flying over.
I apologize for the sound quality. But because there really isn't much in the way of birding podcasts out there, here you go.
Kites use underwear for nest.
Eagle flies off with osprey chick on nest cam.
I think we talked about the threat to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act but don't worry, that amendment has already been shut down. But I'm pretty sure I talked about his article.
A Clark's nutcracker perched on the rim of a tiny piece of the Grand Canyon in dawn's early light.
I recently returned from some training at the Grand Canyon and two things made an impression:
1. Nothing can really prepare you for the Grand Canyon. Sure, maybe you saw the Brady Bunch episodes filmed in the canyon or perhaps a trip in a commercial jet has taken you over it, but standing there on the rim and staring down into the gaping maw of ancient rock that goes a mile deep and you suddenly realize, "Oh hey, that's fault line"...it kind of bowls you over.
The South Rim of the Grand Canyon. I love how insignificant I feel looking into this crazy deep hole in the ground.
I think my friend BirdSpot put it best, "This place cannot be oversold."
2. How do more people not die at the Grand Canyon every year? They get about 5 million visitors and average only 12 deaths a year. That's pretty incredible given some of the dangerous terrain and quite frankly, the average person's ability to do something stupid like texting and walking, going off trail because that one ledge would be a really cool selfie on Instagram or just tripping over your laces.
Stellar's Jays were all over the South Rim.
I was primarily there to get some training in and though it was several days long we had time in the morning and evening to explore and even two whole days off in the middle. Our training facility offered bikes for us to use to explore the area. I was up early every morning because I was used to a different time zone and I thought it would be fun to bike around the rim before my classes. I got a hard less in that high elevation turned what would be perfectly reasonable hills in Minnesota into thigh and lung torture at 6000 feet in Arizona.
One of the dozens of pygmy nuthatches that surrounded my room at the Grand Canyon.
I opted instead to go birding around my dorm in the morning and opened it up to others who might interested. There were some great birds to be had including oodles of pygmy nuthatches, ash-throated flycatchers (one even nested on the training center's dorms), mountain chickadees, black-throated gray warblers, white-throated swift--basically a host of cool southwestern birds that a northern girl like myself doesn't get to indulge in very often.
There were also large herds of elk and mule deer. I don't trust any animal with a hoof and it was incredibly unnerving to walking out of your room at night and find yourself within ten feet of the butt end of an elk. I did my best to give them a wide berth but they really liked coming close to people.
This was a young mountain chickadee that was trying to glean insects with its family from the overhang and screens around our building. Being young and naive it let me grab a quick selfie before it flew away.
For my day off I found a spot using the BirdsEye app that reportedly had painted redstart, nutcrackers, western bluebirds, western wood-peewee and other southwest specialties. It was a different part of the canyon to explore and thought it sounded like a fun spot. Due to the heat and daylight hours I thought I'd start at 6am and offered it up to others in my class to come along.
Now comes the weird part. This was a training for people who work in the National Park Service. I was the only birder. Oh sure, there were one or two who knew local and specialties species of their parks but going birding outside of their parks? Crazy!
Violet-green swallows were all over around our dorms and the canyon. Oh how frustrated I was this time last year that I didn't have time to fly to a spot to video one for our web series.
It gets better. We had the option on our two days off of getting a permit to go hiking into the bottom of the Grand Canyon. While I was there it was in the 90s--granted that's a dry heat but it's still hot. That was just at the rim. Down in the canyon it was actually 120 degrees. So to safely hike in there the group was going to get up at 3am and hike the switchbacks down into the canyon, spend the night (did I mention it's a 120 degrees) get up at 3am and hike back up. Yeah, they were going to go down first and then go up second. That basically sounded like tourture to me. Couple that with the fact they were leaving at 3am and my bird walk started at 6am...I was the reasonable one. How often does birding seem like the more reasonable thing to do?
Western bluebird posting outside of our dorms during one of our morning bird walks.
We followed the driving directions in the app and found a nice shady spot among junipers and ponderosa pine for some light birding. We didn't get the painted redstart but we had most of the other birds that were on the eBird report and a singing hermit thrush. Two other intrepid rangers joined me and what they didn't know about birds, they made up for in residual knowledge about wildflowers and trees.
Fellow park rangers Erik Ditlzer and Charlie Kolb aren't just tree huggers but tree sniffers. Charlie told us to smell the ponderosas because they could smell like vanilla or butterscotch. This one smelled like vanilla to me.
But the best part was when we hiked in and came to another opening of the South Rim and had a terrific view of the Grand Canyon...alone. We got to sit and meditate on the grandeur without being surrounded by tourists. There really is no ugly view of the Grand Canyon. Sure, it changes color throughout the day but it is spectacular no matter where you are. But what a treat to sit for an hour or so with friends to talk and not talk and not have people maneuvering about you with selfie sticks. I think it was one of my favorite moments of the trip.
A remote view we found of the canyon where there were no tourists courtesy of the BirdsEye app.
My main goal in coming to Grand Canyon was to see a California condor. I didn't want to just see one perched, I wanted to see one fly. California condors were part of that trifecta of endangered birds I learned about the in the late 1970s and early 1980s: bald eagles, peregrine falcons and California condors were all about to disappear. Bald eagles and peregrines have made quite the comeback, but not condors. There are several factors like the condor's ability to lay one egg a year that contribute to their slow return to the wild. Also it's arguable that this is a species that's on its way out even without humans mucking up the environment. They were meant to forage on the carcasses of megafauna like giant sloth or mammoth not deer or elk. Will this be a species that will forever need human stewardship to stay around?
That canyon has a lot of birds soaring about...many of them turkey vultures. Here's a great photo showing the difference between a soaring condor and soaring turkey vulture.
The Grand Canyon with a bird soaring over! No, it's not a condor, it's a turkey vulture.
I've seen condors in captive settings and I've even been in a clinic when one was sedated for examination and got to touch it. But I wondered how something that huge flies. It's kind of like seeing a giant bustard fly, you can't imagine it until you actually see it.
As my fellow park service employees found out about my interest in birds they all wanted to know what I wanted to see. When they learned it was a condor they were all eager to help. I loved how everyone had a vested interest in helping me find a condor--isn't that just like a park ranger, make sure the visitor gets the experience they want. I wasn't too worried. Sure I wanted to see one right away, but I knew I had ten days to find a condor, it had to happen. There are roughly 72-ish birds using the area, one had to fly over at some point. The first few times we went to the canyon as part of our training, I tried to play it cool...but of course I had my scope with me. I got a fast education of just how many turkey vultures and common ravens roam the skies.
Everyone was pointing to large soaring birds asking if I had seen them. "Yes, I saw the turkey vulture." Or to be technical, one day I did say, "Yes I see the turkey vulture...oh wait...oh crap, that's a zone-tailed hawk which flies like a turkey vulture--bonus!"
Spotted towhee singing around Bright Angel trailhead.
My Saturday birding companions were also on the lookout to find me a condor. Other colleagues who hiked the canyon or did other things on our day off me throughout the day asking if I found the condor or even better alerting me to condor-ish things they saw in various locations soaring around the canyon. It was really, really sweet.
After a fun morning of Saturday birding, we then headed for Bright Angel Trail Head where condors were reported regularly on the BirdsEye app. As soon as we arrived on the trail, all three of us looked up and saw a bird, one said, "Uh...Sharon..."
If you look close you can make out that the black speck is a California condor.
Yep, there it was, an adult California condor soaring overhead, high in the sky but easily identifiable without optics. Of course I tried to digiscoping it, but a bird in clear blue sky high overhead is next to impossible to find with a scope and I decided, "Screw it, just enjoy it" and put up my binoculars and savored my condor. The thick wing shape, the bulky body, the proportions nothing like a vulture or eagle...so old world looking. Spectacular. I did snap a phone of a dark speck in a luscious blue sky as a souvenir. How could I not?
I had a second view of a bird high overhead the following week. And delighted in saying casually to my colleagues, "Has anyone not seen a condor yet, there's one right over our heads."
Again too high to get a great photo but man how cool to see something like that airborne. I've condors in captivity and even got to touch one in a clinic situation, but see something that huge, flying around in the wild was truly something special. I don't know if this is a species that will be able to survive without human intervention, but I like that that a bird that huge has a place like the Grand Canyon to move around in.
Common raven scavenging the park's trails near the concession stands.
I did get a kick out of the ravens around the trails near concessions stands at the Grand Canyon. Unlike crows, ravens can soar on thermals like hawks. The ravens here soar around the rim and keep a vigilant eye on tourists who drop food and then immediately land in the sea of human bodies to grab a fallen Cheeto. Brazen and huge, what a delightful bird.
Dark-eyed juncos were all over but these were the southwestern race of red-backed juncos.
I also got so see some fun regional birds like the red-back race of dark-eyed junco. Remember when we used to have, like, species of junco and then they got lumped and a bunch of birders lot their minds? Good times.
I also got to see...and not digiscope the local white-breasted nuthatches who look and sound a bit difference than the nuthatches we have where I live. World on the street is that the American Ornithologists' Union might split the white-breasted nuthatch into six different species. Maybe that will make up for the junco lumping of long ago?
Taking in the view near the Tower off of Desert View Drive.
The canyon has something for everyone: views, fossils, birds, archeology, geology, hiking...ok, it maybe lacking in good wifi so maybe it doesn't have something for someone like Non Birding Bill but man, it truly lives up to the reputation of being a spectacular place.
I hope everyone has a chance to visit it at least once in their lives...and that they don't die in doing so.
