I Digiscoped A Famous Lesser Black-backed Gull!

While doing some gull watching at Daytona beach during the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival, some of the more experienced gull watchers were super excited about a lesser black-backed gull. It's not so much that it was there, it's not out of the realm of possibility for a lesser black-backed gull to show up, but this one was banded, and one of the gull watchers (Michael Brothers) knew where this bird came from--and we all know how much I love a good bird banding story!

Lesser black-backed gulls breed in Europe. They have been showing up more and more in North America and the suspicion has been that it's a matter of time before they start breeding in on this side of the Atlantic, if they have not already, but no one had documented a nest. That is, until the last two years. In 2007, a lesser black-backed gull was paired up and tending a nest with a herring gull on an island off of New Hampshire.

A same pairing was observed in the summer of 2008 and it is presumed that this is the same lesser black-backed gull, but this time, researchers were able to band the lesser black-backed gull and the herring gull and they also witnessed the copulation between the two--determining that the lesser black-backed was the male. They gave him the usual metal band, but also a green plastic band that is easier to read in the field: F05!

F05 apparently likes to spend his winters in Florida--this is so exciting! It's rare to get a recovery when it comes to banding, but the chance to track one while it's alive is such a treat. Thanks to the internet we can find his history and have some answers. You can read the whole story of the pairing, the banding process, and the hybrid chicks at this website. If you check it out, you can see that the bird I digiscoped above is wearing the same band as the lesser black-backed on the island off of New Hampshire.

Also, if you are frustrated with gulls and the fact that there are wacky hybrids that make gull id even more difficult, you can blame this dude, he's not helping.

New Year Is Off To A Bang Thanks To The Blog

I'm playing with a host of motion sensitive cameras lately--I'm loving all the pine siskin action this winter.

My favorite photos are the ones where the birds fly a little to fast and the camera speed can't keep up, so they come out a little funky. I'm noticing that quite a few of the birds that Mark and Roger have banded are still sticking around, like the above titmouse. We haven't banded too many of those, perhaps it is the titmouse from this banding session?

So, I'm off to a kind of funky week--funky in a good way. I am Non Birding Bill-deprived. He left Monday for Mac World Expo. I leave Thursday for Bird Watch America. NBB returns on Friday, I return on Sunday. It's unusual for us to travel separately at the same time and of course, it's always strange with the spouse is away. So the week is weird to begin with.

Then, I got a call the other night. It was Guatemala. They wanted to know if I'd like to come on a fam tour (kind of like a press tour) in February.

After I picked up the pieces of my exploded brain, I said, "Can I have 24 hours to make sure I can get the time off from the park service?"

I also needed some time to figure out my passport. Well, thanks to some great advice from well traveled friends, the help of my mom and brother gathering up a certified copy of my birth certificate down in Indiana the process is plugging along. If all goes well, at the end of February, I'll be bringing you some fun entries of the Central American birding experience. Does anyone have anything specific you'd like me to look into in Guatemala--or advice?

I have to thank Mike over at 10,000 Birds for putting the good word in for me in Guatemala. The bonus is that I'll get hang with him while I'm down there. When we end up at bird festivals, we're both so busy, we barely have time to talk. Speaking of Mike, did you hear is weird little explanation of the "12 Days of Christmas" over on the December 24, 2008 podcast of Birdwatch Radio? Check it out if you didn't, it's worth a giggle.

And I got a nice note from Julie Zickefoose in an interview she did for Nature Blog Network. She got started blogging by guest blogging for me when I went on the Ivory-billed Woodpecker search the first two weeks of December 2005. Here's one of my favorite Chet Baker entries that she did. It was strictly selfish. She's one of my favorite writers and I hoped that if she got hooked on blogging she would start her own. She did.

Anyway, it's an interesting interview, check it out.

Okay, now I need to get my stuff together for Atlanta. I'll be heading to Bird Watch America to see the latest and greatest in birding product coming down the pike. Is anyone looking for anything in particular? Let me know, and I'll see what I can find out.

A Little Post Holiday Banding A Carpenter

After several days of butt chilling temperatures, we finally had some warm weather. It started on Christmas Day. Non Birding Bill and I noticed the temps were in the twenties and then stepped outside. It was so warm, we took a walk to Lake Calhoun. By Friday morning the temps were down right balmy in the thirties. The snow started to melt and fog took over the landscape as did a little freezing drizzle, but it made for somewhat pleasant weather banding birds at Carpenter Nature Center. We had several juncos in the traps (like the bird above).

I processed one that had a very odd eye! It was oval instead of round. It looked as though there was some type of swelling above the eye and feathers out of place. The bird had been banded earlier this winter, but there was no notation that it was injured when it was originally banded. I had to look at the eye color under a light to try and determine age and the pupil seemed fine. We let it go. I'll be curious is to see if we get it again.

Among all the juncos, we got in a few of the dreaded cardinals. Dreaded because of that bill and their ability to squirm just right and nail one of you digits. Owie. One of the nice things about cardinals is that you can sex them fairly quick--this is a male based on plumage color. But aging is a different story. I wondered if he was hatched this summer since he had a bit of black on the tip of his beak (juvenile cardinals have black beaks). Our banding leader, Jim Fitzpatrick had me look at the iris of the cardinal and it was dark brown. That coupled with feather condition of some wing and tail feathers made this bird an AHY (After Hatch Year, which basically means we don't know exactly how old it is, but we know he didn't hatch this year).

While I was processing the male cardinal, Jim was processing a female cardinal. They came into the traps at the same time. We had some members of the public watching us process the birds and they asked if the cardinals were a mated pair. It's not the breeding season and cardinals are typically in large winter flocks this time of year. However, there can be pairs in a flock and according to Birds of North America Online, some cardinal pairs will stay on their same territory all year. I wasn't sure if these two cardinals were in the same trap, but my guess was that were. We also couldn't say for sure if they were pair, but it was a possibility.

After we processed them, I tried to get one more photo before we let them go. Note the male is still giving my thumb the what for. We opened our hands and off they flew. Sometimes when we release two of the same species like that, they split in different directions. These two not only took off in the exact same direction, but landed on the same branch of a tree! I dashed back into the center to grab my digiscoping equipment.

They adjusted themselves in the tree and by the time I got my scope on them, the female had perched a bit higher. They seemed relaxed with each other and I think it's a good guess that this is a mated pair. They stayed that way for several minutes. The clouds, fog, and drizzle did not make for the best photo, but it's bloggable.

I took a few more shots of the male I had just banded while he perched in the tree. I noticed that he had some brown feathers on his flanks. I showed the photo to Jim and the other banders. I asked if we should rethink whether or not he was a hatch year bird since there was some brown. Jim wisely pointed out that the base feathers for cardinals are brown (I assumed black, since their skin is black). He also reminded me that the male's eye color was dark brown. Had he been a hatch year bird, we would have seen gray brown. Only Peter Pyle can take a seemingly easy bird to id (like a cardinal) and make it a challenge!

After I let the cardinal go, I got a shot of my thumb--check out the indentations he left! It's now turned to a minor blood blister. Thanks, dude. After banding, we went down to where the Mississippi River and St Croix River meet along the Minnesota/Wisoconsin border to look for ducks and gulls.

There had been a a harlequin duck reported and we had little trouble finding it among all the goldeyes. The fog made for terrible digiscoping conditions and I'm going to have to go back to see if I can get it on a sunnier day. That's a cooling looking duck that deserves a better photo.

Birds & Beers & Banding

The last Birds and Beers was a huge gathering. Some regulars and some new peeps came to join in the fun.

We had a drawing from some prizes courtesy of Woodlink. We gave away a few of their "Happy Hour Hummingbird Feeders." They're nectar feeders in the shape of a daiquiri, margarita, and martini--how appropriate! In the background of this photo is Liz Stanley who runs The Overlook Circle Feeder Cam. She warns on her site that images are uploaded every 30 seconds during daylight hours, Central Time. During the winters here, days are short so daylight is only 7:30am to 4:30pm. In the summer, it's much longer, lasting from 5:30am to 9:30pm. If the image is completely dark, please check back in the morning. Check it out! There's also Jim Ryan in the background who runs Jim Ryan Outdoors Blog.

The big excitement came when Mark Newstrom arrived with extra copies of the new Peter Pyle book, Identification Guide to North American Birds Part II. Some readers have seen Pyle referenced in this blog before, it's a sleep inducing tome essential to aging and sexing birds if you are a bander. Up to this point, we've only had Part I which had warblers, chickadees, sparrows, vireos, etc. This year part II was released which tells banders how to age and sex waterfowl, boobies and spoonbills. We took turns doing dramatic readings of Part II. There's a bit more talk of distended cloacas (great band name) and duck penises in this volume, but that's about as exciting as it gets. Here's a sentence from the zone-tailed hawk section:

"Shape and color pattern to the retrices by feather generation and sex in Zone-tailed Hawk. R5 is shown and is usualy the last feather replaced during molts and the most likely to be retained during the PB2 and DPB."

Or there's this on molt in Canada geese:

"PF partial-incomplete (Sep/Nov-Jan/Apr in HY/SYs), PB2 complete (Jun-Nov in non-breeding SYs), DPB complete (Jul-Dec in breeding AHYs); PA absent."

And if you can understand either of those sentences, then you'll want a copy of the Peter Pyle book. If you don't, take heart that you have a life and run before you get sucked in to the point of no return.

Speaking of banding, we had an interesting and busy morning at Carpenter Nature Center on Friday--lots of juncos! I think they sensed the impending blizzard that was about to hit. Above is a Potter's Trap and it has 2 doors and usually only gets 1 or 2 birds at a time. This trap had three juncos in it!

We also got in some chickadees and a blue jay (the blue jay got in the traps before I arrived, so no photo).

We did get another interesting retrap. I was processing this black-capped chickadee that already had a band. When I read the number to Mary who helps us track the data, she looked it up and found that we originally banded this chickadee on November 10, 2006. I checked the archives of the blog to see if I had a photo of when it was first banded, but discovered that I was in Harlingen, TX at that time and wouldn't have been there on its original processing date.

Friday Banding & Birding

It was jam packed at Carpenter Nature Center banding on Friday. It was the day after Thanksgiving and many people stopped by--including a hilarious 4 year old named Dylan. She kept asking to band a bird herself. I was doing a junco when she came to me and said, "I was going to do that one!"

I asked if she took the banding class. She looked to the side and back at me and said, "Yes." Can't blame a girl for trying. My favorite part was a the end of the morning, she was leaving and we said, "Bye, Dylan, it was nice to meet you," and she replied, "Yes, it was."

The big excitement of the day was getting one of the oodles of pine siskins around the Twin Cities. Tom Bell banded this bird and he noted how fine their bills are--perfect for going into those thin slits on finch feeders.

The yellow is subtle on these little birds, mostly in the edging on the primary wing feathers and the tail feathers. I don't think we were able to determine the sex of this bird, but we did determine that it was a hatch year bird.

Ecobirder was also there, he's going to help Carpenter a bit with their website. When we were finished, I drove over to Douglas Point and found him taking photos. I left him peace, I know how I am when I get in a good groove. The weather was so warm, it was 40 degrees that I decided to go for a bike ride when I came home.

I decided to go over to Lake Calhoun to see if I could get a photo of the long-tailed duck in better light. Plus, I've been curious if I could take my whole digiscoping setup with me on my bike. Non Birding Bill and I were both feeling the effects of eating too much and he also joined me for the ride (as long as I promised not to spend an hour trying to get the perfect photo of a duck).

The light was awesome and waterfowl like Canada geese and hooded mergansers were up close...but not the long-tailed duck, it was WAAAY out on the lake and not worth digiscoping.

The light was so perfect that I hated to waste it and took a few photos of geese. I could hear joggers behind me say, "Why would you want to take photos of those ducks?" I wanted to turn around and point out the scaup and goldeneyes and say there's more out there than just mallards and geese, but did not. And of course, since I was birding in a public place, someone came up to me and said, "Hey, is that bald eagle still over there?"

"I don't know," I said, "I'm not looking for that."

"It was over on the north side, in that tree, the lighter one on the left there." He paused and I could tell by the look in his eye that he was waiting for me to move my scope on it. The eagle was out further than the long-tailed duck. I was not on the clock and I was focusing on a shoveler, I didn't move my scope.

"It's right over there," he pointed. "I saw it when I was jogging over there. It was just sitting there."

"That's awesome," I said, "I'm glad you got to see that." I could see NBB in my peripheral vision over by our bikes. He was grinning that someone was pointing out an eagle yet again when I'm after something else.

I showed him the shoveler in my scope and he showed about as much interest in the northern shoveler as I was in his eagle. I explained about the long-tailed duck and he seemed even less interested in that. Finally, he moved on.

It was fun to squeeze in another bike ride in early winter and it was fun to look at the waterfowl and I was only a tiny bit bummed at missing a good photo of the long-tailed duck. When I checked my email this morning I found this report from yesterday about the long-tailed duck from local birder Terry Brashear:

"The Long-tailed Duck was seen at 2PM close to the west shore, but an adult Bald Eagle came by and the group of Hooded Merganser and Common Goldeneye it was with took flight. It spent the remainder of the day out in the middle of Lake Calhoun till I left at 3:30PM."

Which was about the time NBB and I were biking around the lake. That stupid bald eagle that dude was trying to point out is the one that moved the duck so far to the center of the lake.

I'm shaking my fist at that bald eagle and saying in a tone like a villain at the end of a Scooby Doo cartoon, "I would have gotten that photo too if hadn't been for that meddling eagle."

Interesting Recaptured Chickadee

We had an interesting recaptured bird at Carpenter Nature Center last Friday!

We don't have our nets setup right now, it's too cold. Birds tangled in a net can't use their feathers as well to regulate their body temperatures so we don't up them up when it's below freezing. We do set up little cage traps around the feeding areas though. Birds get trapped inside, but they can move around and still use their feathers to stay warm. The above chickadee got into one of the traps and was already banded. These are the birds we really need--recaptures. We can look at the band number, figure out its original capture date, how many times it's been captured, age, sometimes sex, just all sorts of info!

The above black-capped chickadee was banded on July 12, 2002! On its original capture date, the bird was identified as a hatch year bird. So we know based on its plumage that it hatched the summer of 2002. However, we don't know the sex of this particular chickadee. We can only do that in the summer. Females will have brood patches, swollen bare skin for incubating eggs (often called a BP by banders). Males will have a cloacal protuberance for...mating (often called CP by banders).

This six year old chickadee has been retrapped 10 times. Alas, it has always been in the winter. So the first year we banded it, the chickadee was recently hatched and would not have a BP or a CP. And in the winter, males and females are not in the mating mode and they do not have a CP or BP and even though we've had it 10 more times, never at a time when it could sexed.

Still amazing to think that this bird has survived six Minnesota winters. I wonder where it has set up its nesting territory?

Birds And Beers Turns Into Birds And Scotch

I've spent the last 48 finally catching up from all my travels: unpacking and cleaning my apartment. Regular blogging should resume soon, I still have a few more Texas entries coming.

It was a wild time at Birds and Beers tonight at Merlin's Rest. We had a good mix of people from regulars to at least one new face. I also brought a bunch of books I've been reading to share with the group.

Some of the excitement surrounded a white-breasted nuthatch foot that I brought along with me. On Saturday, I was filling Mr. Neil's feeders. I noticed the seed storage bin (old garbage can) had the smell of a dead mouse. When I took the seed out, I found a dead nuthatch in the bottom. I think the bird had flown into the garage, somehow made it over to the seed (the lid was off), got stuck against the inside wall of the bin which was too smooth for it to get any good traction and got stuck. I felt incredibly guilty and sad and wonder if we might look into some of the seed storage bins at Credit River?

The nuthatch was most likely banded by Mark and Roger (who periodically band birds at Mr. Neil's and also attend Birds and Beers), so I brought them the foot. I also turned the band number into the Bird Banding Lab website. Above, Roger is handing the foot to Merlin's Rest regular Bill Watkins.

I think we made have weirded him out.

The rest of the birders like Curt from National Camera (in Golden Valley, MN) were wowed by the incredibly tiny toes and insanely long claws of the nuthatch. We're not sure how long ago the nuthatch was banded, Mark and Roger weren't quite sure, but we'll find out soon enough.

The big excitement for the evening came when some of used the bathroom and noticed the sign on the door promoting a visit from Winston a rep for The Glenlivet. The sign mentioned that he would be in a kilt, so after my trip to the bathroom, I sought out a man in a kilt. I found him right away and told him that I periodically fill my Swarovski flask with their 18 year old single malt.

Winston came over to give our group a private tasting! It went from Birds and Beers to Birds and Scotch. We tried the 12, the 15, the Nadurra 16, and the 21. The 15 year old was my favorite, not too heavy and with good spicy taste.

Our group got our photo taken with with Winston of Glenlivet. Above from left to right is most of the Birds and Beers crowd: Gordon, Roger, Curt, me, Winston, Kirk, Adele, Michelle, Mark, Linda, and Diane.

Winston resumed his spot in the bar to continue his single malt scotch tasting, but I snuck back the bottle of 21 year old single malt for some photo shenanigans (no, I would not actually chug that). Nice: a Cape May Bird Observatory shirt and a bottle of scotch--see what birding can drive you to do?

This Birds and Beers lasted to almost 11pm! That's one of the longest. Kirk, Roger, Curt, and I stayed awhile discussing topics from movies, cool environmental education experiences, silly birding mistakes, kids, just the gamut. I've enjoyed all the Birds and Beers, but this one was really great!

Now, I just need to remember to sign up for a Christmas Bird Count.

Goshawks & Red-tails, Oh My!

Frank Taylor just sent me last weekend's banding report from his hawk trapping station in northern Minnesota. While I was busy with birding in Cape May, NJ over the weekend, he was dealing with goshawks and a double red-tailed hawk capture! So wish I had not been working and had been at the blind with him.

I just love this photo! This is a red-tailed hawk getting ready to fly into the nets. But look at the great light the hawk is flying in, the sun is hitting some dark clouds in the distance and the vegetation has browns, yellows, whites and green to make a late autumn look--three of my favorite things all in one shot! You'll note I have a similar theme on my banner on the blog. That's how I imagine heaven will be (that and all the angels look like Daniel Craig).

Because Frank bands on the weekends and not during the week, the station is dependent on winds coming out of the northwest just on the weekends to get good numbers of migrating raptors moving through. The weather mojo hasn't been really been that cooperative this year, so most of the weekends have been slow going. Ah well, some years that's the way it crumbles, cookie-wise.

Although Saturday Frank said, "Not much was moving in the morning and our first bird of the day was a huge second year adult female Goshawk that came in at 11:40 am." Check out how big that girl is! That's Chuck and Rick holding her. She's HUGE. She's no doubt female (in the raptor world females are larger than males and it's more noticeable in bird eating raptors like goshawks).

Frank noted that she's a second year bird, meaning she hatched in 2007. She's got her adult gray feathers, but her eyes are still quite yellow. The older these accipiters get (accipiters are a type of hawk that includes sharp-shinned hawks and Cooper's hawks), the more red their eyes become. Here's a photo I took a few years ago of an adult gos with those red eyes:

That red with that delicate gray makes them the most beautiful raptor (in the US) in my book. It also makes them look more maniacal.

They did get a passage (hatched this year) goshawk too--note the brown feathers and yellow eyes. Ug, this is so painful. I love Cape May and I loved birding and I got some fabulous digiscoping images (I still have a few more to post) but I love goshawks so much, I'm so sorry I missed this weekend at Frank's station. And as awesome as goshawks are, they also had some other excitement in the nets:

"A lot of birds started moving. First the Crows got up, followed by the Eagles and Ravens, then an explosion of adult Red-tails with some Rough-legs and Shins mixed in. At various times during the day, we could see as many as thirty birds in the air at once. What a day!!! A lot of the Red-tails would swoop in and perch in the trees over the blinds. We had to go out and shoo them away so they wouldn't scare off any of the others that were making their final approach to the nets."

The highlight of the day came when we got a double of adult Red-tails at 3:35 pm. When they hit, Rick shot out past the one in the front net knowing it was securely caught and grabbed the one in the mist net that was all but out, except for its feet!!! Chuck got on the other one right away. WAY TO GO, GUYS!!!! That was the first time we ever got a double on larger hawks. (We did get a triple on Shins once a few years back.)"

Total for Sunday - 13 Red-tails, 2 Goshawks, & 2 Sharp-shins. Total for the weekend is 19 birds. 13 Red-tails, 3 Goshawks, & 3 Sharp-shins."

Thanks for sharing your photos, Frank. This is his last weekend up at his banding station for 2008. I'll have to wait until next year.

Sigh.

Sky Watch Friday Carver Banding

Doh, it's raining this morning, not sure I'm going banding at Carpenter. Well, I have some banding photos from last weekend and it's SkyWatch Friday, I'll work on that and see if the rain subsides:

Years ago, the summer before Non Birding Bill and I moved to Minnesota, we were on vacation with his family at Virginia Beach. We were flipping around tv channels one night and found a documentary about Minnesota--we thought this would be good prep work to watch. We had heard that we should be prepared for cold and snow year round, but beyond that, not much else. The documentary had an interview with Garrison Keillor and he said something about there are a few days in October which are perfect days (in every possible way) in Minnesota and people visit during those days and get that impression. For some reason, that was what stuck out in my mind and every October, I try to watch for that. If you are an optimist, October in Minnesota is the THE BEST. Sunny days that might require a fleece, glowing fall leaves, local farm bounties, and cool nights perfect for snuggling with your favorite person. As long as you don't think about the impending snow and cold which could easily last six months is right behind this perfect month.

Last weekend, I was going to go to Duluth to do go to Frank's hawk blind, but the wind prediction wasn't good and the sparrows were everywhere in the Twin Cities. My buddy Amber had heard that Mark was going to do some migrant banding on Saturday, so I snuck out to join them. Mark normally does banding programs every third Saturday at Lowry Nature Center. This was not a formal program, so Amber spread out a blanket near the nets, Mark set out his equipment and we banded birds in the beautiful October sun. Above is one of the many swamp sparrows moving through. It's such a pretty sparrow, it's too bad they don't visit feeders as much as house sparrows do--people would really dig 'em. I'm going to save that photo, that would be a good hair color at some point.

We got in quite a few orange-crowned warblers. This is the "drabbest of the drab" first year female orange-crowned. If you are one of the peeps going to the Rio Grande Valley Bird Fest next month, learn this bird's chip note--you'll be hearing it a lot. I know we have them in Minnesota, but I always associate them with South Texas. Speaking of which, there is still time to sign up for the bird blogger discount for the Rio Grande Fest. It's going to be awesome, some of the bird bloggers I know are coming include WildBird on the Fly, Born Again Bird Watcher, birdspot, and Mike from 10,000 Birds--oh, it's on! Looks like there's going to be a Birds and Beers too!

But I digress, back to the female orange-crowned warbler (and since it's SkyWatch Friday, pay attention to the blue sky in the back). She really doesn't have much orange to speak of, even in hand. She's a pallet of gray, drab olive, and kinda white.

Here's an adult male--a little more flashy--look at that yellow. And, you can distinctly see the orange in the crown, can't ya? Please tell me I'm not hallucinating, you can see the orange too? Okay, I admit, it is hard to see, so we used the toothpick method to get a look at the orange crown:

Now you can see the orange in that crown! It's never easy to see when the bird is not in hand. I just check Birds of North America Online to find out when one can see the orange crown on the bird in the wild and found this: "Male threat or alarm display can involve elevation of head feathers to display (barely) the orange crown (Bent 1953)."

"Don't make me barely show you my orange crown!!" Maybe these small warblers have a color orange phobia, so a little is all that's needed. Although, I'm not sure what a flock of orange-crowned warbler when confronted with a male oriole. Or perhaps, those orange feathers are so powerful that too much could be lethal? So much more study to be done.

It's always so cute when an insect eating bird tries to peck your fingers--those bills are just so soft--look at that orange-crowned warbler go for Mark's thumb. Earlier, his thumb went through much worse:

Before I arrived, he and Amber got a young male cardinal in the nets. After banding it, he opened his hand to let it go. The male decided to get in one good bite before flying off and then got so into it, refused to let go and hung from his thumb for a moment. It flew off and remarkably, Mark did not need a band aid.

Ah, looks like the rain is easing up, I should hit the road.

The Difference Of Birds In The Hand

Man oh man, the migrants are all over the Twin Cities right now! The trees are just full of them. Above is one of the many yellow-rumped warblers that can be heard if you listen close for their kiss sounding chip note. I had originally planned to go up to Duluth for some hawk banding, but the winds were supposed to be the worst for banding and the winds in the Twin Cities were pretty good for migrant trapping--Friday at Carpenter was pretty amazing.

And warblers were the main order in the nets. Here's a rather indignant looking yellow-rumped warbler in hand. It's always amazing to me how different birds look in hand. We use mesh bags to hold the birds after they have been taken out of the net. You look through the mesh to figure out what is inside--the species tells you what size band you use. I at first looked at this bird through the mesh and lamented, "Aw, couldn't I have gotten an identifiable bird?" However, the bird fluttered in the bag, and I soon noticed the yellow rump and knew what it was.

We got in a few Nashville warblers too. After this bird was banded, I went to take a photo before letting it go and it just looked so non warbler like-just not feisty enough, almost looks like a child that's been naughty. Many of the birds take on a much different posture in hand than they do the wild.

But, pish at it a few times and it perks right up--feistiness returned.

And then it gives you as mighty a peck as a tiny insectivore can deliver before flying off.

This golden-crowned kinglet is another example--a bird that is full of vim and vigor when hopping about from branch to branch, but completely deflates when in hand.

Check out that buttery-yellow crown, though--drink that in. And again, as soon as this bird was let go, its sassy nature returned.

One of my favorite birds of the day was a brown creeper...or the hunchback. Looking at the above photo, don't you expect it to say in a Peter Lorre voice, "This way, master." But think about the last time you saw a brown creeper...you never see one perched on a branch like a robin, they are always creeping down a tree, perhaps it is essential for their posture.

It's fun to take a close look at all the little bits that make a creeper a creeper--bits that you don't get to see when they are against a tree. Look at how long the toe nails are--each nail is almost longer then the toe itself, essential for life on the side of a tree. Check out that beak, perfect for squeezing into tiny bark crevices to glean spiders and insects. Hm, between the hunch and the diet, this really is the Igor of the bird world.

The tail is pretty incredible too. It's long with pointy feathers, but unlike woodpecker tail feathers, the creeper tail feathers are quite soft. Perhaps the reason is that a brown creeper isn't chiseling into trees like a woodpecker. Strong, stiff tail feathers to prop the woodpecker body are needed if they are hammering open a hole, but a creeper just needs to slink up the bark of a tree.

After getting a bunch of tiny birds that looked small and sad in the hand, it was kind of a treat to get a robust white-throated sparrow with a little bit of an attitude. These birds feel so beefy in the hand and have a bit more kick to their bite, since they need that heavier bill to crack seed shells.

The whole bird is a lovely palette of brown, rust, white, black, yellow and gray. For a brown bird, it's got it going on. Watch for them under feeders (they actually like millet) and around ragweeds, sumac, wild grape, highbush cranberry, mountain ash, dogwoods, and rose hips.

More weekend banding fun to be continued.

Holy Crap! Goldfinch Retrap Info From Mr. Neil's

Back in September, we had a great day of banding birds at Mr. Neil's. One of the birds we got was an already banded goldfinch--but not banded by any of us. Well, it turns out that the bird was banded in 2004 near Springfield, Illinois by Vernon Kleen! That makes this bird at least 4 years old and how the heck did it get over 450 miles north?

Skywatch Friday With Migrants

Hey, have you sent in your comments regarding the proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act yet? Don't let it slip away (and yes, I'm gonna be a pest about this).

Well, it's Skywatch Friday again. You can visit their site and click to all the links to every one's photos of sky and if you wish, you can participate by creating your own blog entry with a photo of sky, adding the Skywatch Friday link to your post and then adding your link to their site. As you can see, the vivid blue skies still continue to enhance the gorgeous fall colors at Carpenter Nature Center.

I tell ya', with the all the negatives adds (on all sides) of the upcoming election and news of the economy it's hard not to get down. If you are anywhere near Hastings, MN make a trip to Carpenter, the colors do not disappoint and the grounds full of birds and a few bees give you peace of mind that money just cannot buy. And if you have a few bucks, now is the time to load up on apples from their orchard--Honeycrisps are in and they have apple cider made right on site (I'm enjoying some now as I type this entry).

The bright blue sky, mixes with the changing reds and yellows of the trees to make the perfect back drop for photographing or just enjoying birds. Not that downy woodpeckers are fugly to begin with, but their black and white coloration is oh so enhanced with the fall colors. I don't know if anyone needs a cleansing downy woodpecker, but here you are.

Later, I'll blog more about the banding bonanza that we had at Carpenter today--I banded a lot of birds and I don't think I worked with the same species twice, it was a parade of sparrows, finches, and warblers and note the bird above: I took my first junco (aka snowbird) of the season out of the nets today. I call this my first junco of the season, but it really is not. I have heard there chip notes in the bushes on the bike trail and I have chosen to ignore the blatant sign of winter.

But if we are talking sky, it's only appropriate that we talk about migration and birds that are pouring out of the skies on their journey south. Carpenter was loaded with white-throated sparrows today (like the bird above) so watch for sparrows lurking under your feeders--and it wouldn't hurt to put out a bit of white millet for them. One of my favorite things about the fall are the nights up at Frank's hawk banding station in Duluth and you can hear white-throated sparrows chipping to each other overhead as large flocks head south. Some of my favorite moments in life have included listening to night migrants with friends...I remember laying on a bench in Cape May, NJ a few years ago do that same thing WildBird on the Fly. Good times.

Here's a tan morph of white-throated sparrow. Look at those gorgeous rufous feathers mixed in with other shades of brown on its back--what a classy little brown bird! Speaking of migration, blog reader Tammy sent over this news link from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about night migration:

"Right around sunrise Tuesday morning the NWS Milwaukee/Sullivan radar (MKX) showed some curious circular reflectivity returns. The echoes developed suddenly and then grew in size between 6:45 AM and 7:30 AM. The MKX staff suspects these to be birds taking off right at sunrise. Some of the echoes initially show returns as high as 30 dBZ, which would equate to a decent shower if the returns were made of rain drops. These are likely dense clusterings of geese heading out early to feed in the fields."

You can read the full story and see the radar images here.

So, keep your eyes and your ears to those fall skies!

It Was About Quality, Not Quantity

I met up with my buddy Rick and we carpooled up to Frank Taylor's hawk banding station near Duluth, MN last weekend. The plan was to have a great weekend of hawk banding, timed right during the big broad-winged hawk. I thought we were off to a bang when one of the first birds in was an early morning red-tailed hawk. This immature bird (because it's lacking a red tail) came in not long after the nets were set up.

I didn't take that many photos of it, I figured more birds would come.

But not many birds were moving that day, my friend, and we spent a good deal of time scanning empty skies and chatting (still a great time). The clouds came in, the winds were not in our favor and started blowing so hard they billowed the nets, making them easy to see to a keen eyed raptor. Eventually, the clouds cleared, but by that point, the few hawks that were moving through were way too high to even consider coming into our nets.

Warblers, especially yellow-rumped warblers (like the one above) were swarming around some nearby bushes, hawking insects and sipping juice from the red berries off this bush. If anyone recognizes the berry bush in the warbler photos, please feel free to drop a note in the comments. We were thinking they were honeysuckle, but were not sure. Whatever they were, the berries were a bird magnet--we even saw a Swainson's thrush lurking among the leaves to partake of the fruit.

However, it is indeed a slow banding day if I can tear myself from the blind to go out and do a bit of digiscoping--and warbler digiscoping at that (not easy to get those little dudes to stay still), but manage I did. However, it is indeed a slow banding day if I can tear myself from the blind to go out and do a bit of digiscoping--and warbler digiscoping at that (not easy to get those little dudes to stay still), but manage I did. We closed up the blind a little early and headed over to the Lighthouse for dinner. After sitting in a blind with cold winds blowing on your face, a hot meal was in order--I ate a lovely pork chop with sour kraut and mashed potatoes (insert Homer Simpson donut noise here). It's amazing to me that I can be a good two and a half hours north of the Twin Cities freezing my tail off and the Twin Cities themselves will be close to eighty degrees. That night, I curled up in my sleeping bag in Frank's van. Again, I would like to say how grateful that despite my girliness, I can still spend the night in a van.

The more I join the guys at Frank's station in the fall, the more I can relate to deer hunters. You may not always get all the birds you hoped for, but you enjoy just being with your friends and staring at birds. There were other things to keep us amused: friend's of Frank popped in for visits (and cookies), an elder hostile showed up and Frank gave them a tour, listening for trains...

And Rick Dupont--who is the master of pulling the bait pigeon made a special friend. A Richardson's ground squirrel is living under the blind and the entry and exit hole is on Rick's side of the blind. Rick is generally a quiet guy anyhow, I wondered if he was forming a special bond with the squirrel...was it telling him things like how to pull the pigeon on the harness or that Free Masons rule the country? If you have been to Hawk Ridge, you might have seen Richardson's ground squirrels near the counting area, under the sign.

We set up the next morning and Rick hoped we would do better than the day before. I was hopeful and said that we only needed two birds and our numbers would have been twice as good as the day before. Frank has a second blind set up on his property that is run by his friend Todd. We can sometimes see birds pop up and head towards the second blind--we'll even radio over potential birds. We watched this immature sharp-shinned hawk pop up and then dive down towards Todd. Frank, Rick, and I wondered if Todd got. Ten seconds later, Todd radioed that he had a shin. There were a couple of times we watched merlins bombing across the field and then they would disappear. Just as we would wonder where the merlin went, Todd would radio a few seconds later that a merlin passed his net twice and moved on. Those tiny falcons make speed look so effortless.

As the morning wore on, the chances of getting any birds looked bleak. While watching a shin that was totally ignoring us, a harrier made a sneak attack from behind the blind and dove down on the pigeon. Fortunately, Rick is always ready to pounce was able to prevent the harrier from getting the pigeon. He harrier had no intent of going into the net, it was very much trying to get the pigeon inside this strange fence. It just didn't realize humans were that close. We debated about what time to close the blind--noon? I said we should stay until 12:30pm, something good was going to come. Well, we noticed some snipe moving through (that's something). One landed fairly close to the blind, so Frank and I thought we would head over to get a shot. We were wandered for about twenty minutes. Rick came out to join us. We looked up and a merlin flew low right above us. We were all too far from the blind and totally missed it. Doh! We walked back to the blind and debated if it was time to close shop. When we were about ten feet from the blind, Frank shouted, "Peregrine!"

I set my scope behind the blind and darted in. Rick just made it to the pigeon line and pulled, Frank whispered to freeze. I saw the large, dark bird approach from the north, it was set and made a beeline for the pigeon. The peregrine made the decent from a low angle and then dropped it's feet like a red-tail would--we call this lowering the landing gear. Usually peregrines do not do this, so it was interesting to see. Two seconds later the bird hit the nets and Rick exploded out of the blind (a peregrine got away from him the weekend before, he wasn't letting this one go).

There she is--and it's another tundrius peregrine falcon, like Peregrine 568. You can tell by this young bird having a light blond head. Other young peregrines like anatums will have a dark head. She was unbanded and tundrius peregrines come from way up north on the tundra, she could be from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (you know that place where Michele Bachmann said there's no trees and wildlife).

So, I wasn't just talking out of my butt when I told Frank and Rick that we should stay until 12:30pm because something good was coming. All told, for two days of waiting, we got in only 3 birds. But they were quality birds. A red-tailed hawk and a peregrine falcon are great birds to watch fly in. As a matter of fact, I've never watched a peregrine fly in. I've seen them after they were trapped--usually at Todd's net but never got to watch the full flight in. It was pretty awesome. I'm looking forward to making another trip. I'm hoping October will be a busier month than September, but not all years can be epic days of bird after bird flying in.

And just one more photo because she's so beautiful!

Fall Banding At Carpenter

The warblers are just drippin' off the trees in Minnesota. We had a great day of banding on Friday at Carpenter Nature Center. Note this palm warbler giving itself a scratch in among the autumn leaves. Again, I have to say that the color at Carpenter is peaking right now, and it is a GREAT time to visit.

One of this first birds in the nets was this male American redstart. This was one of the easier birds to id--looks kinda like a miniature oriole.

Some were more challenging--even in hand. Here's a magnolia warbler.

I missed this, but my buddy Larry sent over a photo of a Wilson's warbler that someone banded.

A surprise thrush of the day, was this Swainson's thrush...didn't they just arrive, I feel like I was just listening to these guys sing as they were migrating north through my neighborhood. After I downloaded my photos onto my computer, I noticed the weird little spot behind the thrush's eye. I zoomed in on iPhoto, and I think those are ticks.

Here's a little bit closer view--and a shot of the bird's nictitating membrane (extra eyelid that protects a bird's eye in flight or while eating). Man, I'm also just noticing how large this bird's eye is in relation to its head--it could give an owl a run for its money on big eyes.

We got in a plethora of vireos and normally this time of year, it's a bunch of red-eyed vireos, but didn't get any of those. But seemed like we were getting anything but. The above bird just confused me. It had a bunch of yellow, so I thought "Ah, Philadelphia vireo!" Alas, no, it's a warbling vireo. That's a vireo I just don't pay that much attention to, the first time I really worked to get a look (you tend to hear them more than see them) I was rewarded with a really drab gray bird. But they can have some splashes of yellow--these are the birds that some birder's describe saying, "If I could seize one, I would squeeze one, and I'd squeeze it 'til it squirts." Not sure what exactly it wants to squeeze or what that birder had on his mind when they made that one up.

Now, here is a Philadelphia vireo--the yellow goes down the chest. We got in a few of these.

And then we got in a dazzling yellow-throated vireo. Not a bad day of banding.

Fantastic Banding At Mr. Neil's

Quick notes first:

My buddy Amber can be seen in an odd photo I took of a Mandrake Carrot at Lorraine's blog and Mr. Neil's blog. Rumor has it that the MC is working it's way towards our home for a sacrifice to the great Disapproving Rabbit.

Tea and Food linked my Chicken of the Woods post. I have not found any in the usual places this year. I think it's been too dry. I'm worried about not finding my all time fave wild edible - Hen of the Woods. But that's one of the reasons wild food is such a delight when it happens, you just never know for sure if you'll have it.

Sunday was the day I always knew we could have at Mr. Neil's. I always knew there was great banding potential and great things to be learned. I've asked Mark and Roger to band and they've been out a couple of times and we've gotten some birds, but nothing like this past Sunday. It was good timing with the migration and placement of the nets.

We had some nets set up around the feeders and another set down in the woods near the creek (but far from the beehives). The nets were so busy around the feeders that after we got birds out, we would furl the nets up so we could quickly process the birds we had. I think we banded a total of 53 birds on Sunday.

The most common species banded that day? Goldfinches! I'll have to double check Roger's report, but I think he said they banded a total of 27 goldfinches? It was insane around the feeders, they would unfurl the nets and in less than 3 minutes, there would be 6 goldfinches. These are fun to band and I noted some things that banders look at when a bird is in hand. Notice the rough and beat up look of the primary wing feathers? Those are older feathers that have been worn with use. Then notice how some are fresh looking and not too beat up.

You can do this with all birds and Mark's research with banding is the aging of down and hairy woodpeckers based on feather replacement symmetry and wing feather color. According to his research, you can age a downy or hairy up to four years. Next time you see a downy or hairy woodpecker on your feeder, take a minute to look at the wings. Sometimes, you'll notice that some of the wing feathers will be brownish instead of black--that's all part of Mark's aging system.

At one point, we had so many birds in the feeder nets that Mark and Roger told Amber and I bag only non banded birds, any birds that already had a band, we were to note the number and let it go. A could were found and Mark and Roger were able to figure out if it was banded last spring or fall. I took out the above goldfinch and noticed right away that the band was on the right foot--we normally put it on the left. I assumed that this was probably a bird they let me band last fall and spring when I was still learning and somehow managed to put it on the wrong foot. I read off the number. Mark and Roger looked at each other and said, "Bag it!" Turns out, this banded goldfinch was not banded by Mark and Roger--it wasn't wearing one of their assigned bands! This is the type of excitement that banders live for. It's exciting to get any of your birds recovered and get the data, but to get someone else's bird is just as exciting. The bird had a brood patch (meaning she's nesting nearby). The band looked fairly new...is someone nearby banding birds? Or did she get banded this past spring and did she travel a good distance? Mark and Roger are going to submit the band number to the Bird Banding Lab and we'll have to wait and see on the results.

UPDATE: We now know where that finch came from!

It will be interesting to note how many banded goldfinches will stick around--27 is a lot of finches. But towards the end of the day, Amber and I were noticing non banded finches at the feeder--how did we miss you? Finches do wander in the winter, but I'll be keeping an eye out for them at the feeders--and for one with the right foot banded.

The feeder nets were pretty hoppin' but we also had the nets in the woods. Mark and Roger could hear LOTS of birds in the woods, but they were high in the canopy and we weren't sure if they would come down. We got one bird right away--recognize the species? I wasn't too surprised to find it in the nets, they have nested near where the nets were placed. It's an ovenbird!

The ovenbird is the species that goes "teacher teacher teacher" in the woods. I got some footage of Mr. Neil's ovenbird earlier this year. Here's the link to that blog entry. I doubt it's the same bird, but nice to know some are still here this week.

As Amber and I were taking in the beauty of the ovenbird, Amber and I took note of the feathers on the back...hm, kind of olive...

...kind of like the olive feathers found stuck to the toes of a sharp-shinned hawk at Frank's banding station the day before. I have to say that if I were a sharpie, I would target an ovenbird--that's one beefy warblers. They are chunky and feel like they would fill you up a lot better than some tiny yellow-rumped warbler.

The ovenbird is a brown bird, but they do have that crazy rusty cap on their heads and it's a bird that you rarely get to see from the top down and it was fun to just take in every nook and cranny of the feathers. After the ovenbird, the woods net wasn't getting any traffic. We could hear warblers and vireos passing overhead, but couldn't get them down. I started to think about how Hawk Ridge uses owl calls to bring in birds for owl banding in the fall. Why not try that on Mr. Neil's property? Territory song will not work this time of year, but some chip notes would work. I grabbed my iPod and iMainGo Speaker. BirdJam has a new warbler playlist that not only has tracks of songs, but tracks of chip notes for each warbler species. I also have Cornell's Voices of North American Owls which has each type of owl call for every North American species on individual tracks. So, I made a quick mobbing playlist: a single eastern screech owl trill followed by chip notes of a few warbler species I know could be found in Mr. Neil's woods. The whole playlist lasted less than two minutes. I hung my iPod near the nets and walked in the woods a bit with Amber. We walked back to the nets:

A northern waterthrush! It was so strange to see this bird in hand being so still. When you see them along creeks, they are always bobbing their tails like little Fergies.

It was a good chance for me to really work on telling northern waterthrushes from Louisiana waterthrushes. This one is for sure a northern because of the yellowish wash and the spotting on the chin. The only other way I did it before was with song, having them in hand is a chance to hone your id skillz.

We tried the playlist once more and when Amber and I returned to the net, we saw a flycatcher perched just in front of the net. It looked young and we tried walking towards it to see if it would flush into the net. It flew over, but the reason why it flushed was that another bird was already in the net--a great crested flycatcher! After Amber took this guy out of the net and walked it back to the banding table, the other flycatcher kept following us. I think it was a young bird wondering what was going on with its parent, but without DNA tests, can't know for sure.

This bird is a beauty. They are also cagey as all get out, I always have a tough time digiscoping these dudes and was surprised we got one in the nets. Check out all the yellow on the belly and along the wings.

And where the bird is brown, it's not just regular brown, it's a beautiful rust. These birds are cavity nesters and I have seen them use a Peterson bluebird box. Periodically, birdhouse manufacturers will try to make great crested flycatcher houses but they never seem to catch on. I think there's a block. When people think flycatcher, they thing drab brownish gray. Wouldn't you love to have a dynamite looking bird like this--and like bluebirds, they're insectivores!

Even the inside of their beaks are colorful. These guys are known for their loud "reep, reep" call. This guy gave a much whinier version of that. He also snapped his bill a few times, similar to what an owl does when threatened. Just a cool insect eating bird all around.

Alas, we tried our mobbing playlist two more times and the birds seemed to have figured us out. "Hey, did you notice that screech owl trills the exact same way every time? Hmm, and did you notice that when it's mobbed, the same birds go in the same order, never overlapping each other...call me bird brained, but that is suspicious." Even though we didn't get huge amounts of birds, we got some awesome birds. I'm going to definitely watch the ovenbirds that nest around there next spring and see if either of the pairs are banded.

Weekend Banding Extravaganza Part 1

Non Birding Bill went away to New York for the weekend and I found myself a bachelorette for a few days. I had some plans for songbird banding at Mr. Neil's on Sunday, but called my buddy Amber and asked if she wanted to go up for the day on Saturday to Frank's to band hawks and then come back on Sunday to band songbirds. She was game and I was glad for the good company. I was a touch worried that I had jinxed our banding weekend. I dropped NBB off at the airport at 4am on Friday, came home and fell asleep, missing Friday banding at Carpenter. I figured I would get in enough practice over the weekend. I worried with the few birds on Saturday that Sunday would be a bummer. I was wrong.

We got in a couple of sharp-shinned hawks. It's still a bit early in the season, but a slow day in a hawk blind is better than a great day in the office. We didn't see huge amounts of hawks flying the skies but that left time for jokes and witty witty repartee--not unlike the Algonquin Round Table, only substitute painful bird puns for witty repartee and waxy chocolate donuts, cheetos, and gas station coffee for martinis.

We got in a cute little female kestrel. It's always surprising when a kestrel comes into the nets--they're about the same size as the bait pigeon and it's surprising that they think prey that size is a good idea. She was a passage (hatched this year) bird, so perhaps she's still trying to figure out what is sensible prey.

After she was banded and released she landed on a spruce. A second female kestrel (on the left) landed on a spruce near her. I wonder if these two were in the same nest this past summer? The bird we released started preening her. Amber's boyfriend says that the birds are muttering, "Damn greasy primates!" after having been handled and banded. The second kestrel soon followed suit, even though she had not been banded. She was cute, she kept rubbing the top of her head on the spruce top--a great way to scratch those itchy feather shafts.

One of the sharp-shinned hawks that flew in had just hunted successfully. Te toes were covered with blood and had a couple of feathers still stuck to them. The feathers were a bit olive. Amber and I were trying to suss out what the prey could have been--warbler, sparrow? We think we figured it out during the next day's songbird banding.

We stayed until about 4pm, only three birds had been banded up to that point--2 sharp-shinned hawks and a kestrel. I'll be back up later this season--hopefully with photos of goshawks.

Marathon Birding & Banding Weekend

Just came off from a wild weekend of banding. I'm feeling as rough as this mid-molt robin looks. We did a little bit of hawk banding and a whole lotta songbird banding. Here is a tiny video of a kestrel that we got into the nets. She was very fascinated with my purple nail polish:

Skywatch Friday & Carpenter Nature Center

It's Skywatch Friday again and I was out at Carpenter Nature Center this morning and thought I'd get a shot of sky. The sky was crisp and blue. And though it's a lovely shade of blue, when put in the blog, it looks more like I just placed a blue box in the post. It needs some accents. Since there were no clouds to oblige, I had to work with earthly accents.

How about some goldenrod? I think this is the start of my favorite time of year at Carpenter. In late summer and early fall the prairie comes alive with color of yellows, reds, greens...

The asters are starting to burst open to. The purple itself is fine, but add a touch of that gorgeous blue sky is all part of the pallet.

And it's not just the flowers, monarchs and swallowtails are nectaring on every blooming thing. This is a giant swallowtail on a a thistle. Note that sea of goldenrod capped off with a beautiful blue sky in the background. At Birds and Beers last night, I had a conversation with bird banders Roger and Mark about goldenrod fields and all the birds that lurk in them this time of year. They mentioned how many warblers are down in them. We had a net up in a goldenrod/sumac/dogwood field at Carpenter this morning and it was our most active net.

We got in a couple of Wilson's warblers (or WIWA according to the American Ornithologists' code) like the bird above and a Nashville...and oodles of flycatchers. Flycatchers just kind of take the wind out of my sails when banding. We get both alder and willow flycatchers in Minnesota and telling them apart this time of year (when they aren't singing) involves algebra (that's not an exaggeration). What heck kind of sadist has to ruin birding with math. I always feel like Tom Hanks in A League of their Own: "There's no math in birding! There's no math in birding!"

Here a second Wilson's. It's so buttery yellow--you can imagine how well it would hide in those goldenrod fields while gleaning insects off the flowers.

Check out the bottoms of the WIWA's foot--it's super yellow. Warblers are just cool from head to toe.

We did have a rather interesting chickadee show up-- it was missing a foot! Fortunately, not the banded foot, so we were able to find out that we banded it last fall and it was healthy and had two feet when it was first banded. Wonder what happened? Did the toes freeze off over the winter? Did the bird fly into a window, injure its foot, resulting in a severe infection that caused the toes to fall off? Did it get bumblefoot?

Another surprise was finding a goldfinch incubating two eggs this late in August. I know goldfinches nest late, but this seems really late for Minnesota. Will be interesting to watch its progress over the next few weeks.

Birding the Minnesota & South Dakota Border

Don't worry, this post isn't all shorebirds.

On a Friday I was watching these little semi-palmated plovers squabbling on a beach and then the very next day, I'm watching them on a mud flat in western Minnesota...

And getting prickly pear cactus paddles stuck on my leg--owie. Yes, we do have a couple of cactus species growing in Minnesota, you can see them at Big Stone NWR. I went with Stan Tekiela and a group from Staring Lake Outdoor Center in Eden Prairie. These are fun, low key trips where we see some great birds...

...and local color like the Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota (if you're wondering if this is the famed ball from Weird Al Yankovic song, it is).

We also stopped at the headwaters of the Minnesota River. Which was chock full of American white pelicans.

They were fishing right at the dam--I think I have a video of it, I'll see if I can dig it out of the external drive and load it later today. These were some urban birds. They did not care about us coming too close at all.

Usually white pelicans around the state are a bit cautious of humans, but these dudes just didn't care.

The fishing must be that good...and hopefully not too polluted right at the headwaters, unlike some of the other parts.

I got a kick out of seeing a band on one of the pelicans, perhaps this is a bird that I banded? If I didn't do it, I'm sure it's part of that same colony, it's very close to the Minnesota Headwaters.

We were hoping to find some shorebirds while we were out here, since Amber and I went on the shorebird workshop and had a great time last year. The weather had not been as cooperative this year. There was a big storm a few days before we arrived and all the prime mud flats were now ponds--not the best stopover for migrating shorebirds. We did find some like the least sandpiper above. The storm damage was incredible. The locals said there were 80 mile an hour winds and it showed in shredded corn fields, barns missing chunks of roof, and LOTS of trees down.

We went to Salt Lake right on the Minnesota/South Dakota border and found more shorebirds there like the Wilson's phalaropes (and lone pectoral sandpiper) in the above photo. It had the best and most accessible variety of shorebirds on the trip including short-billed dowitcher and stilt sandpipers.

This group wasn't all about shorebirds either, and we found black terns and a single Forster's tern (above).

The big stars of the show for the group was the massive amount of swallows around Salt Lake. I tried to get a video of this, but it's so windy and shaky that I think people would get motion sickness if I put it up on YouTube. But see this little section of swallows, it went on for as far as you could see the fence line. There were literally hundreds of swallows of various species. We found bank, barn, tree, cliff, and northern rough-winged swallow all hanging out and staging on the fence.

There was also a family group of savannah sparrows on the fence too. They appeared to have one fledgling with them--go native sparrows! Squeeze in one more brood before you migrate south!

We were seeing quite a few flickers as well and there was a family group with some fledgling flickers too. Young flickers begging always throw me. Yesterday, I was biking a different trail and I heard some begging at first I thought it was a raptor begging, until I saw the young flickers. I have to say, if you are in the Twin Cities and like to bird and bike--the Cedar Lake Trail is GREAT right now. I can't believe the diversity of species right on the edge of downtown. I found a fledging red-shouldered hawk, an adult Cooper's hawk, a pileated woodpecker, red-eyed vireo, indigo bunting and I got dove at by a male bluebird guarding his nest box--it wasn't my fault, someone put the bluebird box right next to the bike trail. It was also encouraging to see another species going for the gold with a late nesting.

Now, I just need to find a way to attach my spotting scope to my bike handle bars so I can digiscope--then I'll be unstoppable!

Banded American Oystercaters

While birding at South Beach in Cape Cod last week, we found some banded American oystercatchers. Above is number 52. At first, I was going to enter its information to the Bird Banding Lab (where one typically submits found band numbers), but the yellow tags with fairly easy to read numbers usually means there's a specific study. Sure enough, I went to google, entered "banded oystercatcher" and found AMOY Banding--someone is doing a specific oystercatcher study! Based on the yellow bands, I was able to figure out that this bird was banded in Massachusetts. I submitted my siting and today got this info from Shiloh Schulte of the Zoology Department of North Carolina State University :

"The bird you saw was banded on South Monomoy as a chick in July 2004. This bird overwinters on the west coast of Florida near Cedar Key. This is the first report of the bird on the breeding grounds since the year it hatched. Reports like yours really help us understand how oystercatchers move and use habitat throughout the year. Please let us know if you see more bands!"

Looking over my photos, I now see that more oystercatchers were banded, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to read the bands--at least three birds in the above photo are banded. So, if you see any oystercatchers, double check to see if they are banded. The colors are not just yellow, there's green, blue, red, and black as well.

Young Grosbeak

So, I'm in Rhode Island at the moment hanging at the Swarovski Headquarters. I'm eating lunch (real mashed potatoes, thank you very much, Swarovski Cafe) under a large crystal chandalier. Ah life. I'm giggling too because Non Birding Bill has just sent me a link to a limited edition Beverly Hills 90210 iPod Nano. But, if I download all the episodes, will I still have room for birdJam?

Check out this funky bird in hand that we got in at Carpenter Nature Center last Friday (boy am I behind on some blog entries or what. To those who are not as familiar with birds this might be a tad confusing but banding wise this was a fairly easy bird to figure out. We didn't have to debate too much with the Pyle over it. It's a hatch year male rose breasted grosbeak. Normally you have to look at feathers and see if they're truncate and fresh or relatively abraded, blah blah blah. But, because this dude looks like a female grosbeak with pink on the undersides of the wings, that tells us he's fresh from the nest and male.

It this upclose head shot you can see the gape at the corners of his beak indicating a young bird. Don't get me wrong, even though he's young, that beak is still quite capable of breaking the skin. Here's hoping he survives his first migration and visits us again next spring.

Okay, now back to looking at naked binoculars.

A Waxwing And Some Woodpeckers

Check out what we got in the nets on Friday at Carpenter Nature Center. No that's not a female cardinal tarted up with excessive eyeliner, that's a cedar waxwing. There are waxwings around Carpenter, and by their behavior, I'm sure they are nesting, but I am always too distracted to figure out where the nest is.

We were actually able to age this bird. Notice something missing? Check the wings--there's no "wax" on the wing. This is actually a second year bird (it hatched last summer). Waxwings do not get those red waxy tips until their second fall. The waxy tips are the result of a astaxanthin, a carotenoid pigment. We also had to measure the yellow tips on the tail--they are shorter in younger birds than they are in the adult birds.

Here's a female red-winged blackbird. These birds just look kind of like an overgrown sparrow when you see the flying around marshes, but they are quite pretty up close and in hand. Note that she also has reddish shoulder patches, similar to the male of the species.

The big excitement of the day was a male northern flicker in the net. You can tell he's male by his black mustache. I had actually just stepped outside with a male goldfinch that I had just banded and was thinking, "Oh, this would be a good picture for the blog, when I noticed something large in the net with a white rump. I immediately let the goldfinch go (we'll get more, so I can get a photo another day) and walked quickly to the nets.

The flicker started to fly and I noticed that it was actually on the other side of the net than I was on. Also, as it flew, I could see it was only caught by one foot. I heard more banders coming out of the building so I just reached through the net, and put my hand over the flick and secured it against my body. Our master bander, Jim Fitzpatrick got hold of the flicker on my side and I went to the other side of the net. In less than a minute, the flicker was out of the net, and Jim banded him.

The bird was a study in elegant design, beauty--not bad for an ant specialist. Check out the yellow feather shafts on the wing feathers that give this bird the old name "yellow-shafted flicker."

Check out that yellow when it flies.

Another interesting bird that came in was a recently fledged red-bellied woodpecker. It looks enough like a red-bellied woodpecker, but the red on the head is a little weird and doesn't match up with the coloration on males and females.

Another interesting bird that came in was a recently fledged red-bellied woodpecker. This bird just had a small red patch on the top of the head. So, we had to break out the Peter Pyle banding book to see if we could find a clear way to sex this bird. We could measure either the spikey part of the tongue, or the culmen--which is basically the upper mandible of the bird. Females have smaller culmens and tongue tips than males. We came up with female based on measurements.

I also pointed out the gape on the above bird. That's one way you can tell an immature bird in some species, that yellow corner on the bill. Keep your eye open for that with the birds that are showing up at your feeders.

Longevity

Took a little bit of a blogging break over the weekend. Non Birding Bill and I celebrated our ten year wedding anniversary. Always nice to reestablish the pair bond.

I had longevity on the brain on Friday, not only by anticipating the weekend, but because we got some old birds in the nets at Carpenter Nature Center. Normally, we'll get one or two retraps in a session and one of those birds might be a few years old, but this time we got in several older downy woodpeckers. There must have been something in the air:

A downy woodpecker originally banded 5-2-03 as an after second year bird was retrapped 5-30-08!

Another downy woodpecker originally banded on 11-14-03 as an after hatch year bird was retrapped on 12-19-03, 4-28-06 and 5-30-08.

A third downy woodepecker originally banded 11-5-04 and retrapped 5-30-08!

Though our oldest down on Friday was over seven years old and possibly a record for Carpenter, that's not the oldest down woodpecker. According to the Bird Banding Lab, the oldest downy woodpecker on record was eleven years old and eleven month.

My Life As A Part Time Park Ranger

So, in April, I got a part-time job as a park ranger for the Mississippi River and it is a great time! I work primarily at the Mississippi River Visitor's Center at the Science Museum of Minnesota but I do get a chance to get out in the field. Last week, a group of staff went canoeing along the Vermillion Bottoms. What a joy to canoe in spring and get to know some of the people who work for the parks like the Historian, Botany Bob, and Rock Girl (nicknames all based on their areas of expertise--although Non Birding Bill said that we sounded like some sad band of super heroes: "The Historian and Birdchick canoe the river using their magical interpretation skills to save the people!")

I had a great time, the birding was fantastic. I couldn't really take my digiscoping equipment in the canoe, but still could watch the birds. Above, you might notice a bright yellow spot in that pile of brush--that was one of about eight prothonotary warblers we saw. You can't really tell it from the photo, but we could see them very well with the naked eyes. We heard parulas (and other warblers), had a flock of caspian terns fly over, saw one sandhilll crane, lots of eagles and I was totally surprised to see a flock of common nighthawks hawking for insects above our heads. I figured these normally nocturnal birds were mid-migration and very hungry.

We stopped for bit and had lunch along the river. We were there at least thirty minutes and a few of us snuck off into the woods to...see a man about a horse. As I was working my way back, I heard a strange noise right about where the above photo was taken. I pished a few times and a few seconds later a HUGE turkey hen burst out of the grass...almost causing me to relieve myself on the spot. All of us should have noticed a turkey lurking in the grass during lunch...unless she was totally hunkered on a nest. I walked over to where she burst forth:

There were the eggs. Poor thing must have been terrified when we pulled up our canoes and started eating. We had finished our lunch so we packed up as quick as we could and left to give her a chance to come back to her nest of fourteen eggs.

You do see quite a bit of litter along the river, one of the most disturbing piece we found was this two liter bottle of 7-Up filled to the brim with used hypodermic needles. EW!

Canoeing isn't the only thing I've been up to. The week before the canoeing, I got to go out and follow along with some of the eagle banding happening along the Mississippi River.

Even though the bald eagle is off the endangered species list, it's a good idea to keep tabs on them. Because they are so high on the food chain on the river, the researchers are using the eagles as an indicator species--if something is affecting them, it's eventually going to affect the humans. The birds all have a bit of blood drawn that's DNA tested and also checked for pollutants. Because the research is still going on, I can't give all the details at the moment...but it does make me want to be a bit more choosy about what part of the river I would eat fish from.

Check out those eagle toes! I will say that it was fun to work with big birds in my banding comfort zone as opposed to those teeny warblers.

Professional tree climbers from out west were brought in to get the eagle chicks out of the nest. It was way cool to watch them work. They used a crossbow with an arrow and string attached. Once the arrow made it over an appropriate branch, a climbing rope was added and then the guys would climb the rope into the trees. It was impressive to say the least.

It was interesting to notice the animals living the trees with the eagle nest. One tree had an oriole nest a few feet away. Above, a guy from the DNR was measuring the circumference of the nest tree when he shouted, "Hey, there's something nesting in here...and it's furry." He didn't want to stick his hand in, so I gave him my camera to stick in the hole and snap a photo:

At first, we weren't sure what they were. I wondered if they were otter, but if you look at the back paws, that gives them away. Do you know? They're baby raccoons--prey, right in the base of a tree with an eagle nest!

There have been requests to see the park ranger uniform:

If you're thinking "Wow, a badge and a cool hat--that's gotta be fun!"

It is.

If you're at the Science Museum, stop in and say hello.

Carpenter Banding In May

We had a great sampling of birds come into the nets on Friday...and lots of people came to enjoy the beautiful day outdoors and watch what we do at Carpenter Nature Center. I have finished my banding class and am an official apprentice--with a certificate. I'm not sure what I will eventually do with this, my primary goal was just to be a better volunteer for Carpenter and I really do feel so much better taking birds out of nets and processing them now--even birds like Bitey McBitersons in the above photo (Bitey McBitersons is the lesser known folk name of the quick to nip northern cardinal). The little boy in the above photo is Aaron. He and his mother followed us around and Aaron was a big help to me--when we would have several birds in the nets, I would put them in bags and he helped carry the bags back to the processing station. Several bags of chickadees, sparrows, and warblers can be heavy. It's always nice to encounter a helpful gentleman in the field--thanks, Aaron!

Check out the awesomeness that is the clay-colored sparrow! Drink in its brown and gray goodness. We had two come into the nets just about a foot from each other. I suspect it was some territorial chasing on their part. Okay, now note the bill of the clay-colored sparrow above. Now, check out the second one below:

It had some kind of nasty gunk on the tip. I wondered if it had foraged and got some mud on the tip or if it had been eating some old berries that crusted up the tips or what was going on. The bird appeared otherwise to be very healthy.

A big highlight of the day was this female Canada warbler. Even though she's not as bright as the male, she is a very striking bird. Another highlight was a chickadee that was already banded. When we looked up its banding number, we discovered that the female chickadee was first trapped and banded in January 2003 and at that time she was in her second year. Think of that--a six year old female chickadee still going strong. Incredible!

Common yellow throats were probably the most common warble we got in the nets. I just love these guys up close. As we were getting birds out of the nets, I didn't have my binoculars or my digiscoping equipment with me, guaranteeing that something super cool would fly by--and it did. A red-tailed hawk with a snake! At first, I thought it was a falconry bird with jesses and a leash hanging down (Jim said some falconers had been by recently tracking a "lost" red-tail, but that bird did not have a leash, just two jesses, or leather anklets attached). Another Carpenter volunteer was smart and had his binoculars handy and could see that it was, in fact a snake. What was strange was that the red-tail disappeared in the trees with the snake and about ten minutes later reappeared and just kind of hung in the air with the snake hanging behind it. The hawk didn't appear to be in any rush to get it to a nest or land and eat it, just kind of slowly grabbed a thermal and glided along. I later asked my buddy Amber if she had any idea why the red-tail would appear to be carrying the snake around, almost as if flying with a type of trophy, showing it off. That's not a smart thing to do, if anything it kind of advertises to other predators to come and steal your food. She wondered if the adult red-tail had young in the nest and it was about time for them to leave and it was advertising the snake to get them to fly out and learn to hunt on their own? That seems very plausible, but once again, birds leave me with more questions than answers.

What I Missed At Carpenter Today

I may be at the World Series of Birding. I may even be feeling a little high on my horse because I got to see a wood sandpiper today. However, Larry Sirvio just emailed over his photo of what came into the banding nets at Carpenter Nature Center this morning:


Arrrgh. I am just pea green with envy! Great photo, Larry!

From White-throats To White-Crowneds

This has to be a quick and dirty post, I have an early flight in the morning.

This morning while at banding class at Carpenter Nature Center, I looked around and everyone had a white-crowned sparrow like the above bird in their hands, a little different from the white-throated sparrows a couple of weeks ago.

We did get in one male yellow-rumped warbler. It's still a tad chilly here and the insects are not out in full force so the insect eating birds are still having to improvise. One male yellow-rumped warbler was foraging on the ground at one of the feeding stations. As I watched, a downy woodpecker flew in and began pecking on the suet cage. As the downy pecked, tiny pieces of suet fell to the ground and the warbler would scurry to snarf up the suet scraps.

I was painfully pinched by a female cardinal today. The funny thing was that she was barely caught in the nets. When I walked over to retrieve her, she clamped down on a tiny piece of flesh on my inner hand (worst pinch I've ever had--owie) and pretty much rolled out. Had she not clamped down on my hand, she probably would have easily gotten herself out of the nets. Above, Erin is banding her. She had the genius idea of letting the cardinal bite the bag, while she placed a band on her foot. The cardinal is actually holding the hole bag in her mouth above the ground--that's some bite.

We got in a couple of interesting sparrows too. Above is a field sparrow--check out that pink beak!

And here's a Lincoln's sparrow, migration is really kicking in. Speaking of migration, have you seen the story that scientists may have cracked the bird navigation code?

And now I must go to sleep. Tomorrow I head for Cape May and The World Series of Birding. I don't know what's my favorite part: saying that I'm going to the World Series of Birding or that I'm on the Swarovski Digiscoping Team. And at some point I'm going to have to tell you guys about the rules for this thing...and the handy warbler study aid I've been using from birdJam. I kid you not, thanks to birdJam, I now have a playlist that consists of nothing but warbler chip notes.

Spring Bird Banding Around Mr. Neil's

It's been interesting to watch the bird movement at Mr. Neil's. With all the bee installation going on, Non Birding Bill and I spent a few days to make sure the bees were enjoying their new digs and to watch some bird. We put the bees in Thursday and on Sunday, Mark and Roger were coming back to do a bit more bird banding. Friday was rainy and cold, lots of birds were coming to the suet including a few pine warblers, the one above (this bird showed up about the same date last year). Even a black and white warbler showed up--Sunday's banding potential seemed immense.

Saturday, the weather was chilly, but the sun was out and I could hear new bird song. One thing I do love about spring is waking up, hearing a bird song and realizing that I had not heard that song the day before. These birds had just arrived overnight. Over a morning cup of coffee saw the first rose-breasted grosbeaks in Mr. Neil's yard.

Not long after that, a pair of orioles showed up and stayed around the feeders all day. Even though it was a male and female, they did not tolerate being on the oriole feeder at the same time--they fought over it quite a bit. I put out both an orange and grape jelly, they totally ignored the orange and went straight for the jelly. The brush pile was chock full of sparrows, they looked like mostly white-throated sparrows. Pine warbler, rose-breasted grosbeaks, white-throated sparrow, orioles--this banding session was going to be colorfully unbelievable!

Not so much, as evidenced with Ms. Brown-headed Cowbird. Actually, I shouldn't say that--it was awesome as always--it was banding and I always learn something, we just didn't get the birds that thought we would.

We did get in both red-breasted and white-breasted nuthatches. I love in the above photo that the red-breasted puffed up a tad when confronted with a larger white-breasted. The red-breasted did have a brood-patch and I have been seeing a pair sticking around. Between that and some excited yanking calls, I have a suspicion that the red-breasted are nesting nearby.

Here is the titmouse from the earlier contest. That was a treat for Mark and Roger, they don't get too many of those where they normally band birds, so something new pecking at your knuckles is always fun.

A surprise in the nets were a pair of mourning doves. We had been using the back entrance of the house, and while I was in there indulging in a cinnamon roll, I noticed to doves on the ground. I wondered if I went out the front door if they would flush towards the nets. Yep. It was a pair too and we were able to sex them by plumage. Above is the female.

And here is the male. Note that he has some blue on the top and back of his head--the female doesn't have that.

Another fun surprise was a pair of blue jays. We did get in a steady stream of birds Sunday morning, so I was not able to get all the info about the birds, I was busy helping to get them out of the nets. But my friend Amber got some great shots of them flying away.

We did get one warbler. This yellow-rump filled the quota for the day. It was interesting to note that while the nets were up, no pine warblers or Baltimore orioles showed up. Grosbeaks serenaded us from the tops of the trees and when they did fly into the feeders, they had a knack of flying in a line just above the nets--clever birds.

Out of the 40 odd white-throated sparrows in the brush pile, we only got one in the net. This bird is fine. Sometimes, when you finish banding a bird and open up your hands to let it go, they don't quite realize that they're free and just rest for a moment. All it usually takes is for the bander to twitch his fingers or for an observer to cough, sneeze, or move suddenly and the bird takes off like a shot.

We did get in quite a few chickadees. One was a retrap that Mark and Roger banded last fall. What was interesting was that they were unable to determine the sex of the bird last fall, but this time the bird had a brood patch (a bare patch of skin used to incubate eggs, in some species just the female has it--like chickadees, and in other species both males and females have it--like nuthatches). So, since the chickadee had the brood patch, she was female. The chickadees have taken over a bluebird box in the front yard. I'll have to watch and see if one of them is banded.

At about noon and over thirty banded birds later, the guys took the nets down. And what species was one of the first to show up to the feeders? The pine warbler, of course. The orioles never did show up again all day. Roger suspects that they were just passing through and that the previous nights winds pushed them north. Ah well, more will be coming soon.

I spent the rest of the afternoon practicing my digiscoping for the World Series of Birding this coming weekend (boy, I was just going over the rules for that--that's a blog entry). Amidst all the white-throated sparrows and chipping sparrows in the brush pile, I was surprised to find a field sparrow! Wonder where this bird came from? I don't normally find these guys around the yard, I hope it stays, I love that call.

Migration Floodgates Opened At Carpenter Nature Center

We had so many birds fly into the nets today (like the Nashville warbler above) at Carpenter Nature Center that I did not have a chance to document them all. I really felt more like a helper today as opposed to someone under foot. It was awesome, I was getting birds out nets--even uber challenging ones, I was using my Pyle book and my Pyle dichotomous key and even understanding it to age and sex birds--it was just sweet. Hey, Peter Pyle, have I thanked you lately for making the words "truncate" and "abraded" part of my daily vocabulary? Perhaps next time I get my hair done I will tell my stylist Rachel, "I would like the bangs fresh and truncate and the back to be tapered and relatively abraded with pale to buffy edging."

You can see his little rusty feathers on his crown. Migration was in full swing, as I was taking birds out of the nets I could hear red-eyed vireos singing and Jim Fitzpatrick, our instructor could hear a towhee.

And eventually it was trapped and banded. Jim said that he thinks this eastern towhee may be a first time banded bird for CNC--he got to do the honors of banding this bird. It was an exciting bird to see up close. This particular male's eyes were not bright red, but more of a rust.

Check out how the eyes on this male perfectly matches the rufus on his flanks. Very cool bird. Just as we stepped out to let the towhee go, he made a few odd squealing sounds and from the nearby woods we heard an uncertain, "Towhee?" Jim and I looked at each other--there was another towhee was in the woods. We let him go and he flew in the direction of the towhee call. What a bonus bird.

A surprise today were two clay-colored sparrows. My fellow classmate Sue heard them out on the prairie but we didn't expect them in the nets. Two came in at the same time in the same net, I wonder if this was related to mating? Two males chasing each other or a male in pursuit of a female?

I thought this was going to be my big challenge bird today--a female ruby-crowned kinglet. She was so tiny, it was like trying to get a dust bunny out of the nets. I took a deep breath, grabbed a toothpick to help remove the net tangled around the wings and got it out. Woof. I got her in the bag and eventually got to band her. She was so light, I decided to take her outside to band her. I wasn't used to banding such a tiny bird and chances were could that she could slip from my fingers in process. I thought it would be better to just have her fly away totally than get loose in the building and hit a window. All went well, I got the tiny band on her, measured her wings, and away she went.

But, she was not the most challenging bird of the day for me. It was this male rose-breasted grosbeak (he still has some of his brown juvenile plumage from last year--that made aging him a little easier). At one point we had several birds waiting to be processed but we hadn't checked the nets. I asked Jim what would be helpful, helping to band or doing a round to check the nets. He told me to check the nets and if there were several in one net to give a shout and someone would come out to help. I checked one net and there were four birds--including the grosbeak. We had been warned that grosbeaks and cardinals would bite the crap out of our fingers. I thought about saving the grosbeak for Jim and concentrating on the chipping sparrows, but I realized that I would have to learn on one of these sooner or later, might was well be now.

At first, I tried to hold him so that he couldn't reach my fingers as I tried to get him out of the net, but that just wasn't getting him free, so I changed my grip and she started to bite my hand. When he would get the entire tip of my finger in the grasp of that fat beak--it wasn't too bad, almost like being bitten by a sharp-shinned hawk. However, when he would use his beak to pinch and grab a tiny piece of skin...ZOWIE, that hurt. He also completely scraped off the nail polish on my index finger. But, I didn't have it so bad.

Fellow classmate Kelly worked to get a downy woodpecker out of the nets and he went after her fingers like Homer Simpson in a donut factory. Boy, that woodpecker seemed to know where to strike, right on the cuticle and along a knuckle. Downy woodpecker blood lust, who knew?

Kelly took her banding wounds in stride.

I ended my morning by banding a male brown headed cowbird. When he was in the net, he was incredibly docile, but as soon as I had him in the bag he freaked and was fluttering like crazy. Since cowbirds lay their eggs in the nests of other birds contributing to the decline of many species of birds including thrushes and warblers, it was tempting to do some experimental neutering on this male, I could not. The CNC permits only allow us to place a band on the birds and measure them, so I had to let him go.

The male cowbird really is kind of a striking bird up close. They filled an important niche when the bison roamed the prairie by following the large herds and eating the insects kicked up by the large animals. The traveler lifestyle isn't conducive to raising chicks, so they evolved over time to lay eggs in nests of other species of birds and those parents would raise their young. There aren't any herds to follow anymore, so the cowbirds follow the sedentary humans. One female cowbird depositing 60 eggs while following a herd of bison for miles and miles is one thing. One female cowbird depositing 60 eggs in a neighborhood can cause problems.

I have to admit that after spending the winter banding mostly juncos, I wondered how I would handle doing several species in one day, but I think I'm going to be fine. Can't wait to see what the rest of May brings and who knows, maybe by the end of summer I'll be ready for those difficult flycatchers.

Turning A Corner With Banding

Wednesday was a glorious 70 degree day and just a fun morning of banding--I'm finally getting my footing with getting birds out of the net. We got in quite a few white-throated sparrows like the bird above.

KARE 11 came back to film a few more shots for the bird segment they are working on. Jim Fitzpatrick is getting interviewed above. And once again, as I was trying to get a bird out of the net I heard, "Hey, hold still, we're coming over to film that!" Happily, there was no panic attack like last week. I ended up doing it twice and I really feel like a turned a corner in my learning process. I have to admit that after last week, I was questioning whether or not I should keep going--but thanks to some extra practice last Sunday and the patience and teaching of some of the other banders at Carpenter I feel like I'm back on track with little birds. The only thing I worry about is that I don't dress for tv when I'm banding at Carpenter, I tend to dress for comfort--ah well.

The most interesting bird that we got on Wednesday was the last bird in the traps--a junco (quite possibly the last junco I will band this spring). When I was taking it out of the bag, I could see that it had a pink rump. Closer inspection revealed that they were not pink feathers:

The bird was missing a large patch of feathers on its rump. It must have happened a couple of weeks ago, pin feathers are already growing above the tail. You could also see that in the middle of the pink skin was a healed over puncture wound. Something had attacked this junco and it survived! And it was still strong enough to migrate! At this point, the juncos we are getting at Carpenter are ones that spent the winter further south like in Missouri or Texas. Somewhere along the way, something tried to eat it. We made a note about the wound and it will be interesting to see if the junco is retrapped and how long it survives.

Here's a photo pointing out the growing feathers and the scabbed over wound. You can also see the uropygial gland also called the preen gland. They squeeze this gland and oil comes out that is used when preening. I wonder if this wound is from a shrike? Shrikes kill with their beaks? It could also have been a sharp-shinned talon too. I don't think it's from a cat, small animals usually don't survive that. Cats have a bacteria called Pasteurella that will infect the bite or claw wound and kill the small animal within a few days.

So many things learned at banding.

Trapped Squirrel

Sometimes squirrels get trapped in the Potter Traps for songbirds at Carpenter. We have to get them out, so I usually use a stick to open the door to avoid being inadvertently clawed. Today's squirrel was a little slow on the uptake:

Hairy Day Of Banding At Mr. Neil's

We tried to band and track some of the birds in Mr. Neil's yard on Sunday. Professional banders Mark Newstrom and Roger Everhart came out and set up some nets--just like they did last fall. Above is the first bird we banded--an eastern phoebe.

On the left is Roger and on the right is Mark. We were expecting a 70 degree day, but the morning started with fog and 37 degrees. Fabulous Lorraine, who is Mr. Neil's assistant was taking good care of us by keeping a steady flow of coffee our way--to keep us alert and warm.

What surprised me were the number of hairy woodpeckers we got in the nets on Sunday. Mr. Neil has a huge population of woodpeckers on his property--partly because he doesn't cut down and haul away every dead and dying tree. Some have to be removed for safety, but even when trees come down, some are left as huge fun brush piles. But, we had so many hairy woodpeckers come in, I lost count--I think we got in five. Above is the head of a female hairy woodpecker.



One of the things that the guys check for are brood patches. Above, Roger is blowing on the feathers of the female hairy, exposing a large patch of bare skin--females (and males of some species) get these to keep eggs warm during incubation and keep chicks warm on cold days. Speaking of which, Roger and Mark noted on this female that the skin was wrinkly. That tells them that she already has chicks at the nest! When the brood patch first forms--the skin swells for incubation. After incubation, the swelling goes away and the skin has wrinkles.

Here is one of the male hairy woodpeckers that came into the net (note that the sun did eventually come out). Are you noting the length of that hairy bill--that is one of the ways you can tell them from a downy woodpecker--hairys have longer bills. Speaking of length...

in the spring, you look for things like cloacal protuberances (aka bird boner). I know length isn't supposed to matter, but for a bird, this is impressive. When the hormones kick in, the cp swells and remains that way for a few weeks. Imagine having to fly around with that swollen for a few weeks. It must be hard to concentrate.

Here is the stiff tail of a hairy, you can see that the tips are stained from being used to prop the woodpecker up against the sides of trees.

Owie! We did get in a couple of female red-bellied woodpeckers. I was glad because this is Lorraine's favorite species.

Red-bellies have really cool tongues. Note above the hardened tip that is covered in sharp bristles that are used to spear and grab on to larvae inside dead trees. These birds can be a challenge in the net because their tongue bristles can get caught on the nets. You always have to be careful when taking birds out of the nets, but it gets really tricky with this species. One of the many reasons you need have permits and be well trained to band birds.

Speaking of training, Mark and Roger were very gracious and let me help so I could learn. Early on, I would start to get a bird out and then give it to them. Both showed me their techniques of getting birds out of the nets and towards the end of the morning, I was getting birds out (without shaking). They even let me practice my banding on a robin. I've been doing so many juncos, I needed the practice with a larger bird. Oh! I should mention that this female was VERY vocal. As we were taking a photo before she left, she was squawking and out of nowhere two male robins flew in and one almost hit me in the face! We let her go--my goodness, the dangers of banding.

Roger was excited to get to band a new bird species. Tufted titmice are not found in the area where he and Mark usually band birds. I had hoped last fall that they would get one, but did not. We did on Sunday and it's the same bird in the video posted earlier. I swear, this species head is 80% eyeball.

I was noting on Thursday that I was still seeing tree sparrows and no chipping sparrows yet. Well, that changed on Sunday, we got in quite a few chipping sparrows. It will be interesting to watch and see if the chipping sparrows keep heading north or will be the birds that nest here in summer.

We got in some white-breasted nuthatches, but no red-breasted. We saw at least three red-breasted nuthatches in the net, but each one managed to work their way through--perhaps because they are so tiny, which is odd because we got some last fall. I wonder if they were a tad fatter then?

My friends Amber and Reier came along and during a lull, Reier found a raccoon sleeping in a very large hole of a dead tree. He had hoped to find an owl but found the raccoon instead.

I think we banded close to 30 birds on Sunday morning--check out poor Roger's knuckles in the above photo--that's what comes from banding woodpeckers all morning. One of them actually drew blood! Although, he's holding a phoebe in the above photo--it almost looks like that bird did it.

Look at that sweet phoebe face, they wouldn't hurt anybody...well, except flies (being a flycatcher and all).

Check out this shot that Amber got of the eastern phoebe being released--what a great shot! I love how the bird's head is turned, almost as if giving her the perfect pose on purpose. It was a great day of banding and the guys will be back in a couple of weeks to try and get some warblers. Should be fun!

Spring Birds At Carpenter Nature Center

It was another action packed day at Carpenter Nature Center. Despite the big seasonal movement and warm temperatures, we didn't get huge amounts of birds. Above, some of the guys in the glass are playing with a spectrograph--there's always something scientific going on. At first they were just looking through it, but then Paul (in the pink shirt) tried to take a photo with his digital camera. Can we party or what!

Local weatherman Sven Sundgaard stopped by to film a bird segment for KARE 11. Jim Fitzpatrick (the guy teaching my banding class) is demonstrating how we band birds. I had a minor panic attack today. While they were filming a segment, a chickadee flew into the nets. I need practice getting birds out of the net and chickadees are one of the hardest birds to take out. They grab on to the net with both feet and do not let go. While you are trying to take the small ball of feathers out from entanglement, they peck at your fingernails--usually right where the nail meets the cuticle or between the nail and skin (if you're thinking "ow" you're thinking right).

I thought that I had it easy, since most everyone was over watching the filming, I could practice getting the chickadee out of the nets without everyone staring and making me nervous. After a few moments, fellow classmates Paul and Sue came to help--and I needed it. The wind kept blowing in and out of my face and Sue get reminding me to take deep cleansing breaths to stay calm. I almost had the chickadee out (and cuticles intact) when I hear a shout behind me. "Hey, Sharon, hold on, we want to film you getting the chickadee out of the net."

"Nooooooooo!" was my panicked response. Even though the bird was already mostly out, I could see that the net was twisted and I needed calm to get it out. However, the crew and group was around me before I knew it. Sue continued like a faithful Lamaze instructor, "deep cleansing breaths" but it was to no avail--my hands were shaking and no amount of being told, "Just calm down was going to help." The camera was on my fingers and even though I do tv segments all the time, that's me talking and doing things I'm 110% confident in. I'm still learning about banding and was just not ready for that audience. Sure enough, the bird fluttered and ended up tangled in the net again and I had Jim take over. Too much pressure. I know I'll get the hang of it like I got the grip down, but it's just going to take lots of practice.

But on to some of the other birds. We got in our first robin of the year. Someone else actually banded this bird, but I wanted to hold it for just a second. I have been handling tiny juncos all winter and I wanted to see what a big beefy bird like a robin would be like in my tiny hands--just fine. Whew.

We still have some juncos around. These are not the ones we've had all winter, those guys have already gone north. This one probably wintered in Missouri, Texas, or perhaps Illinois. One of the juncos I had was was missing a talon...or is it claw on a songbird...whatever it's called, the bird was missing a toenail. It looked like an old wound that was well healed over and the bird had adapted to it very well.

We did get in one fox sparrow--wow, this has just been fox sparrow week for me. They're at Staring Lake, they're at Mr. Neil's, they're pretty much all over the Twin Cities. Talk about a beefy sparrow--these guys are robust! And if you're wondering what the big deal is about this brown bird, check this out:

Look at those gorgeous rufus colors on the wings, rump, and tail. That's not just any brown, that's a special brown. Really, it is. Just soak in that reddish brown for a few minutes.

Like Sue says, "Deep cleansing breaths" breathe in the fox sparrow, breath out. Breathe it in, deep cleansing fox sparrow.

Non brown birds will be coming to the blog soon. I swear.

Junco Processing

I just got a call from my buddy Clay asking if I would be interested in being on the Swarovski Digiscoping Team at The World Series of Birding. Insert giant coffee spray through my nose here. Whoot! I am so excited, I've wanted to be on a World Series of Birding team since I was a kid. This means I'll see some kickin' birds, eat at Al's Pancake House, hang with WildBird on the Fly, and fulfill a childhood dream. May is going to be SO much fun! And after the heartbreak of dealing with taxes this week, I really need this.

Today was another day of banding chock full 'o juncos and not white-throated sparrows. I tell ya' right now, I'm feeling some confidence with a handful of junco, but in a few short weeks, all that comfort of aging and sexing will change to overwhelming and panic. Instead of a mono species day, it will be warblers, finches, flycatchers, chickadees, nuthatches, catbirds, and sparrows--just to name a few. Pile on top of that a whole new confusing criteria for aging and sexing. Yikes. But, while we have juncos, I thought I'd point out some of the things we look for when they are in hand. Above, we have a garden variety junco perched on top of a snag. It looks well put together, clean feathers in place.

But check out the tail of a junco I banded today. This is what Pyle might call "relatively abraded" when asked about the feathers on the tail. Think about watching juncos feed--they're on the ground, kicking stuff about looking for food--the tail is bound to experience some wear and tear. Depending on whether or not a junco has some fresh outer tail feathers or unmolted ones, we can get an idea of age (combined with other plumage differences).

We also use eye color as a means of aging. Younger dark-eyed juncos have gray eyes that get browner and eventually more red. This dude was fairly brown.

Now, here's something you don't want to hear from the person next to you when you have a bird in your hand, "Hey, is that avian pox on that bird's toe?" This bird had white dots on a toe on each foot. We weren't sure if it was avian pox or just some discoloration to this individual bird (any readers out there have any idea). We're not a rehab facility and the bird looked otherwise healthy so we released it after it was banded. Even though I can't really get avian pox and we weren't sure if it was pox, I didn't want to risk infecting other birds or bringing it home to my cockatiel, so I scrubbed my hands after I let it go.

Juncos With White Wing Bars

It was another big junco day at Carpenter Nature Center on Friday morning--we banded 56! I think I'm finally getting to a certain comfort level handling small birds. Of course, I have all sorts of stuff memorized about dark-eyed juncos--wing measurements to tell sex, eye color to determine age...soon it will be a whole new ball game with several new species.

While we were banding birds, a couple of people from The Raptor Center stopped by with an adult bald eagle to release--with a news crew in tow! Above, Al Rasmussen (on the left) is about to be handed a bald eagle he found injured on his property. The eagle was suffering from lead poisoning and had made a full recovery at TRC.

Here's Al releasing the bird. You can see the Fox 9 news crew behind him--I felt bad for the camera man. He had positioned himself about where I was so the sun would be behind us for a well lit shot. However, the on air talent that was with him insisted that he move to the other side...aiming the camera towards the sun. If you go to the Fox 9 website, you can see the video...and that the on air talent apparently didn't know where he was. He wrote that the eagle was release at the Eagle Center in Hastings. The Eagle Center is in Wabasha, the eagle was released at Carpenter. Oh, Fox 9, will you ever learn?

After the release, we went back to banding. I took a junco out of the net and noticed something funky right away with the wings. Funky is a color description in the Pyle book (the bird bander's bible), but looking at the bird, you could see that this junco had white wing bars. I grabbed a National Geographic Field Guide and found that there is a subspecies called the white-winged junco which has two wing bars and is a tad larger than a dark-eyed junco. The white-winged should have a #4 retrice (tail feather) that is white or almost white. This bird had an almost all white #4. It was on the large side and I thought I nailed it and felt proud of myself for using the Pyle book without beating my head against the wall.

Alas, this bird is very dark (and true white-wings are very light) and records for white-wings in Minnesota are few and far between. This bird may actually be a dark-eyed junco with white wing bars, but not a white-winged junco. Confused yet? It gets worse. Juncos used to be divided into five separate species (one being the white-winged) and are now lumped into one species (the dark-eyed junco) so it doesn't really matter--white-winged junco or just a junco with white wing bars--this is still a dark-eyed junco. But why do we need a subspecies of dark-eyed junco that has white wing bars called white-winged junco and yet also have just dark-eyed juncos with white wing bars that are not white-winged juncos? Oh crap, did I just make the universe implode again? The bird is under review and I'm going to go have a drink now. Ah well, this is what training is all about, right?

We heard purple finches singing around Carpenter and even watched a female flitting in the trees. Another woman who is in the banding class with me is named Erin and she caused one of my best belly laughs on Friday. She walked over to one of the ground traps and shouted, "Oh, hey, it's a house finch!" She stuck her hand inside the trap and then we heard, "Oooooooooooooooooooch!" The rest of us looked at each other and said, "Purple finch!" Even though house finches and purple finches look similar, there's much more bite in the large bill of the purple finch. Look at that above photo, he's ready to bite someone there.

Look at that raspberry coloration on the head--just drink that in for a moment--I kind of need that myself after the headache inducing junco. Breathe in the purple finch, breathe out the purple finch. In. Out. In. Out.

After we closed down the traps and nets at Carpenter, I nipped over to the Prescott railroad bridge to see some peregrine falcons. And I got a great shot of a peregrine butt (or should I say vent). The male and female both made a few passes at pigeons, so that was fun. I do have a question for the pigeons--seriously, you guys think that roosting and nesting as the same bridge as a peregrine falcon is a good idea? Really?

I also stopped at Point Douglas to check out the waterfowl. Above is a male redhead displaying to a female. Ah, duck love, beautiful and humorous all at once. I met a fellow birder who I know mostly through email. He was out on his lunch break watching the scaup. In Minnesota, we tend to get lesser scaup, but greater scaup are possible. However, telling them apart can be a bear.

I tried to see if I could pick out some greater scaup and thought I had, but my better duck photos are all of lesser scaup. But ducks are a good sign, that means the water is opening up and spring is really coming. It's so fun living here: Monday we get eight inches of snow, Friday it's sunny and 60 degrees.

Bluebird Splosion At Carpenter

Oh, we are getting into dangerous territory. The last few days have been sincerely spring-like in Minnesota: forty degree temps, sun, melted snow and lots of returning birds like the killdeer in the above. What typically happens here is that we will have a few days of this and out of the blue will come either a fourteen degree day or eight inches of snow which leads to extreme crankiness among the citizens.

I headed out to Carpenter Nature Center on Friday for a little extra banding practice. I'm finally starting to feel a bit more comfortable handling small birds. I reported on Wednesday that we saw a song sparrow around the traps but didn't get one in, well on Friday we got two in the traps (that's one in the above photo). Check out that massive central breast spot. I've been so used to juncos and chickadees, that this bird felt quite beefy and robust in my hand. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when it's my turn to do a larger bird like a blue jay or hairy woodpecker. I have small hands and am now used to tiny birds. I've done large birds like sharp-shinned hawks before, but you can't hold a blue jay the same way you hold a raptor. Oh well, that's what training is all about.

Since it was so nice and sunny, many of use walked outside. We could hear distant sandhill cranes overhead, a couple of meadowlarks and lots of eastern bluebirds (above). I followed a pair around the small prairie trying to get photos. The male was excited to show the female any nest cavity he could find. He showed her a bluebird house and then guided her over to an old snag with a few woodpecker holes. He perched atop the snag, excitedly singing as she tried to fit through the hole...alas, she was too large to slip inside--talk a dating disaster: "Honey, I've found a great place to raise a couple of kids! Oh wait, you're too big to fit inside? Awkward!"

I'm sure any man who has purchased the wrong sized clothing for their lady friend can relate.

The bluebirds were singing like crazy trying to decide on territory boundaries. A fight between at least three pairs broke out at one point and then a fourth female flew in for a total of seven bluebirds. They have such a pretty and subtle song, that it's hard to take it seriously when they fight.

I've been anxious to try out my Remembird on some bird songs. I got it in January and have loved it for its audio note taking ability but it also has a microphone for picking out bird songs. Even though the bluebird was some distance away, I was able to pick up his song with the Remembird You can hear it below. It's not professional but wow, did it do the trick. It's not loud, but to be able to record an unknown bird song that I can take home and compare with my iPod--this is fantastic. I can tell, that I'm going to be lovin' my Remembird during warbler season, this is a really cool tool for note taking in the field.

Wednesday

I just had a weird, weird Wednesday. First I read a headline on CNN about a high school teacher in trouble for using a banned book in her classroom. Curious about what backwards school system that was, I clicked on the link and discovered it was my old high school: Perry Meridian High School. And that the teacher in trouble was my old Speech and Drama teacher. You can read about it here. I remember that when I was in school I wore a shirt that read, "Celebrate Freedom: Read A Banned Book" and listed a bunch of classics that had been banned. How did I not get suspended? Well, they did let one student wear a "Hitler World Tour" shirt so the clothing policy was lax.

It was another junco bonanza at banding class at Carpenter Nature Center. This time we could hear them singing all over. Most of the juncos were new birds, not too many retraps. I wonder if the birds that we got on Wednesday morning are from further south: Indiana? Texas? They're heading north towards their breeding grounds.

Here's a junco being let go--this new camera can get some really fun shots. We did see one song sparrow hopping around some of the ground traps and we were trying to use our mind control to get it to hop into the trap. It's funny, we'll get them in the summer, but it's been a few months so a different species is exciting. I'm sure by September we'll be dreaming of juncos again.

When I finished, I drove over to the Prescott Railroad Bridge to see if any peregrines were about and sure enough, one unbanded bird was in the sun. Right after I snapped this photo, it hopped off the rail and disappeared so I wasn't able to digiscope it. I looked around and noted a spotting scope attached to a car. I walked over and found that is was Bud Tordoff. He said the unbanded bird was a male and he was watching for the female who is banded to try and read her numbers. Always a great day to run into that Peregrine Guru.

Raptors were really on the move yesterday. On my way home, I passed several bald eagles chasing each other and even saw a talon grab. Red-tails were chasing each other, I saw two more peregrines doing a fly over and though they're not raptors I did see some turkey vultures catching a few thermals. Spring is definitely on the upswing.

Banding In March

Well, one of the things about March is that it's a transition month and when it comes to banding it's feast or famine. This red squirrel in a Potter's trap. Don't worry, we didn't band it. It was set free.

We did get in a few birds like this junco, but that's nothing compared to Minnesota BirdNerd (aka my buddy Roger who often shows up at Birds and Beers with has banding partner Mark) who was having a slow bird banding day until a pileated woodpecker flew into the nets. Check out his blog entry here for some photos of the event. Also, check out his face in this photo--he totally looks like he's a breath away from some choice four letter words--I'm sure a pileated pecking your hand is up there with getting footed by broad-winged hawk.

Pouring More Salt

As if missing the northern shrike banding weren't bad enough, my buddy Larry Sirvio has sent more photos of what I missed at Carpenter's banding this morning!

Hm. I don't think that turkey is going to fit into that Potter Trap...and the next photo I think deserves a caption contest:

Here is a first year sharp-shinned sitting on top of a Potter Trap with a freshly trapped junco. I bet a junco has never been so happy to be trapped in its life. Got any caption ideas? The one who makes me chuckle out loud wins their choice of a Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America or a Lang Elliot's Music of the Birds: A Celebration of Bird Song (with CD)--prizses courtesy of Houghton Mifflin.

Final Rio Grande Valley Bird Festival Post

Really, it is. I swear. At least for this year.

Banding was slow today at Carpenter Nature Center and I spent the morning talking to the Development Director while she repaired nets. Fortunately, I had a chance to observe some banding while at the Rio Grande Valley Bird Festival. Once again, a Sunday morning trip was scheduled to watch bander Mark Conway (that's Mark in the above photo banding a kiskadee) and his assistants band birds at Los Ebanos Preserve.

Here's a closer shot of the kiskadee Mark was banding. Something interesting that I learned was that all kiskadees have a yellow gape.

I took a photo of one earlier in the festival and I had never noticed that before and thought it was a young bird, but all kiskadees of all ages have that yellow outline at the corners of their mouths.

The first bird of the morning wast a gray phase eastern screech owl. The banders weren't targeting owls, but they had the nets up at not long after dawn and this bird was just flying through and flew into the net.

Here is a long-billed thrasher which I hear way more than see in when birding in South Texas. That bill is not deformed, that's the way they are.

The best part of the day was getting to see a green jay up close. Last year they banded quite a few and I figured that green jays were par for the course.

But Mark said that they don't get green jays in the nets very often as they are members of the corvid family and very intelligent. They had not banded at Los Ebanos recently so the birds were just not used to it.

Mark said that this set a record for the most green jays that they have ever caught in a day: 9 green jays banded--and I never got tired of them.

Another exciting bird of the day was an olive sparrow--one of the hardest birds to see, you hear them quite a bit. I was glad to have a chance to get this photo because, frankly, my earlier efforts were just plain sad:

Behind all those tiny branches lurks an olive sparrow at Llano Grande. This was not bad, just finding an olive sparrow sitting on a branch long enough to aim your scope and camera is feat within itself.

Here, Mark is holding an orange-crowned warbler. These guys are all over in the trees in south Texas this time of year. They're not an easy warbler to see, so when a guide finds one, I think people hear warbler and hope for an exciting/colorful bird. As they search and search, they'll say, "I see a small brownish bird..." Yep, that's the orange-crowned. It's not even as orange as a blackburnian warbler. You may be wondering to yourself, why this bird is called an orange-crowned warbler...

Here, Mark demonstrates the name. When you hold and orange-crowned warbler about six inches from your face and blow on its crown, you can see a kind of orangish color on the underside of the crest feathers--see how obvious that is? Another one of those birds that was named when bird watching was done with a gun, not with binoculars.

Here are one of the many great-tailed grackles in the area. When you get them in the sun, they really are a striking bird. You can hear great-taileds singing all over Harlingen, any time of day--even all night long when they are roosting in the trees--how do those guys get any rest?

They do sound incredibly mechanical as opposed to musical. I wonder how that adaptation sounded, and what must have early explorers to North America have thought hearing those things chatter all night in the trees above them?

There was also a very exciting bird into the nets--a common yellowthroat, which to Mark are not common but something to study in depth. He thinks that there is an isolated population of yellowthroats that could be a subspecies that he calls the Brownsville yellowthroat. Will there a split some day separating this species of yellowthroat from the rest of the common yellowthroats seen around the United States? If so, Mark will have been instrumental in that research.

Okay, this doesn't have too much to do with banding, but there were quite a few anoles running around during the banding program and this guy with the wavy tail caught my eye. I wondered what happened to make it look like that? Did appear to slow it down in its daily travels.

And so, I leave you wit one final green jay photo, because they are just so darn cool looking. I'm very excited, it looks like we will be able to go out with Mark one day on the South Texas trip next year, which would be awesome for the group and great for me to learn different banding techniques from different people.

Fall Banding At Carpenter Nature Center

Hey, check it out, it's Stardust Girl, proudly holding a bag full of angry red-bellied woodpecker. She's visiting from the Hoosier State of Indiana to see friends, watch the banding at Carpenter Nature Center and to attend the Disapproving Rabbits book release party. The party and signing exceeded my dreams. I really didn't expect that many people to show up, it was a blast and you can read about it here.


Another fun Friday banding songbirds at Carpenter Nature Center. It was interesting to note that we got in quite a few ground feeding birds. You have to kind of watch out when you let ground feeding birds go after you band them. Their natural tendency is to fly low for cover.

Unfortunately, that sometimes lands them right back into the nets! Doh! Yes, after I took the head shot of the cardinal, he was released and went right back into the nets. That's Jim Fox, one of the banders at Carpenter getting him out of the nets...again. Not an easy feat when the cardinal is trying to slice open your skin.

Cardinals weren't the only birds having blond moment (oops, did I anthropomorphize, sorry about that). The same thing happened with a few juncos--again, ground feeding birds looking for cover, get tangled in the net when they fly away. I got this guy out of the net and let him go on the other side. He chipped angrily to a tree. Dude, I may be responsible for the little bit of silver on the leg, but don't blame me when you fly into a net the second time in a day.

But let's not focus on that, let's just focus on the junco cuteness when in hand. I just cannot get enough of these guys! There's another species besides juncos who come to our feeders in winter and I saw my first one of the season in the nets at Carpenter on Friday:

Tree sparrows--these guys with the rusty cap similar to a chipping sparrow should be showing up to feeders about now in the north--all you southerns should have them soon enough. It's hard to see in this photo, but tree sparrows usually have a distinctive spot on their chest. I've had tree sparrows come right up to finch feeders, so don't just watch for them on the ground.

This bird was a surprise on many levels--we just don't get brown creepers too often. But the biggest surprise came as I was downloading the photos and my darling husband aka Non Birding Bill looked over and said, "Oh! Disapproving brown creeper!" I gave him a slack jawed look which he immediately interpreted and followed up with, "I've been around ya' for like 13 years--you pick stuff up."

I think it had more to do with one just being on Mr. Neil's window ledge in recent weeks. What's next, cats and dogs living together?

What was interesting was how we appeared to have gotten the creeper in the nets. As I said, it's just not one that we normally get in our set up, but if you notice in the above photo were Jim is trying to get the creeper out of the nets, you'll notice that the nets lean against a tree trunk. Based on where the bird was located, we think it was creeping up the tree and creeped (or do I mean crept, Amy?) right into the nets. Alas, when we let this one go, it too flew right back into the nets, clearly aiming for a tree trunk on the other side. We're excited about retraps at Carpenter, but we like a little more time between 'em.

Our final bird of the day was the handsomest house finch I have seen all year. When I first saw this bird on the feeders, I did a double take. He was so red, he might have passed as a purple finch to some. But that streaking on his flanks gives him away at ye olde house finche.

We did have one male house finch in the nets this morning with a slightly swollen eye-possibly the early stages of the eye disease they sometimes get. This bird was robust and healthy but I still made a point to wash my hands thoroughly after handling it.

Oh! I also have to point out one crazy little chickadee we had on the table. One of the best parts of banding is that we have a donut pool. Every Friday, someone picks up donuts and we all chip in a dollar. Donuts and banding--throw in Daniel Craig reading me Bent books and you have my idea of heaven. Anyhoo, when we take birds out of the nets, we put them in these mesh bags until they are banded. Jim had laid this bag full of chickadee on the table and has he was prepping the band, the chickadee had hopped over to his donut plate and started pecking at it through the mesh! On the one hand I admire the bird's cleverness, on the other the last thing the world needs is a chickadee souped up on sugar. Can you imagine?

Birding The Meadows

I started writing this entry last night, and completely fell asleep while typing it--completely slumped over on the couch. Thank goodness I didn't drool on the keyboard.

Ack! I birded this place Sunday, how is it now Thursday that I'm finally blogging it? Ah well, at least I'm getting to it now. When we watched the weather over the weekend and learned that Sunday would be the first sunny day of the festival, we all were planning our morning birding strategies. Clay Taylor recommended going to The Meadows for just loads of birds flying over, so that was where I went.

We found a good sampling of ducks in the above pond. Here we have a mallard, a blue-winged teal, and a gadwall. It's fun to note the size difference of all three of these ducks when side by side.

I think gadwalls have one of my favorite ducks calls of all time. You can find it on this WhatBird (you may have to scroll down a bit when you get there). They sound like Muppets--mer mer mer. As we were taking these photos, a steady line of small raptors were zipping just over our heads--and I mean mere feet above our heads. The change in weather had pushed songbirds down south on their migration and they were landing in the meadows to feed, sharp-shinned hawks and merlins were taking advantage of the situation. While I was shooting ducks, I would look over my view finder and I'd see sharpie, sharpie, sharpie, sharpie, MERLIN, sharpie, sharpie, etc. It was pretty darned sweet.

Ducks were well and good, but being in Minnesota, I was more interested in doing some beach digiscoping. Clay decided to try his luck with warblers, so we briefly parted ways. I love photographing on a beach with little to know humans. You hear the crash of the surf, you feel the wind on your face, you smell the salty air and you just can't help but feel like an adventurer. I was also feeling more confident about my shorebird id skills and photography after taking that shorebird workshop this summer.

Alas, a little tougher than I thought! Well, one of the things that separates sanderlings from other shorebirds that can look similar like the semi-palmated sandpipers is that they constantly run back and forth with the waves. Which makes them hard to photograph--and just plain hard to find in the scope as the waves and birds move.

Fortunately for me, some much slower shorebirds moved in! Not only that, they have a pretty distinctive bill shape, making them dunlins--whoot! I decided that I would just try to follow shorebirds and take as many photos as possible to have a reference of sanderlings in my photo library.

When I downloaded the photos later in the day, I discovered that some of them were banded! I didn't notice it while out on the beach, but fortunately I was haphazardly shooting and got the evidence. I thought I was photographing sanderlings and honestly, from this angle we can't see the front for positive id, but it's a pretty good bet.

And that wasn't the only one! I found a second banded shorebird! This does look like a sanderling, but it's interesting to note that both birds have similar banding patterns to the banded semi-palmated sandpipers we found this summer during the shorebird workshop. I know the green flag on the bird in the above photo means it was banded in the US, but not sure about the other one. I'll turn these photos into the Bird Banding Lab and when I find out more info, I'll post an update in the blog. Well, as I was just enjoying the day and a set of willets just landed, a peregrine flew into view and chased all the shorebirds away. It dawned on me what a beautiful and unusual site this is for me. To see the large dark falcon fly right on the beach--I usually see them around skyscrapers. Since the shorebirds got the heck out of Dodge, I decided to try my hand at the gray hair inducing task of photographing fall warblers.

I never thought I would say this, but it was like shooting fish in a barrel! It was mostly yellow-rumped warblers, but it was just a matter of picking a perch, keeping your scope aimed there and waiting a few minutes for a warbler to land. This yellow rumped perched here for a full three minutes!

Heck, I even managed to get a shot of it nabbing insects when it flew. That is what is part of the magic of Cape May during migration. Oh sure, you may be able to see many of the bird species there, but it's the sheer number and magnitude that consistently shows up during migration. On year, over a million robins flew over in an hour. While I was photographing this warbler, several hundred turkey vultures were moving through.

I even managed to photograph a second species of warbler--this lovely palm warbler popped up. Only in Cape May, folks, can a novice digiscoper manage to get some decent warbler shots.

The Meadows is run by the Nature Conservancy and you do need to pay a small fee (well worth it) to enter. I will say this, about Cape May--it attracts some old school birders...dare I say crotchety birders. One man was very angry about paying for entering The Meadows, "This place is ruined, I shouldn't have to pay." Which I think is utterly ridiculous. Natural space for birds is at a premium, it takes money to maintain it and people should pay to make sure it stays. Of course, this guy also grunted at the birdJam software, "In my day, we just went outside to learn the bird calls." He would have finished his speech, but he had to run after some teenagers to shout, "Get those darn smoochers offa meh property."

Mental note to old schoolers talking to whipper snappers: Starting a sentence with the phrase, "In my day..." automatically induces eye rolling on the part of the listener.

Speaking of old school, another conversation that I had at Cape May about iPods:

Old School Birder: In my day we did this thing called listening to the radio to get our music.

Birdchick: Yeah, but sometimes the Sinatra or opera isn't on the radio.

Old School Birder: My dear, public radio has opera every Sunday, so there you go.

Birdchick: But what if you're jonesing' for La Traviata on a Thursday night, the iPod's there for ya'.

Old School Birder backs away in apparent confusion that a whipper snapper would know the title of a Verdi opera or the possibility of being able to listen to any kind of music at any time of day...or at the use of the word "jonesing".

I wonder what I'm going to be crotchety about when I grow up? What will be the technology that I think is too much or just think it too complicated to use? I seriously ponder this. "In my day, we held the digital camera to the spotting scope to get photos...we didn't have the camera built into the scope."

And for the record: "old school" and "crotchety" have more to do with a state of mind than with age. I know birders older than I am who act younger than me (I like to think I act like a 15 year old, and there are a couple who qualify as 13 year olds--you know who you are) and some birders younger than me that could qualify for crotchety.

Weekend Of Red-tails

Sometimes, it's fun to live in our neighborhood. Oh sure, there are noisy neighbors, but there are benefits. Twice in the last week I have seen Sir Ian McKellen, once behind me line at the grocery store and tonight on our way to the movie theater (he's in town performing King Lear at the Guthrie). I didn't say anything at the grocery store, but tonight when I pointed him out to Non Birding Bill, he went over, greeted him and told him how much he enjoyed his work as an actor. He was really, really nice and very gracious. Can I say how much I enjoy just picking him out in the streets among all the other people? It's like finding a Ross's goose mixed in with a bunch of snow geese.

On to hawk banding!

Here's the man who makes my weekends of hawk banding possible--Frank Taylor! One of the coolest guys I know and the man who taught me to handle birds of prey and to give an entertaining yet informative program.

Well, it was a weekend chock full of red-tiled hawks at the banding station (that's a passage or first year red-tailed hawk in the above photo). On Saturday we got 7 birds (1 northern goshawk and 6 red-tailed hawks) and on Sunday we got 8 birds on (1 sharp-shinned hawk, 1 northern goshawk and 6 red-tailed hawks).

I think of all the birding things I do throughout the year, hawk banding is my favorite. I love everything about it, the fall foliage, the layers of cold to ward of the chill in the air, the waxy chocolate donuts we eat in the blind, watching the birds fly in, picking our raptors from the specks flying away.

We got to see some other wildlife besides raptors. We heard the crows going berserk on the other side of the field. Eventually, a coyote came into view. Rick Dupont got the above photo. They coyote kept coming closer and closer. Every time someone's camera beeped, the coyote would look right at us. Even with the wind blew and they coyote turned to sniff, if a camera beeped, it looked towards the blind. The coyote kept on its merry way and disappeared and suddenly as it appeared, followed by some noisy crows.

We even had a lone raven meander towards the blind. We watched this bird for the better part of Saturday morning, walking along through the grass snatching up lethargic grasshoppers. Periodically, the raven would hunker in the grass and sleep. After awhile, the raven would resume hunting grasshoppers. It worked its way closer and closer to the blind, oblivious to the many red-tails zooming over head, the half dozen people popping out of the blind, and even the noisy goshawk. When I watched it through my scope, it blinked both eyes in quick succession and not always at the same time. I've seen birds with West Nile Virus do this and wondered if that had struck this raven. The bird would let people get within 10 feet of it and then would fly. It had an ample food source and was wise enough to evade humans, so we didn't make too much effort to catch it.

There were also quite a few horned larks lurking in the grass. It was fun to watch them disappear and then reappear. A couple of northern shrikes hunting in the field would try to separate one of the larks to catch it, but to no avail, the larks were too fast. Another bird that hung out near the blind was a boreal chickadee. A small flock of black-caps flew in and one of them sounded a little nasally--instead of chickadee dee dee it was more of a chickashneeee. It hung out low in the trees and I got one of my best looks at one (alas, I didn't have the digiscoping equipment set up).

Even though we had almost all red-tailed hawks come in, each one had an interesting story. Like this bird. It was in haggard (adult) plumage, complete with red-tail (although the eyes were kind of half passage, half haggard). Note the blood mustache over the bill--this bird had eaten fairly recently. However, it did one of the most powerful dives into the nets I had ever seen. We actually almost missed this bird coming in. We were kind of chit chatting, someone had asked me a binocular question and looked out the blind window and said, "Well, 8x42's are good GASP..." and most everyone else saw it at the same time straight ahead, wings tucked, the bird going over 60 miles straight for the pigeon.

The red-tail blasted through the front net so fast and so hard it went all the way into the back net! Frank and Rick had to get the hawk out of two nets! Rick, ever the master yanker, did manage to pull the pigeon out of the way before the hawk nailed it. I did get to thinking though--if the nets hadn't been there, and this hawk was hunting the pigeon, it would have hit the prey so hard it would have blasted right into the woods. It would have rolled and tumbled and maybe slammed into a tree. That bird was intense. It wasn't skinny either, it had been eating well.

It's always interesting to see the differences in adults and young birds when you have the up close. Even without seeing the tail, you can know this is a young bird by how yellow the eyes are. Red-tailed hawk eyes get darker as they get older. So, above is passage red-tail...

and here is a haggard bird--look at how dark brown those eyes are! Speaking eyes, one of Frank's sub banders was up the whole week banding hawks and found an interesting one:

Chuck Schotzko got in this one eyed red-tailed hawk. Look at that, the whole entire eye ball is missing from the socket! Chuck is a medical doctor and guess with how dried out and healed up the injury is that this happened long ago, perhaps even when the bird was young. He speculated that this happened with the bird was young, even in the nest. It would be much easier for a young bird to learn to hunt with only one eye, than for an adult to suddenly lose an eye after hunting for years with two. Regardless, the bird was very chunky, the tissue around the keel was very plump--this bird had been eating well. If it can fly and is a good weight, there's no need to take it some place like The Raptor Center, this bird is doing just fine on its own.

Here you can see clear back into the empty eye socket. This really makes me wonder about birds in wildlife rehab facilities with only one eye that are turned into education birds or euthanized. This is the second red-tail we've gotten into the nets with vision in only one eye that was fat and sassy. Birds always remind me that they are more resilient than we give them credit for.

On Saturday night, I slept in Frank's van. He has a cot set up inside, so all I had to do was unroll my sleeping bag. I brought a pillow and stuck some hand warmers in the bottom to keep my toe warm. The stars crowded the skies and I was tucked warmly inside my sleeping bag and watched the sky. I was only disturbed once when someone drove slowly by shining a very bright flash light (I assume looking for deer). I set my iPod and iMainGo speaker to alarm so that I would wake up the next morning to the sound of bobolinks. I met Frank and his wife Trudi in their cozy trailer for hot chocolate and donuts, then it was off to more banding. It is nice to stay in hotels, but I have to say that I'm glad that I still have it in me to sleep in a van and use the woods for a restroom all for a cool birding experience!

This is one of the many red-tails we got in on Sunday, note the blood stains on the breast? This bird totally punk'd me! We were watching it in the distance and it hovered, it held its wings in a v-shape, the wings looked longish--I called it a rough-legged hawk. Until it flew into the nets and showed itself to be a juvenile red-tail. Later on, I tried to turn a kestrel into a merlin--I was having an off identification day. Maybe sleeping in a van dulls my bird id skills. Ah well, happens to all of us.

I did find a red squirrel lurking in the trees. It was surprisingly quiet. I suppose it noticed all the hawks flying in and decided that hunkering down and eating would be a sensible tactic instead of chirping and drawing attention to itself.

After we banded and released one of the many red-tailed hawks that came into the nets, it landed in the top of a spruce. As I set up my digiscoping equipment, it started to take off and I got this photo. But my favorite photos to get are the ones of me laying on the ground while people release the birds:

Like this...

Or this...

And this...

This was a little boy who got to release a red-tail. Since he was a tad short, I opted to take his photo from the side. The last thing I want is a face full of red-tailed hawk. He did a great job doing the release--that's a lot of bird for young boy.

I love this photo, that little boy looks like he's about to go into the sky along with the red-tail!

Gratuitous Goshawk

At first when I was looking at my schedule and budget for the fall, I was worried I just wouldn't be able to get to my friend Frank Taylor's hawk banding station--my favorite bird activity I do all year. I was very down that I would not get to see a northern goshawk (my favorite raptor and next tattoo) fly into the nets But thanks to help from my great friends, I managed two trips. And I got to see a first year northern goshawk fly in! Whoot!

Frank asked me to hold the young goshawk so he could get photos and I gave my camera to a wonderful woman I've been getting to know at the blind named Joan. We were working as swiftly as possible with the goshawk so we could send it on its way.

Why would we want this magnificent bird away so quickly? Because the moment it hits the nets to the very second it is released, it give a loud, piercing, melt-your-eardrums shriek over and over and over. All we're doing is holding it, it's not in any pain what so ever. Such a big bird, such a big whiner. Even the smaller cousins of this accipiter, the sharp-shinned hawk and the Cooper's hawk take the banding process with stoicism. Frank wanted to try and get a photo of the goshawk with its mouth closed--not an easy feat.

I think this photo that Joan got about sums it up. Yes, here I am with my favorite raptor and you can see that I'm clearly thinking, "Are we done yet? Can we move on?" I bet you're now curious, just how awful this sound is, aren't you? Okay, here is about five seconds of ear-splitting goshawk (those you cannot view video should be grateful):



Annoying, huh? As if that weren't bad enough...

The goshawk started attacking my coat. It was time to set this bird free and continue on its way.

I tossed the bird in the air and Joan got this great shot which actually looks like the bird is reaching out to attack me. Actually, what's going on is that I tossed the goshawk out to the field, but being the type of hawk that hunts in the woods, the bird is turning around in mid air so it can fly into the safety of the trees behind me. Still, I love how it looks like I'm reaching out it and the goshawk looks like it is going to nail me.

More banding fun to come!

Hawk Banding Preview

"I'm gonna eat you and your little disapproving rabbit too!"

Just rolled in, ate some dinner, pealed off two layers of clothes, and sifted through 98 emails. Am now going to bathe and autograph some books. More hawk banding fun tomorrow.

Banding Birds At Mr. Neil's

I know quite a few banders and I've always wanted to try a banding project at Mr. Neil's. Number one - he's got great bird nesting habitat. Number two, a fair number of migrants pass through and use the area for fueling up for migration. So, I asked my friends Mark Newstrom and Roger Everhart who do regular banding programs at Lowry Nature Center in Carver Park if they would be interested in banding at Mr. Neil's. Being banders, the answer is generally "yes".

They were due to come Saturday morning and I had a somewhat sleepless night between my waning cold, thunder storms all night long, and just general excitement at banding. But the rains finished about 6 am followed by intense humidity.

Roger and Mark set up nets in three different areas: one near the feeders, one near a stand of pines that's full of birds, and one near a small pond. The banding conditions were not perfect. It was hot and humid (hello, it's October, it's supposed to be in the 50s in my neck of the woods), the winds were high (making it easier for birds to see the nets move), the falling leaves kept getting trapped in the nets. Above is a photo of Mark trying to get about 300 oak leaves out of the nets. They took two nets down and left one up by the feeding station.

Here is the first bird banded that day: a red-breasted nuthatch! Even though banding conditions weren't the best and with only one net, Mark and Roger managed to get band twenty-five birds (of five different species) before noon--and the feeder activity was unusually slow. Not bad!

We also got in one very feisty white-breasted nuthatch who did not care for my finger (or maybe just my green nail polish). When biting didn't seem to cause me any agony...

The nuthatch tried the clever and effective nip maneuver. Point taken, nuthatch, point taken.

At some point we had about four birds in the feeder nets at once. We would take the birds out of the nets, put them in a bag and then hang the bags on a string to await being processed. Since it was hot and humid, we had to move the bag hanging area to a more shady spot.

So, we hung them in a tree. Don't let his photo of a smiling Non Birding Bill with bags full of birds fool you. True to his identity in this blog, he showed little to no interest in the banding. He stopped out at one point and then went right back inside saying, "The excitement is too much, I need a nap."

I think the black-capped chickadees were the most common species banded that day. It seemed as soon as one got in the net and started protesting, three others would join in at the sound. Since there were so many, Mark and Roger let me band one:

Talk about pressure! I'm still learning how to do these little tiny songbirds, and I have to do it according to Roger and Mark's protocol.

They take more measurements than at Carpenter Nature Center. They do wing measurements, tail measurements, weight, and they measure individual feathers like primary wing feather 8 as well as trying to age and sex the birds. However, being just two guys, they do it quite quickly. I don't think any bird was in hand for more than five minutes.

They also blow on the body feathers to see if and where the bird is molting and to check for any fat stores the birds might have. Mark and Roger can predict when a flock of birds is about to leave an area based on their fat stores. Above is a goldfinch being blown on and if you look closely on the right of the exposed pink skin (which you can see through--that kind of grossed Lorraine out), you can see a bit of yellow--that is some fat this finch as stored up.

They ruffle the feathers on the head to see if there is any molting up there. Nice Eraserhead look. Don't worry about all the feather ruffling. One good rouse after they fly away puts all the feathers back into place.

We did have one goldfinch come in that appeared to show signs of either illness or not eating well. It was underweight to begin with and all the feathers on the head appeared appeared to have a crusty texture to them.

The bird's tail appears to be molting in late. It could be underweight with the molt or there could be something more serious going on. We're far from any rehabber and so we thought the best thing to do was let it loose and I will just stay on top of keeping the feeders clean and full of good food.

We did get one woodpecker in, this female downy woodpecker. There are usually dozens of woodpeckers at the feeders, but they were wary of the whole situation. We could hear the red-bellies calling from all corners of the yard, but none came to the feeding stations until late afternoon.

Mark and Roger showed me how dark the underside of her tail was--no doubt stained by tannins in tree bark. Woodpeckers use their stiff tails to prop themselves upright and white feathers are bound to get dirty. Based on this bird's molt pattern, Mark and Roger speculated that she was at least hatched in 2005. Pretty cool.

I was hoping we would get some of the fun birds (What am I saying! they're all fun! Let's say unusual) would come into the nets like tufted-titmice. But much like the red-bellied woodpeckers, these birds decided to avoid the feeding stations until late afternoon.

Purple finches managed to avoid the nets as well. The young of the family group are starting to show adult coloring--especially the males. More on these later.

Since it was so hot, Mark and Roger wrapped up the banding by noon--you don't want to risk birds sitting in the nets on a hot day for any extended period of time--bird safety is top priority. Later on Saturday, I was digiscoping and did find one or two of the banded birds. Here is one of the black-capped chickadees we banded. Perhaps this the one I banded? Even this morning, I saw a red-breasted nuthatch and goldfinch sporting the bands. It will be fun to watch which stick around this winter.

I'd like to thank Roger and Mark for taking the time out of their busy schedule to band birds. I hope they can come again. They are excited about the spring migration potential. Hopefully, next time it won't be 80 some degrees with high humidity.

Carpenter Banding

It was another beautiful day at Carpenter Nature Center--and busy! There were so many birds to band that I didn't have time to get photos of the Lincoln's sparrow, orange-crowned warbler, and the first junco of the season (although, I think I will have ample opportunity of getting junco photos in the near future). It's so weird to see juncos and hummingbirds all in the same day. I did have time to get photos of a palm warlber in the above photo. Here's another:

Thanks to all the readers who sent kind notes about my incorrect id in the blog when I originally posted this as a yellow-rumped warbler, they are correct, it is a palm warlbers. Although as soon as I got out of my car I could hear yellow-rumps thick in the trees--kissing sounds everywhere. I'm now to the point where I get to band whatever bird someone hands me or that I get out of the net. I thought this was exciting until I had to start aging and sexing the fall warblers. And if it's any consolation--it's not any easier to do them in hand than it is when they are in the trees. I think we ended saying this one was an after hatch year female. I would tell you how...but then I would have to kill you.

Here was a Tennessee warbler that Larry was banding. I was trying to help him age and sex this bird by reading through Pyle. We were trying to determine between after hatch year male and female. Here are just one of the differences according to Pyle: male--underparts with a moderate yellow wash and female--underparts lightly washed yellow.

Hmmmmm. Can you tell the difference between those two? Ah, Pyle, I kid, because I love. In all seriousness, Pyle is a helpful book to banders, but sometimes you come across weird bits like that and they just make you want to hit your head and against the table and say, "Huh?"

A fun surprise what a Philadelphia vireo. When it was first tangled in the net, I thought it was a warbler. But when I got it out, I knew it was some kind of vireo. They really are quite small and just to give you an idea, check out this photo at Hilton Pond of a green-breasted mango next to a Philadelphia vireo (that photo was taken in Costa Rica). That's one big hummer next to one small vireo.

We also banded a ruby-crowned kinglet. This little stinker was flashing its red crown like crazy when it was in the bag waiting to be banded, but once it was in hand, the ruby crown became subdued. You can see a hint of it in the above photo. The kinglet, half bird, half mouse.

After banding, I went out to get photos of some photos of unfettered birds among the autumn foliage. The song sparrows were quick to perch up to a little pishing. There were quite a few other sparrows lurking about in the brush: white-throated, Lincoln's, clay-colored, and one or two field sparrows.

I did find this sad looking song sparrow. It looks like it's asking, "Have you seen my tail anywhere?"

Now, off to bed, I have to get up early for a field trip I'm leading to Hawk Ridge in the morning. Also, if you still have not been to Carpenter this fall, it's still absolutely gorgeous. What are you waiting for? Great color and lots of apples on sale. Get thee hence!

Interesting Info From Banding Birds

I keep trying to write this blog entry, but my rabbit insists on using me as a jungle gym, making typing most difficult.

Here's a photo of last weekend's banding crew (the only bummer is that Frank Taylor, the guy who runs the blind isn't in it). But from left to right we have Reier Grudem, Joan Schnabel, me, Amber Burnette (holding a red-tailed hawk), Rick Dupont, and Katy Dupont.

Frank Taylor just included this photo in his weekly banding report. That's me in the pigeon yanking seat holding the pigeon line and a sharp-shinned hawk I lured into the banding station by pulling the pigeon. Whoot!

Above are two haggard (adult) sharp-shinned hawks. So, I gave you the info for how we have the banding station set up, now let's talk about some of the interesting things observed over last weekend. First off, birds were all over, both songbirds and raptors. Saturday morning, Amber, Reier and I arrived at the field and could see sharp-shinned hawks, harriers, merlins all moving and could hear blue jays all over. You would see flocks of blue jays miles away in your binoculars and there would always be at least one sharp-shinned hawk mixed in with the flock.

In the above photo is both a haggard (towards the back) and a passage (first year) sharp-shinned hawk. Note the difference in eye color and that the younger bird is brown and white and the older birds is dark blue with and orange breast. The passage sharp-shins were in hunting mode and were bound and determined to take out a blue jay. You would hear a flock of blue jays screaming and then all of a sudden you'd hear one give a strange honking call and that was usually a shin hot on its tail. We also saw flocks of smaller birds in the fields in front of the blind. At one point we had a white-crowned sparrow feeding in the grass in front of us. Just as we identified what type of sparrow it was, a passage sharp-shinned hawk flew down, landed on it, killed it and flew away with it's prize--in less than 40 seconds. It's was a much more effortless affair than the Cooper's hawk incident from yesterday.

Above is an up close shot of a haggard sharp-shinned. It was one of the busiest weekends I've ever experienced at this little hawk banding station. On Saturday we banded 32 birds (29 sharp-shins and 3 red-tails) and on Sunday we banded 34 birds on Sunday (33 sharp-shins, and 1 Merlin). We did have quite a few heart breaks, including birds bouncing out of the nets before we could get to them and one mouthy little female kestrel. When the kestrels come into the net, you are sure they are going to come in, but they always seem to find the net at the last second and dodge out of the way. This particular female, flew right to us with no intention of going for the pigeon and landed on one of the poles that holds the net. She looked directly to the blind and gave the loud kestrel cry--pretty much the equivalent of giving us the bird. It was as if she were screaming, "Hey, I know you guys are here and any predator withing the sound of my voice should stay away!!" We must have had her in the nets before.

Here's a haggard red-tailed hawk that came into the nets. This bird was a bit thin and its bill was a tad crusty looking. As Amber was banding it, she noticed that the left eye was clouded over. When you waved a finger in front of it, the hawk could see out of it at all.

Obviously the hawk had not been surviving well with this disability, but it had been surviving. Who knows exactly how long the birds had been living with sight in only one eye. The bird has been alive at least three years. When red-tailed hawks are young, they have yellow eyes (note the yellow eyes of a passage red-tailed hawk in the next photo). Their eyes get darker as they get older, this bird could very well be 15 years old. Glaucoma doesn't develop overnight, perhaps it has been such a gradual change the hawk has had a chance to adjust it's hunting style. Reier noted how it flew to take to view the bait pigeon and really, had the nets not been there, it would have been able to catch it. There really aren't any treatments for bird glaucoma so taking to the Raptor Center wasn't an option. After banding it, we let it go. Maybe it will survive another few years or maybe it's going to end its last days in a blaze of glory.

For a comparison, here's a very healthy passage red-tailed hawk, note the yellow eyes? This bird was having some tail issues:

Check it out, it's missing quite a few feather and has a mixture of both first year red-tail brown feathers and a red tail feather--what the heck is going on? Frank speculated that the tails feathers had been grabbed, maybe by another red-tail in a territorial fight, or by a nest mate, or even some other predator. The feathers are starting to grow back in, and the new feathers are growing in red because the body says "hey, after the second set, these should be red" but at the same time, the feathers are supposed to be brown striped, so you get some striping in there too. And since we have a photo of a red-tailed hawk with the wing extended, note how the wings look very long in relation to the body, and the tail is short in relation to the body--this is a characteristic of this type of hawk, known as a buteo. Compare that to a different hawk:

Here is a sharp-shinned hawk, they are accipiters and they have a shorter wing in relation to the body, and a very long tail--that's one way you can start to id hawks. When you see one, try to note if the tail is long or short compared to the body and if the wings look long or short. Incidentally, this is one of the birds that I lured into the nets.

The birds were coming into the nets so quickly, that at times we barely had time to get photos or to release banded birds. We were getting ready to release this merlin (in front) and this sharp-shin when Rick yelled that some birds were coming into the nets. We just ran behind the blind rather than taking the time to go in. Sometimes that's faster and if you're quiet, the birds will still come into the nets. I was going to take a photo of these two when all of a sudden both looked up. They were seeing hawks fly over too.

When we have a chance, I like to get photos of people releasing hawks. My favorite thing to do is lay on the ground and get a wing shot of the bird. When you release a sharp-shinned hawk, you can pretty much just open your hand and they take off towards the woods right away.

Reier got a photo of me releasing a red-tailed hawk. They are little heftier and you have to kind of fling them into the air so they don't just thunk on the ground. Unlike the sharp-shinned hawks that head straight for the safety of the woods as soon as they are released, red-tails stay in the open and try to find the nearest thermal to lift high into the sky.

At one point we had two sharp-shins to release and one merlin. We released them all on once (that's the merlin in the middle). Note the shin on the right aiming right for me? That was courtesy of Katy. I told her that she could just let it drop towards me, boy I think she kind of threw it at me. It's okay, I had it coming, I was making fun of her for texting her friends from the blind. And if you're worried, the bird didn't hit me and made it safely to the woods.

We got to do several multiple releases. Here's a video of a sharp-shinned hawk release. I'm holding a sharp-shin and aiming my camera at my hands. But since two people next to me are releasing birds, it looks like a magic trick: one bird turns into three:



And for those who can't see video, here's a couple of consolation photos:

Haggard sharp-shinned hawk.

Passage merlin.

Hawk Banding 101

I'm always amazed at how closely people pay attention to the blog. When I wrote earlier that I was on a tight budget and didn't know if I could go up hawk banding this fall, invitations came from all over for free housing. I am sometimes overwhelmed by friends and their generosity. Another example is what I say I'm going to blog about. While I was having a great time at the banding station, one of the sub banders named Rick said, "Aren't you going to take pictures of the setup?"

"Huh?" I asked.

"You said that you were going to explain how we band the hawks up here." he reminded me. And he was right, I do need to explain the set up so this post will explain that. One BIG point to stress about banding birds:

Because banding birds requires capturing the birds and handling them before the banding takes place, the banding of birds in the United States is controlled under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and requires a federal banding permit. Some states require a state permit as well. Only official federal bands may be legally placed on birds that are released to the wild within the United States.

You can read more about banding birds at the Bird Banding Lab. I'm fortunate enough to know several researchers who band different types of birds (pelicans, hawks, songbirds, herons) and allow me to tag along and carry equipment and now I'm to the point where I'm actually learning to do different aspects of it. This is just how this particular banding station works and records data, every station is different. This station in Duluth, MN is run by Frank Taylor, who has been banding hawks longer than even Hawk Ridge--38 years--and he doesn't look a day over 39.

Here are the nets. Can you see them? There are two different ones there, right in front of the trees--can't you see them? Heck, I took the photo and I can't even see them. Let's look at them from a different angle:

These are the front nets and this photo was taken from the banding blind where we hide while the hawks fly in. The nets form a sort of U-shape, with the open end of the U facing the blind. There are nets surrounding the bait bird (pigeon). Most hawks aim for the pigeon and fly into the front net, but some species are able to see the front net at the last second, dodge above it and as they go up and over, end up in the nets behind the pigeon. Sometimes, they hawks are so fast and maneuver so quick, they elude both front and back nets! It's incredible to watch the mad flight skills of all raptor species. Even a big chunky buteo like a red-tailed hawk has some fast peregrine moves inside it.

This is the pigeon harness. This is a vest of leather that covers the pigeon around the chest to protect it on the off chance a raptor grabs it when coming into the net. The harness is also attached to a pull chord.

Rick is putting the harness on one of the pigeons. The wings and feet fit through the holes comfortably and all the pigeons have to be the same size, if they are too small they can get tangled in the harness, so their weight and size is closely watched. You pull the cord, and the pigeon is aloft in the air, it flaps its wings and then flutters to the ground. The pigeon yanker has to pull, get the pigeon to flap the wings and then prevent the bird from thunking onto the ground and breaking some bones, so it does take technique to do it so the pigeon has a natural looking flight and doesn't get injured. We use several pigeons throughout the day. If it's a busy day and lots of hawks are flying over, a pigeon can be yanked a lot and tire easily, especially in warm weather, so you must keep an eye on the pigeon so you don't exhaust it. Rotating the pigeons gives them a chance to relax.

Rick's primary job at the hawk blind is pulling the pigeon, or as I affectionately call him, The Master Yanker (this is the part that I got to learn this weekend, so I guess that makes me a Novice Yanker). When a hawk is spotted, Rick has the job of controlling the pigeon. You yank the pigeons in different ways for different birds. For accipiters or for larger hawks that are far away, you yank hard and get the pigeon high in the air. For larger hawks that are close, you just kind of wiggle the cord and get the pigeon to flutter slightly, too much flapping can freak out a red-tailed hawk or bald eagle on close approach--seriously, it will. I have to say, this wears out your arms pretty quick. You pull hard and far from the blind, and sometimes you punch people sitting next to you, or knock your knuckles on the boards inside the blind, not to mention how the cord rubs the skin on your hand raw.

That's Rick in the blind in the above photo. See the hole in the lower left corner? That's where the pigeon chord comes into the blind. Another important job that the Master Yanker has is to pull the pigeon out of harm's way. Some raptors dodge the nets or are so big they can still reach the the pigeon though the nets, so you have to pull the pigeon out of the way at the last second, so it doesn't get killed. Frank has only lost 3 pigeons to raptors in the 38 years he has been doing this. As if all that isn't pressure enough, Rick has to burst through that little door at lightening quick speed when a raptor gets in the nets before it works itself out and flies away. It's a high pressure job, but man is it fun. I only did it for about 45 minutes and about 8 hawks flew in, two bounced out of the nets, but still I got six, man am I sore!

We watch for hawks coming in. It's so much fun to watch a speck in the distance, identify what it is and then watch that speck come in to the nets. The red-tailed hawks are one of the coolest. You can see them from miles away, circling in a thermal and if you can figure out when its looking in the banding station's direction, you pull the pigeon. When the red-tail sees it, the bird will flap to get out of the thermal and then set on target for the pigeon--it's incredible once it has set, the red-tail won't usually flap, but just hold the wings steady and come in for a dive. There's a red-tail in the above photo. It's hard to see, I'll try and zoom it:

It's interesting to watch some raptors come in low, using the vegetation behind them to hide their shape as they approach their prey. At the last second before the red-tail hits the nets, it will swing its feet forward, baring the talons--it's like watching an airplane drop its landing gear, and sometimes you can even hear the woosh of their wings--if you're thinking that sounds really awesome, it is.

My friend Reier took this photo from the blind. When Rick had to take a break, I asked Frank if it would be okay if I took a go at pulling the pigeon. He seemed hesitant but gave the go ahead. It took some practice to get the pigeon yanking down (and I'm still no Rick) but Frank then asked, "Sharon can you book it? You have to be fast when the hawks hit the net and grab them before they get loose." I said I could do it. I took off each time and on the last time, my shoe got caught in the nets and I fell over, but still grabbed the hawk before it flew off. That's me, as if I just slid into home base, holding my hand it the air, "I'm okay!" I shouted. I got the hawk, and provided comic relief--that's what I call a job well done. I have a beauty of a bruise today and have made the extra effort to wear cropped pants to show it off. "Ew, Sharon, how did you get that nasty bruise?" and I will proudly exclaim, "Hawk banding." I love my bruises and scars.

After the hawks are in the net, you have to untangle them quickly--and I have to say that it's much easier to get raptors out than songbirds (you just have to watch out for the feet). That's Reier above getting a hawk out of the net with Rick. From thew, the hawk is processed, it's measured, banded, aged, and in some cases we try to determine sex. My buddy Amber is learning the measuring and banding end of things (and I just realized that I have tons of bird photos, but none of Amber in action), but I have to say I am a pigeon yanking junky--it's sooooo fun--and GREAT exercise. I'm okay with how my body looks, oh sure I would like to be a but more buff or a few of my parts could be a little smaller (it would make clothes shopping for tv, ten times easier) but it's hard to find exercise that's not redundant and boring. Today, after doing the pigeon yanking yesterday--all the right parts of me are sore--my arms from yanking, my thighs from squatting and lunging to get hawks out of the net, my torso (I'm not sure why) but if a gym could come up with some sort of virtual hawk banding station where every ten minutes I do some sprinting to get hawks out, and pulling to get the pigeon going, I would SO sign up! You could have screens to show hawks flying in, ah, it would be so cool.

For some birds, we take photos before they are released. Seriously, little male sharp-shinned hawk, you thought trying to catch one of those pigeons who are bigger than you was a good idea?

"Yeah, and I still say I could take one!"

And then the hawk is released and we start the process over again.

I love this photo. It's Frank (in the green fleece) standing in front of the hawk blind with some friends getting photos of the hawks that were just banded. If you look at the blind behind them, Rick is scanning the skies for more incoming hawks. Rick, Master Yanker, ever ready to bring in a hawk.

More hawk banding photos and interesting bird things we learned coming in the next entry.

Birdchick Mention In The Wall Street Journal

Well, I was called perky and witty in the New York Times Last year, and now the Wall Street Journal confirms my status as falling short of geeky. So, if you come by my blog for the first time via WSJ, welcome! Here's the mention (and as luck would have it, I was getting a good whiff of red-tail this weekend and have a photo to go along with it) and I've linked to the entries the article mentions:

This blog by Sharon Stiteler, based in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, aims to "show the world that you can be a birder without being a geek," according to its masthead. Her recent video of a Peregrine falcon tearing a piece of meat to shreds certainly falls short of geeky.

Ms. Stiteler talks about birding on a couple of radio shows in the Minnesota area, and her blog is packed with information about birds on the prairie and in more urban habitats. In one recent post, she explains how to tell the difference between a juvenile male cardinal and a female cardinal -- neither of which has the bright plumage associated with adult males -- by the color of their bills. A separate post describes a particular insight that comes from being close to wild birds: "I love the good, warm, feathery smell of a bird. Not all birds have this, eagles for example smell like an empty 35mm film canister. Great-horned owls frequently smell of skunk or at the very least three-day-old road kill. . . . Red-tailed hawks have a wild alive smell."

Congrats to Birds Etcetera, Bill of the Birds, 10,000 Birds, and I and the Bird for getting a mention too.

And to take advantage of the all the extra traffic and continue my usual shameless self promotion, I do have a book coming out October 16, 2007 titled Disapproving Rabbits, based on the website and my pet rabbit Cinnamon. We also talk about beekeeping and a favorite reader post appears to be my recent bee sting, so if you need a laugh, you might want to take a look at that.

Great Hawk Banding

Ehn.

I am so tired, worn out, bruised, and have a feeling of overall contentment. It was an awesome hawk banding weekend and some in depth posting will be coming, but for now, I'm going to soak, sleep and read about Jim Stevenson in People Magazine (interesting that it takes shooting a feral a cat about to attack an endangered bird before a birder gets a profile, but that People for ya').

In the meantime, here is a preview of hawk banding:

Autumn Banding At Carpenter

It was absolutely stunning at Carpenter Nature Center this morning. Really, if you have never been there and live in the Twin Cities area, you should go now. The last of the late summer flowers are blooming, the leaves are changing color, and birds are all over the place!

It was such a pleasure to walk in this environment to the nets to get the warblers out. I was running a tad late to Carpenter this morning (thanks to a Rocky Horror Picture Show discussion on fm107) and all along the way, I could see raptors lifting off the bluffs along the Mississippi River and the St. Croix River. Thursday night, we had some bad storms with funnel clouds right at sunset. I wonder if the migrants were forced down and I was watching them leave. I saw several sharp-shinned hawks (one ambitious fellow was trying to pop a blue jay) and even a young peregrine as well as LOTS of harriers. The songbird banding was great at Carpenter.

We had a puzzling Nashville Warbler (above). The bird showed many characteristics of being male, but had NO rufus cap. But was way too yellow on the bottom to be female. So, take heart new birders, even in hand, fall warblers are tough to id. But, do note the warblers toes--Nashville warblers have yellow toes--cute!

The most exciting birds for me were the two above. It was just about time to take the nets down, and I was doing one last round to check for birds in the nets when I found in one of the nets right outside the nature center, two birds within a foot of each other. Recognized one right away. For some reason, chestnut-sided warblers and bay-breasted warblers get cross wired in my head. I know they are two separate species, but in my mind, there's not much difference in color between bay and chestnut.

I got this one out of the net and confirmed it was a fall male chestnut-sided warbler.

Larry got the second one out of the net and it turned out to be a fall bay-breasted warbler--in the nets at the same time, withing a few feet of each other--so sweet.

It was such an honor to hold these birds for a few moments as they start their trek to South America. Who knows, in a few nights these birds could be lurking in a bush in Illinois and then a week later be in St. Louis. Hm, side by side, these two don't look so hard to tell apart.

We also got in an eastern phoebe today. We've been getting in so many least flycatchers and alder flycatchers, that this looked like one beefy bird. If fooled me at first because it was so yellow. But after we banded the bird and let it go, you could hear a weak "fee bee" call. It's still learning the notes.

I was surprised to see a monarch lurking about on the prairie. It's still possible to see these guys.

I think this is an Atlantis fritillary, although a tad beat up. The last few remnant butterflies before winter sets in.

And, I leave you with one last photo of the chestnut-sided warbler. I have to get to sleep. It's now 10pm and I have to wake up at 4am to go up north for hawk trapping. I don't know what my Internet access will be like this weekend, but when I come home there should be some hot hawk banding photos.

Giggity.

Banding Giggity Giggity

Banding rocked so hard today--and it's not done, I'm going hawk trapping this weekend. I try to formulate a post about banding at Carpenter before I leave--I still have to download photos from the other camera, but here is a hint of what we got:

Both of these birds came into the same net at the same time. Can you guess what they are?

The Browniest Of Birds

A cool front has moved in and it's finally starting to feel like autumn. It was another busy morning banding birds at Carpenter Nature Center--when I arrived, they had taken 15 birds out of one net! Incidentally, CNC is selling apples from the orchard (Zestars) and have some you pick raspberries (as if the birding were reason enough to visit).

I'm finally to the point where I'm an actual helper, really banding the birds and taking them out of the nets. For a long time, I just documented the events, but I'm finally to the point where I can be of some real use. I felt like joined the big kid table somewhat because I got to band a small empid flycatcher. They can be agony to id in the fall--even in hand six inches from your face. But with some help it was determined that the above bird was a willow flycatcher. This flycatcher was so young, that as we were taking it out of the net, it started making whiny calls and fluttering its wings--food begging behavior (kind of an odd little avian Stockholm syndrome there).

A surprise for me was a cedar waxwing in the nets. Such a pretty bird, almost like a female cardinal with a lot of make up on...which I think I've probably stated more than once in the blog...an probably will again.

Someone's bringin' waxy back! Check out the waxy appendages on those secondary flight feathers. For those curious, BNA says that the red bits are colored by astaxanthin, a carotenoid pigment and increase in size and number with the waxwing's age. If they don't have any, they are likely immature waxwings.

Later in the morning, someone from the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center came by with about 23 young mallards that had been raised in the waterfowl nursery. They are going to be released in a few days so we put bands on them. Interesting to note: if you hold a duck in just the right way, it can act as a very stinky squirt gun when it poops--just so you know.

The cool sunny day was so gorgeous, that I couldn't leave when we finished banding so I went out to take some photos. The prairie is glowing with late summer flowers. Above is a young song sparrow with its back to the wind. Take a look at the tail--feathers are still growing in.

A field sparrow popped up on some sumac, not too far from the song sparrow. As I was watching this bird, a second field sparrow flew in:

This one was carrying food. Curious, it chipped nervously while I walked the path and took photos. Eventually, it ducked down into the grasses and I could hear faint begging calls. Seriously? You guys went for another brood in Minnesota? It's early September, what's going to happen next week when the young fledge? Will you say, "Great, now that you've mastered flying five feet, you need to know that in the next couple of weeks, we're gonna fly a few thousand miles south...at night." I wonder if any studies have been done on migratory birds and multiple broods? Do birds hatched earlier in the summer that have had more time to master flight and catching food fare better than birds hatched late?

Another interesting thing about the second bird--it's wearing a band, it's been in the CNC nets at some point. Oh, and we had a very interesting retrap today--a female goldfinch who was originally banded SEVEN years ago. Incredible!

That concludes our regularly scheduled update of brown birds.

Hawk Trapping Has Begun

My friend Frank Taylor opened his hawk banding station this weekend. I couldn't go because of the state fair and I'm so bummed that I missed it. I just got his report and found this in the notes--for this bit to make sense, you need to know that there's a bait pigeon on a harness and there is a net in front of the pigeon and a net in back of the pigeon. There's about 10 feet of space between the nets.

Monday was the most exciting of all! We got started at 6:30 am. There was no wind at all. It was supposed to start up and shift around to the southeast by noon with a chance of showers. I figured we would not see much and be out of there by noon. Around 7:20 while we were watching some shins, kestrels and merlins chase each other around the field, a thing that looked like a small airplane came floating in from the farm. It was an immature male bald eagle! It kept coming and coming and we figured it would just pitch up and sit in the tree above us like all the rest have done. This one pitched up but then came right down in the middle of the nets! Rick was in shock but ran out and scared it into the back of the front net. That is only the third eagle we have ever caught up at the blind in 38 years!

Here's a photo Frank took of Rick holding the eagle after they banded it. Frank's blind isn't aimed at attracting eagles but they are opportunists and will for anything. For those worried, the eagle didn't get the pigeon (I think Frank has only lost two pigeons to hawks in all his years banding--that's pretty good).

I'm not sure how much I can go banding, I need to save money for Cape May. Guess I'll be sleeping in the car when I go up.

Busy Day Of Banding

This is a photo that Larry Sirvio took of Tennessee warbler at Carpenter Nature Center--one of the 47 some odd birds that we banded this morning. Oy.

It was just nuts at banding today--I barely had any time to get photos. I arrived a little late and noticed some of the parking lot was getting ready to be repaved. I thought to myself, "With all this construction activity, I bet it will be slow." As I walked towards the building, I noticed one of the nets hadn't been put up yet. I thought it strange, but figured with the construction, maybe they weren't putting all the nets up.

Larry passed me and said, "They just radioed, there are eight birds in the orchard nets. There's one over there too." I said I would put my stuff down and start helping. Inside, the other volunteers were furiously looking up small flycatcher identifications, and there were already about six bags with birds hanging waiting their turn to be processed (from a quick glance the bags had warblers, vireos, a red-breasted nuthatch, and some sort of small flycatchers). Yikes!

From there it was just a blur. At one point I was at a net with one of the Carpenter naturalists. There were four birds in the net. While we were trying to get them out, four more flew in, and then another two. We decided that it was so backed up in processing that we would close up the nets until we were caught up. By the time we got to the last net, eight birds had flown in. We were running out of bags, but fortunately, they were all mostly goldfinches and we could put more than one in a bag.

This is one of the juvenile chipping sparrows we got in--they don't quite look like the adults, about the only thing that really gives them away is the eye stripe and the chipping noise that the make as you untangle them from the nets. We did get in a rather exciting adult--it had a band and turns out that it was banded for the first time on June 17, 2005 and at the time of banding it was already an after hatch year bird, which means that by now it is well over three years old!

This young catbird looks like it is off to a rough start. First, notice all the pin feathers--it's just growing in its cap. But towards the back of the head, its missing some feather and skin--something poked it, hard. Was it a nest mate? Was it a blue jay trying to attach the young in the nest? Who can say. It reminded me of the red-headed woodpecker we got in last year.

And it's interesting to note how different birds feel in the hand. Above is a male Wilson's warbler that I got out of the net. He felt so tiny, like I would break him. The easiest way to get birds out is to grab the feet and untangle those. Most of the time, if you can get the feet out, you can get the rest of the bird fairly easily. Most of the time.


Volunteer Dennis Donath go this photo of a female Wilson's warbler (note the lack of black cap). Today was good practice for untangling birds from the net, I just kept doing the over and over. The goal is to get birds out quickly. Usually, when a bird is REALLY tangled, I defer to the more experienced banders to get the bird out. However, everyone was so busy today, that a coupe of times I found that I was the only option and just had to muddle through. Sometimes, when I'm trying to get out a really tangled bird, I panic. My hands start to shake uncontrollably and are completely useless. When that happens, I just have to let go, take a step back, take a few deep breaths, understand that my panic is not going to help the situation and then go back to the task at hand.

Above, Jim Fox is handing a Wilson's warbler to a young girl whose family came to visit today. Sometimes, you can place a warbler on its back and it will lay there for a moment before flying away. That gives the kid holding it a chance to marvel at the magic of the the little thing in their hands. I got a five second video. Note the little girl's face.




Tell me that she's not now hooked on birds.

I'm still kind of learning the ropes at banding. I'm now to the point where I can actually band a few birds. I insisted that the first practice birds be ones like cowbirds--let me mess up on a cowbird, not a warbler. But I'm to the point that today, when I got an ovenbird out of the net, I got to band it myself--WHOOT!

First, let me say that after handling other warblers from the nets, the ovenbird is much chunkier. That is one beefy warbler--very chunky. You don't really get a chance to notice that when their flitting about in the wild. I'm happy to report that I banded it, aged it (after hatch year--at least a year old) and sexed it (unknown). We got some photos and let it continue on its southward journey.

Today was the first day of sun after six days of non stop clouds and rain. I finally noticed that migration in Minnesota is sincerely underway. If you have a chance, get out and enjoy it while you can.

Lawrence's Warbler?

As if fall warblers weren't already tricky to identify! Here comes a whopper.

All the photos in this blog entry were taken by bird bander Mary Messerli. She and Robert Fashingbauer were banding birds near Willow River State Park in Wisconsin on August 15, 2007 when they banded these two unusual warblers. Take a look at this:

At first glance this looks like a golden-winged warbler, however it has way too much yellow. If some of you are jumping to a hybrid conclusion, you are right. Sometimes golden-winged warblers will hybridize with blue-winged warblers.

When a golden-winged warbler mates with a blue-winged warbler, you usually get a hybrid called a Brewster's warbler. This bird doesn't look anything like a Brewster's. It has the masking of a golden-winged, but the yellow wash of the blue-winged warblers. This bird is a backcross--one of it's parents was a Brewster's and the other was either a true golden-winged warbler or true blue-winged warbler. When this happens you get another type of hybrid called a Lawrence's warbler. Confused yet? Were you able to follow that? Well, hold onto your hat, it gets even trickier:

That same day, those banders caught this bird--another hybrid. Oy! The banders said that this bird had characteristics of being a hatch year bird (it came out of the egg this year) the bird above had characteristics of being an after hatch year bird (at least a year old). But really, it's hard enough to identify hybrids and even harder to age and sex them. I think this is another Lawrence's warbler backcross (a Brewster's hybrid that bred with either a true golden-winged or blue-winged warbler). The banders felt that this bird is of unknown sex, but with the pale mask, I think it is reminiscent of a female golden-winged warbler, so I'd be willing to go out on a limb and call this female.

I nipped over to BNA Online to see what they had to say about hybrids and found this:

"Molecular analyses of hybridization indicate that Blue-wing mtDNA introgresses asymmetrically and perhaps rapidly into Golden-wing phenotypes without comparable reverse introgression and footprinting of Golden-wing mtDNA into replacement Blue-wing populations."

Holy crap, I though Pyle was hard enough to read. Basically, (I think) this is saying is that all this hybridizing and backcrossing can result in fewer golden-winged warblers and more blue-winged warblers. The hybrids and the backcrosses end up in future generations breeding into blue-winged warblers.

Banded Sandpipers

Remember the banded semi-palmated sandpiper we found over the weekend along Duck Banding Road on Big Stone NWR? Well, Doug Buri found out where and when it was banded from Nate Thomas, the doctoral candidate working on tracking them:

The first bird was banded about 2 miles south of Salt Lake on the Minnesota/South Dakota border on July 21-23 2004. That means that the bird is at least 3 years old! Since we couldn't read the individual band number, we don't know if it was tagged as an adult or an immature bird but it has been surviving and migrating since 2004! WOW!

I didn't mention that on our final field trip, we found a second banded semi-palmated sandpiper with different colored tags. I can tell you from my other banding experiences that finding recovered birds is unusual, but finding two banded birds in a weekend--that's unbelievably rare. Again, we couldn't read the individual band number, but based on the color marks on its legs, Nate said the bird was banded in either 2003 or 2005, making the bird either 4 or 2 years old.

These birds breed in the Arctic and migrate down to South America for the winter. Think of the thousands of miles they cover year after year--I'm still trying to wrap my head around that one. What is this saying about migratory route fidelity? So, if you are lucky enough to see any shorebirds in your neck of the woods, even if you can't identify them, think about the migratory journey they could be on.

An Exciting Day

I'm too wiped out to do a proper entry, but I will leave you with some exciting bits from the day. First up, can you identify the bird in the above photo? Hint: It's not a shorebird. When you're ready to guess, the adult plumaged bird can be seen here. No prize, just glory in the comments section.

Second, I met someone totally cool (in my book) on the trip. Long time readers of this blog may recall that I am a big fan of the crop art at the Minnesota State Fair. One of my all time favorite pieces was a portrait of Jackie Chan in 2005. Turns out that one of the women taking the shorebird workshop not only does crop art, but her husband did the Jackie Chan portrait (I totally geeked out). I told her that her cool points had just sky rocketed in my book. Between that and the fact that there is a Strong Bad sticker on her car, leads me to believe that we could be friends outside of birding--if my overwhelming (but sincere) excitement over crop art didn't frighten her. I'm not sure she wants me to completely out her or her husband as crop artists, but I will say that if you visit Cropart.com they have some work up in the gallery section.

Take note of the above photo. Notice anything out of the ordinary? Note the bird coming in for a landing. Do you see tags on the legs?

We found a tagged semi-palmated sandpiper! Normally, I would say that finding a tagged bird is excitement enough--we'll report it, find out where it was banded, how old it is, etc. But I'm even more excited that when it flew in, I was able to tell the trip leader that we had a tagged semi-palmated sandpiper...I identified a semi-palmated sandpiper on my own (sniff, sniff) I've had a total breakthrough!

Friday's Fun At Carpenter

But first, a wee bit of bragging. My sister, Terri N. Graves has a front page article in the current issue of NatureScape News! If you have a copy, it's the one with the blue dragonfly photo. If you don't have one, go out and buy it right now--it's a great paper and my sister is a great writer, a bit different from me--perhaps a tad more conservative...and not as many typos. Here's her profile on their website, but here is what she actually looks like. I think she's going to be a regular contributor to their publication and I'm so excited for her. She'll write on birds, flowers, dragonflies, or whatever tickles her outdoor fancy. NatureScape News covers the whole Midwest and Terri will be their Indiana field contributor, giving her Hoosier perspective. Go, Terri! Whoot.

Well, it was a mini bogging conference on Friday at Carpenter Nature Center because Hasty Brook and Hell Ziggy showed up to join in the fun. I learned that I am not ready to get black-capped chickadees out of the nets on my own. You would be surprised at how hard they are to retrieve, because they ball up their little toes around the nets, and you have to get their feet out before you get the rest of their little bodies out. Problem is, as soon as you get the toes out, they sneak in and clamp down on more net. My particular chickadee had fluttered quite a bit and was beyond tangled. It had to be cut out, which I didn't enjoy, since banding nets cost about $70--ack. Hell Ziggy did get a photo of me above getting a song sparrow out of the nets--easy cheesy. Alas, I was an over achiever with that bird, for I not only got it out of the nets swiftly, but accidentally let it go before we had a chance to put a band on it. Ah well, easy come, easy go.

While I was working on a chickadee, I could hear that someone else was trying to get a woodpecker out of the nets. Some can be quite squeaky and vocal when you are getting them out. I wasn't sure of the species, but could tell by tone that is was a woodpecker. I was surprised when they walked in with a young yellow-bellied sapsucker (above)! We really haven't seen them around Carpenter this summer, so I imagine that this is a young bird leaving its nesting territory--kind of like a kid leaving the house at about 18 years old and living on its own. Here's what the adult looks like. It's a pretty woodpecker.

It was challenging to try and get a photo, it kept flapping and squealing. I was curious to see if any hawks would come in. I've heard that sometimes playing a "wounded woodpecker" call and bring in hawks, foxes, coyotes, and mink.

We also got in a TON of catbirds. I think they young are finally leaving the nest and we may also be getting a few moving out of territories and pondering migration. I laughed when I was looking over the photos, my shot of one of the catbirds looks rather petulant.

Hell Ziggy's on the other hand looks down right artistic (and completely in focus). I've been hearing lots of reports of catbirds eating grape jelly (and robins too). Though it is possible that these species will regularly come in for grape jelly, I wonder if the increase in reports to me has to do with the dry conditions in Minnesota or more people taking notice?

Here's a photo Hell Ziggy got of Hasty Brook releasing a goldfinch. It almost looks like she's doing the flourish at the end of a magic trick. Hasty also got to release a catbird and appeared to have a magical experience.

Hell Ziggy on the other hand wanted to go for a more hard core, if not masochistic experience of holding a cardinal...

I got a shot of it, pre-crunch. Now, that's what I call a nail biter! Har har. She took it like a trooper though, and was proud of her blood blister from the cantankerous cardinal bill.

Afterwards, we headed out for lunch and I got some much needed fun conversation. Remember, you too could be having this kind of fun, so stop out at Carpenter sometime.

A Milestone For Me

And yet another grasshopper sparrow, they are everywhere I go, I can't escape them. I've seen them before, but not like this summer. I don't know if I'm just paying more attention or if we are having a bumper crop of grasshopper sparrows...or if aliens from some distant planet are trying to send me a message about saving the planet via grasshopper sparrow (although, that would seem to me to be an unreliable messenger).

You can tell this press release about Cape May Bird Observatory's new website was sent by a hardcore birder:
"Since you all have blogs and/or have close connections to Cape May I thought you might like to take a look at the site..... and in the event that you might be looking for something to write about given the slow nature of the summer......."

Slow nature of summer? Not in my neck of the woods! There's always some birding happening (and now bees--and some new caterpillar madness had started which I'll be talking about soon). Oh, how my grasshoppery ways have caught up to me this last week--sheesh. Here it is Monday, and I have bloggin' left over from last Friday.

So, Friday at Carpenter was a first for me--banding a tiny bird. Usually, at Carpenter, I'm happy to lurk and watch the pros but the bands swiftly on the birds. I enjoy trying to get the birds out of the net and bringing them in, but I always felt my place at the table was to just promote all the cool things that they do. I'm used to banding large birds, but not the tiny ones, so I have avoided actually pacing a band on a bird. Friday that changed. There have been offers before, but every time I always answer, "Oh, let's wait for a cowbird, let me practice on a cowbird, not a chickadee or goldfinch."

Friday, Jen Veith, the Development Director and experienced bander would not take no for an answer and had me band my first tiny bird--a house wren--man oh man, talk about a really tiny bird to band! Larry took a photo of this momentous occasion (above photo). It all happened so fast, and I was so freaked about not breaking one of those tiny wings, or legs that I barely remember it.

Up next was a house finch. Larry helped supervise the banding of that bird. You will note that we are doing these outside. Jen recommended that the first few times I band birds outside, that way, if I accidentally let one go, it won't risk injury by hitting walls and windows indoors. I was much more comfortable putting the band on this one.

Here I am taking the wing cord--fancy talk for measuring the wing. This house finch was a hatch year bird (hatched this year) and we couldn't tell if it was male or female. I measured the wings, all went well and the bird flew away.

Since many of the birds I have banded (pelicans, hawks) it's still hard for me to get the songbird bander's grip down: holding the bird in my left hand with it's back to my palm, it's head between my index and middle fingers, also holding it's chest. With my small hands, the finch and wren fit easily in my hand...

Then came a much larger hairy woodpecker--not so easy to hold in one hand--good grief, how will I ever hold a blue jay in one hand? This bird we could tell was female and were able to determine her age by her eye color (brown to grayish brown indicates that this bird was hatched either last year or this year). She also had a brood patch for incubating eggs and chicks, which she wouldn't have if she hatched this year, so that means she is a second year bird--she was hatched last year.

In between teaching me how to band, Larry got to band an eastern phoebe. I took a picture with his new Sony digital camera--it's got a pretty good macro feature--look at that feather detail. While we were taking this photo, the phoebe flapped a few times, and each time we heard a rapid clicking noise--phoebe's snap their bill when agitated--just like owls do! I never knew they did that. Of course, I've never had the opportunity to make a phoebe angry.

After banding, Jen and I explored the prairie area at Carpenter--loaded with grasshopper sparrows (another one above) and sedge wrens. Jen and I came upon a family of grasshopper sparrows, and the young were just learning to fly. It was a hoot to watch their labored flights around us and then the oh so awkward landing on what looked like a sturdy perch but turned out to be a wobbly prairie flower. About as graceful as a girl in her first pair of high heels.

There was also a pair of eastern meadowlarks scolding us, we must have been too close to their nests. It would be fun sometime to move the banding operation out to the prairie and get some bands on the birds out here.

Banding Young Raptors

A question came up in the previous entry about banding young raptors, do we worry about being bit and do we band the adults (and if so, how do you get the adults)?

Let's talk about handling raptors: If you have ever noticed from my fall hawk banding photos, we always are holding the hawks and falcons by the feet. It's the same with the young osprey, note Reier in the above photo. It looks like he is cuddling the bird, but he's keeping the feet safely away from his body and since the bird is pressed to his body, that prevents it from flapping around.

We're not really worried about the the hooked beak. The feet on raptors are the business end of the bird--their powerful toes are what separates them from other predatory birds--they grab and kill with their toes. So, when a raptor (eagle, hawk, owl, falcon, kite) feel threatened, their instinct is to always defend or attach with their toes and sharp talons. The beak is a last resort, it's too close to their eyes, and eyes are so crucial to their hunting ability that they don't want to risk putting them near danger.

In the last few years, researchers have also been taking blood samples from the birds. This could be useful for future DNA studies--especially if the populations fall low again and a reintroduction is necessary. Again, in the above photo, note how Amber is holding the young osprey's feet, and has her other hand over the bird's chest to hold it in place while mark takes its blood. Osprey are about five weeks old when we band them, they have learned to stand up and walk a little, but their wing muscles are weak. They also haven't figured out quite what their feet are for. As we are holding them, sometimes they will weakly and slowly make grabs with their toes, but they aren't nearly as swift and as strong as the adults.

Even when its time to put the bands on the legs, one person needs to hold the large chick while another places the band on the legs. Above, Amber holds the bird and feet steady as Mark places the band on the young osprey. Already, osprey banding is a two person job. However, that's just putting the bands on--getting the chicks out of the nest is another matter altogether. You either need...

...a cherry picker to donate their time and truck to go up and retrieve the chicks and put them back. Or you will need...

...a professional tree climber to donate their time and skills to go up and retrieve the chicks. It's a group effort to band osprey--at least two to three people are needed. Note that the climber in the above photo is also having to climb past a slick metal raccoon baffle to to get to the top.

As to the adults, they don't band them anymore in Minnesota. They used to do that when they first started the reintroduction program in the Twin Cities, but I've never observed it. To my understanding, it's not easy. It's not like other raptors where you can put out a bait pigeon and some mist nests--osprey only eat fresh (live) fish. From what I understand, they would take one of the education eagles from The Raptor Center and perch it out near the osprey nest. The adult osprey would fly in to chase off the eagle and either get tangled in nets surrounding the eagle, or some other type of trap. I remember a few times that adult osprey were brought in to TRC from banding because after they trapped it, they found fish hooks in their talons and were able to remove them and return the adults to the nest that day.

And for those curious, no education eagles or wild osprey were hurt or got hold of each other during the banding process.

Now, on to get check the the doin's a transpirin' out at the Kitty hive.

Osprey Banding

I don't know how many of you readers have been following the Zickefoose Blog about blogging styles: as a blogger, are you an ant (writing posts ahead of time and having a store of well thought out, well written, typo free entries) or are you a grasshopper (posting as the muse strikes you, never bothering to have a larder of entries)? If you haven't been able to catch on by my typos, I am very much a grasshopper. I would say that for the most part, that works for me. However this week, the blogging has been a struggle. Nor for lack of inspiration--but lack of time and alertness to do many posts. I have a back log of entries.

Now, on to Thursday's osprey banding:

My friends, Amber and Reier picked me up Thursday morning for some osprey banding with Mark Martell. We stopped at four different nests and had some interesting discoveries.

Nest 1: only one chick to band (mark did two nests on Sunday and each had three chicks) and the adult female had a transmitter on her back--she's from Milwaukee. Can you see the chick in the nest in this photo? When the osprey parents call the warning, the chicks go flat like a pancake, this only shows their brown feathers and hides the white feathers. To a passing aerial predator, the nest would look empty.

Nest 2: three chicks, one died as soon as it was taken out of the nest--very similar to what happened in 2005. The necropsy of the 2005 chick showed that it was severely weakened from a liver problem and that it died from cardiac arrest. The stress of being taken from the nest killed it, but had it been healthy to begin with it, then it would have survived the banding. The problem that the chick had would have killed it either before it left the nest or not soon after. I have a feeling, the necropsy for this bird will show that they same thing happened. Bummer.

Nest 3: Two healthy chicks. Although, besides just the pair of adults screaming at us as we banded, a third flew over and joined in the screaming and yelling. You should be able to see three birds in the above photo, flying in the sky.

Nest 4: Empty. What was interesting about this nest was that chicks were observed in the nest this past Sunday but a mere four days later they were gone. It was way too soon for them to have left the nest and even still, there should have been some osprey activity and it was dead quiet. A new eagle nest was built withing half mile of the osprey nest and Mark speculated that the eagles at the chicks sometime between Sunday and Thursday (guess the pancake defense didn't work so well that time). Talk about getting two birds with one stone (har har)--they get to juicy birds as well as cut back some of the competition for fish in the lake.

Sometimes great horned owls will take osprey chicks, but they aren't strong enough to carry the body away and eat it right in the nest. An eagle, is much larger and can easily carry an osprey chick. The lack of feathers and body parts in the nest points the finger to the eagle.

For me, the best part of the day was at the Lake Josephine nest. There were some kids who came to watch the banding and while this bird waited its turn to be banded, I let them touch it and even better--smell it. Since osprey only eat fish, they have a very distinct aroma. They also became our helpers, holding the bands and other equipment before we put them on the birds. They did a good job. Perhaps future naturalists?

And, because I feel like everywhere I go, I'm finding grasshopper sparrows, I'll include the above photo. This bird was near one of the osprey nests, perched on top of a sapling covered with a plastic tube (to keep deer from chewing it) and then covered with netting on top (to keep bluebirds from going into the tube looking for nest cavities and getting stuck). It tried not to move, hoping I wouldn't notice it just sitting there with some incredibly incriminating billful of food, on its way to feed a nest of hungry chicks. I was more entranced by the insect that whipped around in the tiny bill. I wonder what it was?

I'm Trying

I keep trying to do a blog entry about osprey banding today, but I keep finding ticks. I've lost count of how many I have found crawling on me and I'm not sure what's more disturbing: the number of ticks I keep finding or the fact that I've been out of a tick area for over six hours and I'm still finding them. Why are they just crawling on me, why aren't they latched on? Am I not to their taste or is something wrong my blood?

What does it say when you are rejected by ticks?

For Teageeare

Who tells me that I don't put enough Kabuki in the blog:
Here is my cranky little cockatiel, eyeing my inbox, hoping I will not notice if he pulls out and chews some paper. He and Cinnamon are about to go an a small adventure. We're going to dog sit for the next few days and we're bringing the pets with us.

I can't believe blogging escaped from me for a couple of days--it turned much busier here than I had anticipated. Next weekend should be about the same. I took Cinnamon with me to Carpenter Nature Center on Friday. I got an email a few weeks ago from some blog readers who said they might join us for banding. They asked if Cinnamon would be there and originally I had said no, but Thursday night and Friday morning, she was doing all those things that say, "Hey, mom, I need some stimulation." ie - digging in her litter box and sneaking into the kitchen. So, on went her leash and she went with me to Carpenter and found a whole slew of new things to disapprove of.

Even though we can still get her to put on the leash and harness without too much of a fuss doesn't mean she tries to chew and whip it off when she thinks I'm not looking.

We're getting in quite a few of the summer residence. Above is a male robin we have had in the nets twice this summer. You can tell he is male by the dark head and the darker rusty breast. Boy, he really looks unhappy in this photo.

We also got in this hairy woodpecker. Notice anything strange about him? Check out his red patch--it's on the front of his head and not the back--a way you can tell if the bird just hatched this year when it is at your feeder.

Cinnamon was not as impressed with all the banding going on and was way more interested in exploring all the prairie grasses. Just by hopping in a few feet, she would completely disappear.

Apart from the leash, the only other way you could tell she was in there was by watching a tall piece of grass waver for a moment and then fall over as she had chewed its stalk. She was almost on sensory overload with the abundance of chewables at her feet.

To a blade of grass, she's kind of a scary looking monster. Afterwards, she kept me company as i scouted for a field trip that I was leading on Saturday. Which I will blog about later tonight. Right now, I have to go out and check on the bee situation...have I prevented a swarm...will the Olga hive be ready for a queen excluder...what wonderful bee adventures will I encounter this week?

Colonnade Peregrine Banding

Yesterday they banded the peregrine falcon chicks at the Colonnade Building in Minneapolis. This week has been so insane--I just can't seem to keep up with the schedule. I had a business meeting this week and the poor woman and I were trying to get our schedules to sync up, I finally asked, "Dawn, do you want to meet at a peregrine falcon banding event?" Lucky enough, she did! I wasn't sure, she's one of Non Birding Bill's friends.

Here is Bud Tordoff, holding up one of the four chicks that got bands yesterday. There's a video of it here, you can see one of the adults flying around the nest ledge above Bud. You can also hear the adults screeching in the background of all the chick screaming noises.

There were two males and two females (researchers can tell them apart by size--even at 21 days old). Dawn and I watched a couple of the chicks being banded and then went inside to go over our actual meeting. As we were wrapping things up, the banding crew were coming back into the building. The person in charge is Jackie Fallon, who I know through The Raptor Center so I begged, "Hey, Jackie, can I come up to get photos of you putting the birds back from the floor the nest box is on?"

She said yes. Dawn gave an understanding look and I dashed into the elevator with the peregrine banding posse.

There were some maintenance people taking advantage of the absent chicks to do some minor repairs around the nest. Even though the chicks were gone, the female adult peregrine falcon was giving him the hairy eyeball:



Note the woman in the window well with the padded stick--to keep the falcon from nailing the repairman. There were some interesting leftover prey items around the nest:

This is a chord from the repair man, but under it is a rail head. I'm thinking Virginia rail.

There was also this pellet and I'm so bummed that it didn't turn out so well! There's a hummingbird bill at the top of it! Peregrines--eating hummingbirds? How? I know they are fast, but hummingbirds? Why? Wouldn't it be too much work for so little food? It's gotta be like eating a jolly rancher. I begged the banders to bring it in, but their priority is getting the banded chicks back in the nest swiftly and not getting hit by the adult falcons. It was not in an easy to grab area from the window well, and really, I was lucky just to be there watching the nest platform.

Which reminds me, I ran into HellZiggy and Hasty Brook at the banding. I got this photo of them while I was upstairs. Hi guys, sorry I didn't have more of a chance to chat.

While I was getting their photo, the male came up to see what was going on and to look for the chicks. The repairs were finally finished at the nest...

And the chicks were put back on the nest ledge. As soon as they were put down, they scrambled to the back corner of the nest and screamed together. The female falcon swooped back and forth as she could hear her chicks screeching.

As soon as the window well went up, the female flew in. Both the chicks and the female are looking up towards the well like, "What the heck was that all about?" Here's a video of the female looking over the chicks:



You can almost see her trying to work out in her tiny little brain what just happened. You can also see that she has an urge to feed the chicks. That begging cry stimulates the adults to hunt and feed the chicks.

We left the female alone with her chicks to get back to the business of rearing them. Ultimately the birds get a sense of "I won". They kind of are thinking, 'This big scary thing came in, took the chicks away, but all the falcons screaming and swooping frightened the big scary thing so much, the chicks are back."

Okay, now I have to load up the car and hit the road to North Dakota.

Friday Birds

A quiet day of banding at Carpenter Friday morning--I keep hoping for a big warbler wave in the nets but the timing has been off when we are banding. Some birders are mentioning that they aren't seeing warblers like they normally do this spring, but I think they are there. We had one heck of a leaf out in early May and most the warblers have been hidden. Much my warbler enjoyment this spring has been by ear.

We did get a ruby-throated hummingbird stuck in the nets. We don't have any equipment for banding hummers so when they are in the nets, someone takes them out and we let them go. This girl needed a few minutes for recovery and we got to get a good look at her feathers.

As Jim was getting her out of the net, we noticed that her throat was tinged a light golden yellow. I wondered if this was a plumage variation--the older the female she gets some coloration on her throat? We looked it up in the Pyle book and on BNA Online but could find not mention of gold throats on males or females. The only explanation we could think of was pollen dusted onto her throat from foraging on flowers. Has anyone else seen anything like this before?

The peony garden at Carpenter was loaded with pollen. The gardens are gorgeous right now in various reds, whites and pinks. If you are a fan of the Hoosier state flower and live near Carpenter Nature Center, I'd stop by this weekend.

I did get a chuckle when I found one of Carpenter's honeybees gathering pollen in the peonies. Who knew I'd be paying attention to bees in flowers? Am I losing my birding edge?

Since the banding was slow, I thought I would take some time to try and digiscope some kingbirds with Larry around the property. While walking, I noticed some monarch eggs. Above is a monarch egg on the bottom side of the milkweed--that's my big ole honkin' thumb next to the egg for size comparison. Ah, it's getting to be monarch ranching time. If you would like to learn more about raising native monarchs indoors for release, I'll be teaching a Monarch Ranchin' workshop at Staring Lake Outdoor Center July 7, 2007. Contact Staring Lake for details.

We did find some kingbirds on our walk. Not the best photo ever, but you get the idea. It was so cute, while I was away at Detroit Lakes last week, I could tell Non Birding Bill missed me--he was noticing birds. He sent me a text message on my phone that he had seen a kingbird in Loring Park on his way to work--I didn't even know he knew what a kingbird was.

On my way back to my car, I found myself being spied on by a thirteen-lined ground squirrel. Sometimes they snarf up the spilled seed under the bird feeders.

Larry had posted on the listservs this week that he'd seen dickcissels in Dakota County already. I usually don't see those guys until June. So I drove over to my favorite spots for dickcissel in Dakota County at the Empire Substation on 210th St. There's a small tree farm, power station and Buddhist temple surrounded by farm fields which is great for sparrows and meadowlarks. I didn't find the dickcissels but I did find chipping sparrows singing on territory (above) and lots of singing clay-colored sparrows.

As I was driving home, a sparrow popped up on a tree on the side of the road--a grasshopper sparrow. I pulled over and set my scope on my window mount tripod--which isn't easy to use for short people, but fortunately for me, the Swarovski eye piece rotates around so I can kind of use it with the window mount--it still takes some contorting on my part.

The grasshopper sparrow was incredibly accommodating. It stayed perched in the open even though it took me a few minutes to get the scope up and on it. Maybe this sparrow is ignored so much, it was happy that someone wanted to digiscope it?

Boy, you can tell this has been a good birding month, not many entries on the antics of Cinnamon. She disapproves of her lack of exposure in the blog. Okay, now Non Birding Bill and I are off to celebrate the Holiday Weekend, enjoy the outdoors, irritate a disapproving bunny, grill up some meat, bake some rhubarb pies, and I have to finish up a couple of deadlines. The rain is supposed to ease up tomorrow and I'll try to get out to the beehives and take some photos--our first batch of new workers should be hatched--whoot.

Hope you guys have a good time and enjoy birds where ever you are.

Northern Rough-winged Swallow

Kudos to everyone who made a guess at the photo id contest--it was pure evil on my part. The northern rough-winged swallow is not a bird I normally talk about, it's brown and nondescript and just not a bird people pay a lot of attention to--even though they are there and easy to see if you look. A big pat on the back to Leanne for the correct answer.

Here's the original photo of the bird that was zoomed in for the contest. We had two swallows fly into the nets at the same time at Carpenter--near the bird feeders of all places! Since these aren't birds that will come to bird feeders, our best guess is that they were chasing each other over a territory battle and both landed in the nets at the same time.

At first, there was some talk that it might be a swift, but a check of the tail--and running fingers along the wing confirmed that this was a northern rough-winged swallow. The barbs on in the primary wing feathers on a male rough-wing are distinctly hooked and running your finger over them kind of feels like running your finger over a nail file. Females do not have as distinct barbs. I don't think scientists have figured out the reason for the barbs yet--if anyone knows or has an idea, please let me know in the comments. I would have gotten a photo of the barbs, but the birds were flappy and stressed and we wanted them back out on the wing ASAP.

Again, thanks to everyone who guessed. It's not easy to put your name to an id when you aren't sure.

Common Yellowthroat & Another Contest

Okay, I know I wrote in the comments of the previous entry that I would update after breakfast, but truth be told the gorgeous spring day took hold of me. Once outside, there was not going back indoors. I do have enough material for a whole week's worth of entries and I'm not sure when I'll have time to get them up.

First up, the correct answer for the photo id in the eyeball contest was common yellowthroat, a bird we banded at Carpenter Nature Center on Friday. These are those tiny birds in marshy areas that sing "whichity whichity whichity" from the reeds and are very pishable.

Here is the eyeball...

And here is the whole original photo. Aren't they just gorgeous little guys?

I love the macro feature on my Nikon Coolpix 4500, it really can capture the magic of seeing these birds in hand. The photos though make the common yellowthroat look much bigger than it really is.

The winner of the eyeball contest already has a copy of the book, so the prize is still available. So, here's another eyeball contest--however, this one is much more diabolical than the last! Mwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha:

What bird species belongs to the eyeball? First correct answer in the comments section with a name wins the prize--a paperback Singing Life of Birds with CD (you can use anonymous as a blogger id, but put your name in at the end of the comment if you want the book). The first correct answer with no name wins self satisfaction. Something for everybody!

Banding at North Coast Nature

One of my favorite things to do is banding and they had a great demo at the North Coast Nature Festival.

Here is one of my favorite photos of the weekend. That's master bander Tom Bartlett showing a goldfinch to some awestruck kids. Look at that little boy in sunglasses--that look about says it all!

Kids got the chance to release some of the birds after they were banded. This little girl just opened her hand the finch flung himself from the palm of her hand in a split second.

Here's a handsome little chipping sparrow that came into the nets. I have to say, Tom is one of the fastest banders I have ever seen. Birds were banded, measured, weighed and outta there in less than two minutes.

I also really appreciated how patient and enthusiastic he was around the kids. His missioned appeared to go beyond just banding the birds, but sharing their beauty with them. If kids wanted to, they had a chance to touch the birds. Several years ago, I was against this. I thought it was cruel to the bird and wondered why do kids have to touch everything. One day I realized that touch is how to make something real and understandable to a kid, and when done in a respectful manner, is not that stressful to the bird.

Sometimes, there can be issues. This female brown-headed cowbird gave one little boy a good hard nip on the finger with her bill. It stung, but he survived. He was lucky it wasn't a cardinal.

Tom got several woodpeckers in the net that day, including this male downy woodpecker. You can really see all those downy feathers around his bill...and his tiny spear like tongue.

And off he goes. If you'd like a chance to watch Tom in action, he will be banding at Kelleys Island later this month.

Friday's Aventures Part 1

Holy Cow! A big thanks to Leanne for nominating me for a Blogger's Choice Award! I'm up for best Animal Blog--I have two votes already--whoot! Although I wonder if I should say Cinnamon is up for best animal--she has a very loyal fan base. We're celebrating with some parsley. If you enjoy the blog, please consider voting. That would be pretty cool to get recognition for birding...and disapproving rabbits.

Friday was an action packed day, I'm to have to divide the entries up. We started at Carpenter, which at first seemed like it was going to be a morning of nothing but juncos but then some excitement came in with a sharp-shinned hawk (above). We were watching a fox sparrow hop and kick around one of the traps and I was trying to use my mind power to get it to go into one of the traps, when all of a sudden all the birds flew towards the window, missing it and ducked for cover. One of the staff announced: "Hawk!"

Hellziggy took the above photo. A junco had already come into a trap further away from us and an adult sharp-shinned hawk was trying to get it in the trap. I wonder if this is the same sharp-shin that nailed a junco in a trap from last December? The hawk spent quite a bit of time flying and clamping down on the trap--it did not seem to understand that it was not going to be able to get the junco out. Jim Fitzpatrick dug around for a balchatri trap (works well for raptors), bated it and set it outside. When he went out, the hawk flew up in the tree, but as soon as the bated trap was out, it went right back down for the balchatri.

After about fifteen minutes, but the hawk finally got caught on the trap and we brought it in for banding. Before it got its toes caught in the nooses on the trap was on the trap, I digiscoped a few photos.

The bird was an adult male. Isn't he beautiful. It's kind of strange, I'm sued to seeing these guys up close when we band them in the fall, not in the spring. He did not have a full crop, but he did have some meat on this chest, he'd been eating well this winter.

Hellziggy made it to banding and we ended up going to lunch and birding in a few other areas. I was glad she made it today, she got to be the one to release the sharp-shinned hawk. New people at banding always seem to bring good luck and cool birds into the traps!

Incidentally, the junco that had been in the trap that brought the sharp-shin in was let go--it had been through enough that morning, it didn't need the added stress of human handling and banding. Although, when he gets to his mating territory, he will pretty fierce thinking, "Yeah, I did a round or two with a sharp-shin, I can take on any male junco in a territory battle." Although, banding must not be too stressful, the above junco we trapped yesterday has been re caught NINE times since it's original trapping in December of 2004. Nine times and it still goes into the the potters traps and hangs out around Carpenter in the winter. It's not like the traps are the only places on the property with food and seed, there are plenty of feeders and spilled seed for juncos to get to without being trapped.

After banding I thought we would check open water for ducks. We stopped at the St Croix and the wind was brutal. It's been below freezing the last for days and today the wind was twenty - thirty miles an hour at least. The river was covered with hundreds of tree swallows (above) trying to glean what little food they can from just above the water. This is the weather that separates the strong from the weak. Usually tree swallows are already nesting, but this cold has put a stop to that. This report came in yesterday from Wisconsin by Patrick Ready:

Today while monitoring my state park trail boxes I opened a box I was concerned had a house sparrow nest in it. Instead of house sparrows about 12 Tree Swallows came bursting out of the nest box.

These birds are under severe stress with this frigid weather and are bunching up in nest boxes to stay warm to survive. The magnitude of this behavior is very unusual due to the fact that so many tree swallows returned very early this year.

Kent Hall in Stevens Point reported finding 17 in one of his boxes this afternoon and promptly quit monitoring. Anyone needing to check nest boxes during this cold spell should stop and look into the entrance hole to see if any tree swallows can be seen before proceeding. Even this is risky as some boxes may only have 3-4 birds and may not be visible until the box is open and the they'd take flight. Better to hold off monitoring until temperatures return to normal. When night time temps drop below freezing avoid checking boxes until later in the morning in case swallows have gathered inside to stay warm.

I don't know if anyone saw Julie's post last month about dead bluebirds in her box, but I think this is a good warning to readers who have bluebird trails. One of the risks that birds take when arriving back in early spring is dealing with low food supplies and harsh temperatures--this helps ensure the strongest survive, but it hard for us to watch. If you would like to help a little, now is an excellent time to stock up on mealworms at your local bird store and attach cups full of worms to your bird houses or just mix some in with your tray feeder. I also scatter suet into my tray feeders to for migrants.

More on Friday's birding adventures later.

Another Break

You know what's fun? That bee people really aren't that different than bird people. During the bee class there's been a guy behind me answering questions loud enough for all in the immediate area to hear. He hasn't raised any bees but has read so much, he is an expert (his words, not mine).

So, we're at another break in the bee class so I thought I would catch up on the doin's that transpired at Carpenter banding yesterday.

It was a veritable junco 'sploxion. we trapped and banded a ton yesterday. And they were a little chirpy. I wonder if the warmer weather was stimulating them? They will be heading north soon.

We didn't have the mist nets up, only the Potter's traps to get smaller birds. Somehow this female mourning dove lumbered her way in. Interesting: you can sex mourning doves in hand by checking their neck. If there is quite a bit of iridescent rosy pink the bird is male. If there is mostly tan coloration then it is female. She had mostly tan on her neck.

After banding, it was so warm out I couldn't just go home and decided to head down to Red Wing to take a quick look at eagles. I passed a bank sign that said the temperature was 47 degrees. I ditched my coat, gloves, earmuffs and scarf and wandered around the marina.

The warm weather was helping the eagles feel the love and there was some flirting going. Above are two eagles on the same branch. That's the raptor equivalent of second base. There is a nest at the marina and I did see an eagle sitting inside the nest.

Many were across the marina, but a few lurk in the trees right over the walking path at Colville Park, fairly oblivious to humans. That's what I love about this area, these eagles are not delicate flowers to be given distance. They see the humans, they get what we're about and they will hang out fairly close to us. Heck, they nest right off of highways and here at the marina with high boat traffic. These birds made an informed decision and will nest in an open area, easy for humans to watch and enjoy. Raptors nests aren't always as fragile as some would like you to think.

While at the park an eagle picked off a large fish, probably a carp. As soon as it landed in the tree all the other dozens of eagles in the trees were screaming and squeaking. I'm not sure if they are saying, "Way to go, dude, nice catch!" or they are saying, "Aw man, I'm so hungry. It's not fair, I was thinking of going for that fish."

While this guy was eating, another eagle came over to check out the situation (above).

This eagle was really, really interested on watching the other eagle eating its fish.

It kept looking down at its toes. Our eagles at the Raptor Center do that all the time. I wasn't sure if this bird was watching fish bits fall and debating with itself if it would be worthwhile to go get them or if it was hoping that at some point a fish would magically appear in its talons.

Breaks over.

Wowsers!

I just bought a used camera from one of the Leica guys, a Nikon Coolpix 4500. I bought it for digiscoping and because it's supposed to have an incredible macro feature. I tried it out banding at Carpenter Nature Center today and was VERY pleased with my close ups.

It was a cardinal bonanza today in all the traps, much to the chagrin of the banders' fingers. Those bills are so perfect for ripping open sunflower husks are quite capable of slicing flesh.

We trapped and banded the above male cardinal on September 15, 2006. Note, he was going through that gawky stage transitioning from brown juvenile plumage into is adult male red plumage. Look at all those pin feathers--aka bird acne. He even has a sad little stubby crest. Hmm, this is taking me back to my seventh grade school photo. Shutter.

Here is the same bird retrapped today! What a difference four months make! He looks like he's thinking, "I can't believe how good I look!"

Just take a moment and soak that bird in. Breathe in. Breathe out. Ahhhhhhhhh.

Good night, how red do you need to be? Interesting to note, this bird had a birthday on January 1, 2007. Even though he was probably about two or three months when we first banded him, according to banding rules all wild birds turn a year older the first of the year. He is now an official second year bird--even though it has been less than a year since he hatched. I don't make the banding lab rules, I just follow them.

I'm really digging the macro feature of this Nikon Camera--it really picks up great feather detail. I could just get lost in this female cardinal's patchwork of reds and tans.

Here she is head on. I'm fascinated by the area where all the feather connect with her bill. Such a combination of heard, bright, and shiny contrasted with soft, gray, brown, red, subtle. I just want to run my finger right along that line...I can't because of the whole biting issue, but still...

Well, can't wait to see further results with this camera and future banding sessions.

Of course the fun part of purchasing used cameras is that sometimes not all the old photos are deleted. I found this photo:

It's Pete Dunne and it looks like he's visiting Panama's Canopy Tower. I wonder if he got in?

What A Great Day!

I found a new pair of Keens on sale, got a fabulous haircut AND we now know where the green-tailed towhee came from!

The above photo was taken by Dave Cahlander in early January 2007 in Mountain Lake, MN. He sent an email yesterday saying:

"With the help of photos taken by Steve Roman, we now have a complete band number for the Green-tailed Towhee. 8051-98299 I've submitted this to the bird banding lab, but they don't have a record of this band being used. I'll check with them in a day or two and report any information that they have."

And then today Terry Brashear found that the Mountain Lake Green-tailed Towhee was banded at the Long Point Bird Observatory in Ontario, Canada on June 10, 2006.

According to Jon McCracken of the Bird Banding Lab:

"Yes, incredibly enough this is the bird that John Woodcock banded at TCBO on 10 June/06. It was an after second year male (wings = 78mm; weight = 29.0g; fat =trace) captured in the Heligoland Trap. Wow! It would be great to get all the details (incl location) on the MN sighting. Even if it didn't venture very far, it'd make a great "latest news" blurb.

Here is a photo of the exact same towhee taken by John Woodcock, the day he banded him June 10, 2006 in Thunder Bay! You can read the note about this bird at here.

This is the bird banding equivalent of winning the lottery. It's not often you trap and band a bird and find it again still alive and still traveling. To have it be so out of range and a rarity for Canada and Minnesota is very exciting. We have an idea of his sex and age--this is not just a young bird who got lost or has crossed wires. This bird has been around the block and is at least three years old. Where else has he been?

I'm so grateful for all the banders and photographers involved to get to the bottom of this very cool bird mystery...although, now I wonder...where was it hatched?

Okay, now I seriously have to pack for Atlanta, I'm leaving tomorrow morning.

Green-tailed Towhee Banding Mystery

Bird-wise we got totally nooged at Carpenter today. The traps were birdless, although there was some excitement over a Townsend's Solitaire that was found on the trail. We went to go look for it, but did not find it. Although, I was rewarded with a view of a gorgeous gully (above) that I've never noticed at Carpenter. I tend to hang at the banding station and today made a mental note to take a walk on the trails more often.

Fortunately, we have a very sweet banding mystery to chew on. We've had a rare bird show up in Mountain Lake in Cottonwood County--a green-tailed towhee (a western species not typically found in Minnesota). The photo above was taken by Dave Cahlander and if you look at the leg, you can see that the towhee is banded. Dave is one heck of a photog, and he even tried to photograph the band! No one in Minnesota is claiming to have banded the towhee, so where did it come from? Dave said, "It looks like the numbers are 8051 ?8299, where I can't read the ? number."

He submitted the digits and photos to the BBL and here is a response from Danny Bystrak,
Wildlife Biologist at BBL:

"... It is one of the more fascinating reports I've ever seen here, but so far, I have not made any progress in finding the bander. The problem is that, assuming the 8051 is correct (which it seems to be) and the ?8299 is correct (which it also seems to be), all the possible numbers for the ? are accounted for except two. One of the two was issued to a bander in S.D. who has never banded a Green-tailed Towhee, and the other was issued to a bander in Canada. If it was banded in Canada, the banding record is as far out of range as the sighting!

I will check with the Canadian Banding Office to see who it was issued to, but it is starting to look like maybe the above numbers may not be correct. "

More pictures would be great, if there's any chance we could get that missing number in the picture. "

Where did this bird come from? Anyone out there reading this in Canada banded a green-tailed towhee? I love a good banding mystery!

**There's been an update to the towhee and we now know where it was banded. Check the blog entry for January 10, 2007.

Retrapping at Carpenter

On Friday at Carpenter Nature Center we didn't get in loads of birds and I think all of the ones we got were re traps--birds that have been banded before. But that's important because it gives you an idea of age and territory habits--these birds are year round residents or in the case of juncos the birds are returning to the same spot.

They were passing around a sheet with ages of birds documented through banding. It had both the records for the Bird Banding Lab (BBL) and for Carpenter. According to Carpenter's records, they oldest black-capped chickadee they have documented was 7 years and 4 months. The BBL's oldest black-capped chickadee record was 12 years and 7 months, the sheet didn't say what state the record came from. I went to the BBL website to see if I could find the state the 12 year old chickadee had been banded but it didn't give that info. Interestingly, the website reads that the oldest chickadee is 12 years and 5 months. But I have a feeling that the site hasn't been updated recently and the 12 years and 7 months is a recent record.

So, keep an eye on the chickadees in your backyard. Just think one of the little dudes you are watching right now could be between 7 - 12 years old. Think of that: the storms in your yard, the snows, the cold, the heat, the predators--that tiny bird is capable of surviving well past a decade.

If you are interested in the oldest species on record according to banding records from the BBL, check this link here. I think I need to start eating more fish.

Above is a photo of a cardinal that we banded on September 15 of this year. Because of the black patches on the bill and some of the brown feathers mixed in, we knew this male had been hatched in the spring of 2006. We re trapped him on Friday.

He was now completely red, with just a hint of black on the tip. I tried to take a photo outside and the first one was without a flash. You can see how red he is but he is out of focus. I decided to try the flash.


Ack! Total washout! I am so not a nature photographer. Although, it's interesting that the flash made some of the feathers yellow. I almost need to take a class to figure out all the bells and whistles with this new Fuji Camera.

Incidentally, the oldest cardinal that Carpenter has documented was 9 years and 9 months. BBL's was 15 years and and 9 months.

Getting Some Work Done At Carpenter

Stopped in to watch the Friday morning banding at Carpenter Nature Center this morning. I haven't been able to go for a few weeks and I was glad to hang with the guys again. I was able to get two birds with one stone (so to speak) since I took the Wingscapes Camera with me to test out. For the moment, those photos go on their blog.

It started out as a slow morning. It was about ten degrees but we didn't have any snow. With it being that cold, we didn't put up any nets, but set out potters traps.

A squirrel managed to find its way into one of the traps. Ooops! It was very perplexed and alarmed--as were the banders. Some birds can be a little nippy when they are in the hand, imagine what a squirrel can do. Larry got a stick and opened the trap and the squirrel scampered to freedom unbanded.

We did get in quite a few black-capped chickadees. One very exciting bird already had a band and turned out to have been banded in 2002! This tiny guy lasting close to five years in the wild--amazing. By the way, is it me or does this bird's bill look a little big for a chickadee? I can't tell if I'm getting overly paranoid about birds with overgrown bills or if it's normal.

Juncoes were busting out all over. I love dark-eyed juncos, they kind of remind me of little penguins. Something interesting at Carpenter is that they bait all of their traps with black oil sunflower seeds and the juncos still go in. Working at a bird store and with personal experience, I have always found these guys love white millet, sunflower hearts and Nyjer and not black oilers. I wonder if they are actually cracking open the sunflower or if they see seed and just check it out?

There was a minor junco tragedy. When the guys went out to check all the traps, a sharp-shinned hawk was flushed and left behind a freshly killed junco. The bird was banded, so this was one of the few times when a dead bird could be fully documented we have an idea of where its life ended and how old it was. I think this bird was in its second year. Don't worry raptor enthusiasts, the dead junco was put back outside and the sharpie did return for it.

Frank Taylor Photo Contest

Let's face it, most of us are at home the day before Thanksgiving or if we are at a job we are barely functioning because so many people are out on vacation. Who can concentrate? For readers of the blog who are not living in the United States, Thursday is Thanksgiving where many of us gather with family and eat crazy amounts of food and prep for an insane amount of shopping the following day. Non Birding Bill and I take a low key approach and celebrate Naked Thanksgiving.

Anyway, Frank Taylor sent over is final banding report for the 2006 Season and he included some great raptor head shots. So, can you identify all the raptor head shots in order? The prize is a Zeiss Lens Cloths and a Leupold Tote Bag (with a cool meadowlark graphic).

1.


2.


3.


4.


5.


6.



7.



8.


9.

Feel free to try and age and sex the birds, but really to win, all you need is the species id in the order they are shown. First correct answer in the comments section with a name attached wins the prize.

Even if you can't identify all the birds in this contest, it's fun just to take in Frank's photos.

And Now: Gratuitous Green Jay Photos

In case you don't already feel the necessity to go to South Texas next year, I offer this.

One of the highlights of visiting the Rio Grande Valley Bird Fest are all the green jays. They are so gorgeous and about as common as blue jays are for many of us.

Here, guide Richard Gibbons gives a young boy a recently banded green jay to be released. What a cool bird for a kid to get to see up close and even touch. That's a magic moment right there and that's where a kid will get "BIRDS ARE COOL!" burned into their brain.

Now that I look at this bird closer, it really matches the WingScapes logo. Just soak in that bird's color for a moment. I never get tired of watching them when I visit the area. What's fun is that there is a much more rare jay for the area called a brown jay (which I tried for and missed). Non Birding Bill thinks birders are nuts to try and go for the brown one and not just focus on the green one.

As cool looking as this bird is, keep in mind that it is a member for the jay family. And just like our boisterous blue jays, these colorful birds will eat eggs and nestlings of other bird species. I wonder if that's easier to tolerate when a bird is this strikingly gorgeous?

The banders were kind enough to offer to let me hold a green jay. I didn't quite do it right, I'm used to holding larger birds like pelicans and raptors, not tiny songbirds, but I still really appreciated holding something to unbelievably beautiful in my hands. I even got a life bite.

When I let the bird go, you could see all the bright yellow feathers under the wings and on the sides of the tail. Really, how colorful does a bird need to be? What a treat to see a living, breathing emerald with sapphire, onyx and gold accenting it?

South Texas Banding

So, I took a day off from racking up life birds (seeing birds I've never seen before) for some songbird banding. After two days of bus trips and one day of birding around all over on my own, I was ready for some low key activity. On this trip we sat on a patio of Los Ebanos Preserve. We were even served coffee while birds were brought to us! Above we have bander Mark Conway handing a dove to a young lad very excited about birds. Mark is awesome. He's a careful bander who is a high school teacher in his spare time, this gives him the rare ability to educate while doing in the midst of banding.

Mark does quite a bit of work with South Texas subspecies. He's currently working to prove that there are a separate population of common yellowthroats (above) and Carolina wrens (below).

It was a treat to watch banding in a different area and to see different birds come in. Mark and his assistance must do their banding early in the morning before it gets too hot and over stresses the birds.

Here we have a field trip leader by the name of Richard Gibbons. He's reading the bander's bible by Peter Pyle. It's one of the hardest to read bird books out there but is key in aging and sexing birds in the hand. Richard was reading Pyle out loud which is tough on birders and can work as an instant sleep aid. Pure evil.

It was fun to see so many great birds up close, like this female golden fronted woodpecker.

She was a noisy bird, squealing the whole time they had her for banding. She reminds me of a blond red-bellied woodpecker.

Here's something you don't see every day--the yellow eye of a mockingbird. These guys gave a very plaintive "mew" while being banded. Mockingbirds are such fierce defenders of their territory, it was surprising to hear such a sad little cry from them.

Here's a black-crested titmouse. Don't let that cute face fool you...

This bird had bite. The banders were very careful around the titmice. That sharp bill they use for cracking open seeds and nuts is a handy tool for wedging under fingernails.

Here's one of the many white-tipped doves we got in the nets--check out those crazy yellow eyes.

The doves also had beautiful purple iridescent feathers on the back of the neck. From this angle you can really see what a tiny head holds an even tinier brain that governs a very large body. How do doves manage it?

This was one of the cutest doves we got in, an Inca dove. What was so interesting about these tiny guys was how fast they flew and how quickly their wings flapped. I'm so used to the larger morning doves who lumber around, it was a shock to see these zippy little dudes.

It was a nice way to round out the festival.

Frank Taylor's Banding Report

I'm kind of bummed, I just got Frank's banding report for his hawk banding station for last weekend and the end of the report reminded all of us on the list that this coming weekend is the last weekend he will be banding--and I can't go! That means I will only have been to his place once this year. How did Autumn get away from me? This happened a little bit last fall.

Mental Note for 2007: Leave more time for Frank's banding station in the fall!

I shouldn't complain too much, the reason I can't go to Frank's this weekend is that I'm going to that legendary North American birding hot spot: Cape May Autumn Weekend.

Take a look at the red-tailed hawk photo at the top of this entry. That's a photo I took a couple of years ago at the station, but look at the pupils. Those are normal red-tailed hawk pupils. Now, take a look at the photo Frank took of a red-tailed hawk they got last weekend at the banding station:

Frank wrote, "We caught a passage (first year) Red-tail with both pupils slightly deformed. Chuck gave it the Doctor’s eye inspection and said he thought that both eyes were functioning properly." Chuck is a doctor and one of Frank's sub-banders. Even if the eyes weren't functioning properly, I'm not sure what could have been done. If the pupils are deformed, you can't really do a transplant and the bird would have to be put down. I wonder if the bird sees in double or if images are a little blurry? Can this bird find ways to hunt with this odd vision? It would have hatched at least six months ago and has been surviving and compensating somehow. So much discovered, and yet so many questions are left.

Besides the usual raptors, Frank also got in several passerines--without a bird feeder guiding them in, must be a good spot for birds passing through:

Here's a hairy woodpecker photo that Frank took.

Here's a blue jay photo from Frank. Blue jays are always hanging around the blind looking for left over pigeon chow. One year there was a blue jay that could mimic a broad-winged hawk. It was almost a perfect, except that the blue jay did it a little faster than an actual broad-wing...and you could hear the call well into October when we no longer have broad-winged hawks in Minnesota.

Here's an adult eastern bluebird that found its way into the nets as well. Isn't that just beautiful? I swear I have seen that exact same color scheme in a spring sunrise. Look at how the rust coloration works its way from the breast into the upper wing coverts and scapulars (shoulder feathers).

Tale of Tails

Note: A contest of diabolical proportions is on its way. I planned on doing it today but A: loading photos in Blogger is wonky at the moment and B: Non Birding Bill informed me that he is transferring the whole birdchick website to a new server and it might be hard to find the site on Friday. So, I'm going to postpone the contest to Monday. I'd do it over the weekend, but I think some readers only have internet access at work. The prize is a much coveted autographed Letters From Eden. Now, on to red-tailed hawks!

Here we have a haggard (adult) red-tailed hawk--obvious by the rusty red tail. There is another way that you can judge adults from passage birds (first year hawks).

Here is an adult red-tailed hawk's eyes--note the dark brown eyes.

Here is a first year red-tail. Note the pale yellow eyes? Red-tailed hawks start off with pale eyes and they get darker as they get older.

Sometimes at the banding station we get birds in transition. This bird had a rust red tail but note the eyes. The top half is pale, the bottom half is dark, the bird is at least two years old, maybe three. I'm not sure if you can age red-tails exactly by the eye color. They used to say you could with sharp-shins and Cooper's hawks but someone blew that theory out of the water a few years ago.

Here's a red-tail that we got on Sunday that was a dilly of a pickle. It has a pale eye and a mostly brown tail. What is up with those four red tail feathers?

Frank speculated that when this bird was in the nest, one of the nest mates grabbed the tail and the feathers got pulled out. When a bird has a feather pulled out, a new feather starts to grow. The feathers in that spot are programmed the first time to grow in brown and stripey. Since that had already happened, the new feathers grew in red...and a little stripey because the bird is still in its first year.

Speaking of red-tailed hawks I had a fun coincidence at the banding station on Monday. Over the weekend a comment came in from Michael Paulbeck asking for luck because he was visiting a hawk blind. Little did he know he was going to be at the exact same blind I was at. Here he is holding a raptor for the first time. Congrats, Mike!

Generally Awesome Birding In Duluth

Duluth was just unbelievably gorgeous this past weekend. I was surprised that there were still so many leaves on the trees. I bundled up right now. I'm thinking back to last Friday when the temps were pushing 80 degrees in the Twin Cities and less than a week later I see snow flurries out of my window as I type this blog entry.

I had so much fun with my family this weekend. Here is my mom and Terri looking at a female merlin while sitting in the blind.
My favorite place to stay in Duluth, when not sleeping in my car is the Inn on Gitche Gumee. Each room has a theme and gorgeous view of Lake Superior and the enormous garden. The garden attracts a whole host of birds and during migration, it fun to sit on the deck with some coffee, wine or scotch and watch eagles, peregrines, gulls and warblers pass over. Some nights you can even hear night migrants chipping overhead.

The Inn is owned by Butch and Julie and Butch made all the bed frames, I loved the birch frame that was in one of our rooms. My mom and sisters love it and insist on staying here when they visit.

There's a trail behind the Inn that connects with other trails and if you follow it, you find this odd little natural art landscape. Rocks are stacked on each other, dead trees are planted upside down, etc. Its kind of Blair Witch Project/fairy land all in one.

I took my sisters back there and when Monica snapped this photo of Terri an orb showed up in the photo...ghost or fairy?

I had one of those "magical bird guide" moments. As we continued on the trail I told my sisters that sometimes you see grouse along her (meaning at some point in time over the years that I have been here, I once flushed a grouse). Two minutes later I found a grouse sitting about eye level in a balsam--I have never found a grouse before I flushed it. Monica and Terri got a great look and even got to watch it fly away.

Gray jays are EVERYWHERE in Duluth right now. I have never seen so many. There have been several reports on the MN bird listservs and there was a flock hanging around the Inn and at the banding station. I pished this one in and Monica got a photo. They look like chickadees on steroids.

Here is a photo of Frank, Monica and Terri. I was really proud of Monica for going in the woods with me (literally and figuratively). She's not an outdoors type at all. Frank has been banding for over 37 years (longer than they have been banding at Hawk Ridge). He studies peregrines (he loves, loves, loves the peregrine falcon) and also studies what color of pigeons are more attractive to raptors--does color make a difference, and he also studies ways of using pigeons humanely so they do not get injured in the process of attracting hawks. He is a master bander and is in very good standing with US Fish and Wildlife. Frank has a huge raptor background. When I started at The Raptor Center he was the Curator of Birds and taught me how to handle raptors and give programs. His enthusiasm for raptors and their conservation is infectious. All of his research is turned in at the end of the season and can be accessed through US Fish and Wildlife.

Sunday was such perfect weather we got in 41 birds to the station! We were behind the blind when I took this photo and they had just taken those two sharp-shinned hawks out of the net. My sister Terri was there when one of the banders shouted "Freeze!" Another hawk was spotted and was heading for the nets. I got this photo of Terri and I love it, she looks so excited to be there while none of us were supposed to move.

Someone asked earlier in the comments if we are worried about the birds biting us. Small hawks like sharp-shinned hawks don't pack too much of a punch with their bill. If you go to Hawk Ridge, they will bring out sharpies and the naturalists will happily show you how much the bite doesn't hurt.

The talons really are the business end of the bird. We had so many birds all at once--I think at this point there were 7 or 8 that we got in a row, we gave one to Terri to hold and she got nailed by one of the talons (the claws on the end of the toes). Terri was very excited to be footed.

Here the photo of the bird that footed Terri, a passage sharp-shinned hawk. This is no poor little bird, this is a strong creature that can take a few minutes at a banding station and live to hunt and produce future generations.

Merlins on the other hand to pack a wallop in their bite. Falcons have sharper bills than other raptors and they can really slice up your hand. With merlins (or any falcon) you mind the talons as well as the bill.

Red-tailed hawk talons are not only sharp, but have one heck of a grip so you really, really watch yourself around one of these. I regret to say that years ago I got footed by an education red-tail and it was not fun and oh so painful--I'll save that story for another day. Red-tail bills aren't very sharp, but they are bigger and more blunt so I would recommend having the bill too close to your nose.

Before I headed home I stopped at Hawk Ridge to take a quick walk on one of the trails-- the Summit Overlook or "yellow dot trail" is my favorite. While there I heard a hairy woodpecker, it was working dead balsam about six feet in front of me. When it caught me watching it, the bird flew to another tree further away. I proceeded on the trail towards the tree and then I heard another woodpecker chip that was not a hairy coming from the same tree only higher. I whipped out my Handheld Birds from by back pocket, went to woodpeckers and clicked on the species I thought it was. I played the call and that confirmed:

I was hearing a black-backed woodpecker. I pished and the bird flew down from the tree to just above eye level for me. I was able to get the above photo without my binoculars, I was that close. What a great way to top off a great birding weekend. Hawk Ridge is a fairly reliable spot for black-backs but this is hands down the best look I have ever had of one.

When it finished, I went over and took pictures of the scaling the bird was engaged in. Funny, I was never interested in scaling before Arkansas.

Raptor Releases For Your Viewing Pleasure

This is a photo of my sisters Terri (left) and Monica (right) releasing two sharp-shinned hawks. I love Monica, she looks like she just made a touchdown.

More sharp-shins being released.

Multiple sharp-shinned hawks being released.

Another sharp-shin.

Oooooooooo, haggard red-tailed hawk being released. Sweeeeeet.

And yet, another sharp-shin heading to the wild blue yonder.

More shins...wait, one of these things is not like the others...any guessers?

A passage red-tail. There's actually a second shin being released behind it, you can see its wing poking down behind the red-tail.

Me releasing a merlin.

Hawk Banding Basics

Blogger is still acting strange, so the updates will come as blogger allows them--I've been working on this post from 1pm - 4:30pm trying to upload photos--grrrrrrrrrr. I think the first post should be a little note on banding and terminology before the onslaught of adventures.

I LOVE bird banding and especially hawk banding. For a few minutes, I get a glimpse into the life of different birds that make their way into the nets. This photo above is pretty much what I think my version of heaven will be when I die--beautiful fall colors, dark storm clouds behind them, a chill in the air and a bird so close I can smell it. Either I can handle the bird or the bird can handle me, I don't care so as long as those ingredients are there.

Banding migrating raptors is different than some of the other banding that you see here like songbirds or banding young birds in the nest. Like songbird banding where nets are set up around a feeding station, migrating raptors are attracted by bait--typically in the form of non native North American species like pigeons, starlings and house sparrows. What I really like about Frank's blind is that he uses only one pigeon that is heavily protected by a leather jacket. Also, the pigeon is on a tether and gets yanked out of the way of the oncoming raptors--much the same way rabbits and hares jump straight up to avoid hawks and eagles. Frank has been banding over 37--even before they started banding at Hawk Ridge. His blind is several miles away from the Hawk Ridge station and from time to time you can find some of the HR banders hanging at Frank's to relax or drop off injured birds for us to take to The Raptor Center.

Frank sometimes has nature clubs or small school groups up to his station. It's a fabulous way for kids to watch the different hunting techniques of different types of raptors. What's amazing is that some species like sharp-shinned hawks are SO focused on the pigeon that they will come right into the net with six people milling around outside the nets (that doesn't work for eagles or red-tailed hawks). The first time I ever touched a hawk was such an unbelievable rush and really solidified my interest in birds, I think it's an incredible teaching tool. Any person that visits Frank's blind never leaves without a huge appreciation and respect for raptors and many are just plain stunned saying: "I touched a hawk!"

You also get the chance to see similar sized species up close. Can you id these two different species--no prize, just for fun.

The raptors have their wings and tails measured, get fitted with a band and then are on their way. Birds are rarely with us longer than 15 minutes. When you think about what a bird will do on an average day--this is very small part of their life. These birds will fight to the death for nesting habitat, dive and kill prey the same size they are, migrate thousands of miles--15 minutes in a banding station is child's play compared to what they really do to survive. (Don't believe me, check this and this.) I think many of them leave thinking, "I put on a show of how fierce I was around those gigantic greasy primates and I got away without being eaten. Am I bad or what!"

A few things to know about raptors--first year birds (birds hatched this year) are called passage birds. Also the marks on the breast are vertical. The above bird would be called a passage sharp-shinned hawk.

Raptors that are over a year old are haggard birds. Also, the barring on the feathers tends to be horizontal. So besides having the color on the back change from brown to blue, the chest barring go from brown to rust and the eyes go from yellow to red this bird also has horizontal barring making it a haggard sharp-shinned hawk.

Females are LARGER than males. Barb Walker is holding the same species in the above photos. These are both haggard sharp-shinned hawks--can you tell which one is the female? In accipiters, the size difference is much more obvious than in buteos. I guess it's safe to say that male sharp-shins like a female with back.

Okay, hopefully blogger can fix the photo issue and more updates are coming.

Just In

I just got in. Here is a preview--this was one of the best birding times I've had in a while--great birds around every turn. I must eat, check the email which I haven't seen since Friday, read up on the Big Sit and see if NBB actually put in any blog updates over the weekend.

I just got this photo in email from Frank. From left to right we have my sisters Terri and Monica, my Mom, Frank Taylor holding a sharp-shinned hawk and me...wearing a fabulous Pish Off shirt. Hm, that shirt is so fetching, I wonder where I got it? Frank is so awesome, he makes sure everyone enjoys the birds, is constantly educating and I would not be the raptor presenter I am today if it weren't for his training. I think my mom hit the nail on the head when she said, "If God had a refrigerator, Frank Taylor's picture would be hanging on it."

A Bird's Ability to Thrive No Matter What

All the photos in this entry are courtesy of Frank Taylor.

I just got in a weekly banding report from Frank Taylor. In it was a an interesting account of a first year sharp-shinned hawk that had impaled it's wing on a twig. Frank said that it had healed up with a bit of the twig still in the wing!

They didn't try to pull out the twig, just clipped the ends that were close to the wing. The bird seemed to be doing just fine and they didn't want to stress it out with a trip to The Raptor Center down in the Cities. Frank used to be curator of birds at TRC and has been a master falconer for longer than I've been alive. He knows a healthy flight in a bird when he sees it, and with a high strung bird like an accipiter, letting it go gave it a better shot at survival than time in a rehab facility.

The injury was healed, I wonder how long ago it happened? Perhaps when it was learning to fly.

Another fine example of how birds will survive no matter what. It would never occur to this bird that, "Hey, I've got a stick in my wing, I don't feel like hunting and heading south to find food. I'm just going to hunker down and sleep today." Birds just do what has to be done in order to survive. I love that.

Pete vs Pyle

And now, more fun from banding at Carpenter Nature Center on Friday. This time of year with odd molting patterns and juvenile/immature birds, some identification can be tricky. Some ids, with a little deduction, you can figure out pretty quick:

Check out this cardinal. It's mostly brown with lots of red patches--on the surface it shows characteristics of being both male and female. Is this bird a metrosexual? No! This is a male, hatched this summer and is now molting into his adult red plumage. When cardinals leave the nest, both males and females are brown. Half way through the summer, the males grow in all new feathers, ditching the brown and getting the red.

Check out how funky the face is. The feathers are brown like a female with hints of red. You can see the beginnings of the black that will surround his bill. And the bill itself is a whole hodge podge of colors. Young cardinals have black bills--that's one way you can tell a young cardinal from a female--adult cardinals have orange bills. This bill is definitely in transition from black to orange.

Here it is head on. Very psychedelic.

Here was another weird one. A female house finch with one pink feather on her breast. What was that about? I wondered if it was like female orioles. The older they get, the more they start to look like male orioles. However, clues on the bird said that it was a hatch year bird (hatched this spring) so I'm not sure why the one pink feather. Male house finches get their pink color from their diet--maybe this female has been eating like a male? Another mystery for another day.

And here we have a dreaded empidonax! Not the guy, but what is in his hand. That's Jim Fitzpatrick trying to figure out a small brown bird's identification. For people who don't know birds, there's a whole group of flycatchers called the empidonax flycatchers (willow flycatcher, alder flycatcher, etc) and they all pretty much look the same. In the spring when the birds are singing you have a chance to tell them apart by song. But in the fall when they are silent, it's not easy and empidonax flycatchers can bring the best birders to their knees in tears and frustration.

When you are banding birds, you use a very intense guide called the Identification Guide to North American Bird by Peter Pyle. It can tell you how to age and sex many species of birds by looking at subtle colors and feather shape and size. As we were trying to narrow the identification of the flycatcher in the above photo, we of course turned to Pyle. We were thinking it was between an alder flycatcher and a willow flycatcher.

Here is one equation offered by Pyle to determine the two--yes, that's what I wrote, an equation. Leave it to an ornithologist to use math to take all the fun out of birding:

"Formula I is (longest primary feather minus primary feather 6) minus (primary feather 5 minus primary feather 10), the latter value (p5 minus p10) being positive if p5 > p10 or negative if p10 > p5. The thin lines represent a buffer zone of 30% around the optimal equation (thick line on chart). Birds with measurements falling within the two thin lines should not be identified."

Yawn. Basically, this is saying to measure some of the flight feathers and an attached chart to determine if the bird is identifiable. It very well may not be identifiable at this time.

I brought the new Pete Dunne book Essential Field Guide Companion to see if there was any new insight to offer. There were a few hints but the end of the paragraph was tied up with this:

"But in the East, where Willow is more like Alder in all respects, the most helpful characteristic is often humility (on the part of the observer)."

Basically, you're just not going to know for sure. An excellent point, Pete, which garnered a knowing laugh from all the banders at the table.

Going back to Pyle we found this:

"Thus, successful identification of Alder and Willow flycatchers in the hand involves a synthesis of plumage characters, measurements, and wing morphology by age, sex, and geographic variation, and the use of a buffer zone in which birds should be left unidentified."

So, basically, Pyle is saying the same thing that Pete is saying. There are some things you can try, but some birds, you just aren't going to be able to identify.

The flycatcher in question was released without being banded. During the whole time, the flycatcher never struggled and sat patiently for the short time it was with us. If I were going to anthropomorphize (give human emotion to a bird's behavior) I would have said that it look resigned to not knowing quite what it was itself and could we please help it. We didn't want to keep the bird for an hour to try and guess the id and it's important to get the correct id to make sure the correct sized band is on the bird.

So take heart when you're having trouble figuring out a bird in the field. Some species are so complex, that they can't even be identified in the hand, six inches from your face.

Retrapping Banded Birds

So, why is this bird so exciting? What is this bird's id? If you don't know the id, they eyes of this bird should be a hint--note the red eyes. Now is it clicking in? It's a red-eyed vireo. And this particular vireo was in the blog not too long ago!

This bird was banded at Carpenter Nature Center on May 26 and had its photo in the blog May 29th. I was told that the same vireo was netted again at Carpenter in June while I was away, and now here it showed up for a third time in the nets on July 7th. Every now and then I meet people are against banding birds, that it is too cruel and that banders are traumatizing and scarring these birds for life if not out right killing them. If that's the case, why is this vireo showing up in the nets once a month? This bird has made an informed decision about where to set up it's territory. The nets are set up in the same spots when birds are banded, if the bird was so traumatized the first time it was banded, it would have gotten the heck out of dodge and set up a nesting territory elsewhere. At the very least it would have avoided the area where the nets are. And this vireo isn't the only retrap, many species end up being retrapped at Carpenter, it's a helpful tool in determining how long certain birds live in the wild. I'm not saying that a bird's favorite activity in life is to be handled by humans and to be banded, but birds are not as traumatized by it as some would believe. Think about what a bird goes through on a day to day basis: constantly on the lookout for Cooper's hawks, foxes, cats, snakes, never knowing where that next meal is coming from for sure, defending it's territory--violently if necessary from rivals or other species, sitting out storms, getting up and doing it's job every single day--regardless of how it feels--now that's a work ethic. Birds are hardy, tough, resilient creatures. Five minutes of banding is not going to wreck them for the rest of their life. It certainly does far less damage than someone who finds a young bird of prey and feeds it only hamburger and chicken breasts or a young robin and feeds it only bread and milk.

Since the vireo had posed so nicely with a song sparrow in May, I tried photographing it with a nuthatch for comparison this time. Nuh-uh, that nuthatch was not going to have any of that. The nuthatch trashed and snapped and made such strange catcalls that we decided to let it go. When both birds came in the nets, they were fairly low to the ground--the vireo surprised me, that's a bird I tend to associate with the tops of trees and here it had flown into the net only three feet from the ground and about the same time as the nuthatch--hm, I wonder if they were chasing each other?

I was the one who got the white-breasted nuthatch out of the net. I had to stifle my chuckles while I removed her. First she did her caterwauling, but then she started doing that usual nasally nuthatch "her her". I could feel her body vibrate in my hand while she made her yanking calls. Very cool.

Other birds we got in the nets today included a very tiny house wren--we had heard a winter wren that morning and were hoping for one, but got the boisterous house wren instead. It's so hard to believe this tiny guys make such a loud call.

We also got in SEVERAL recently fledged red-winged black birds. The young blackbird pictured above was so fresh from the nest you could still see the edges of the gape that baby birds have.

On a side note, Non Birding Bill just informed me that the Disapproving Rabbits pages are getting more traffic than the blog...Cinnamon is demanding an increase in her parsley allowance and is threatening to hire an agent if we don't comply.

Osprey Banding 2006

It's that special time of year again...osprey chick banding! After all that travel and then time off for the holiday weekend, I should have spent this morning scheduling meetings and catching up on paperwork...but I'm just a girl who cain't say no to biologists and researchers when they ask if I want to come along banding. It balanced out though, I ended up selling a couple of digiscoping adaptors and maybe even a spotting scope--whoot!

We had lots of kids and young people along this morning as we banded birds from three different locations. One of my favorites was bander Mark Martell's son Chris (or Mini Mark as I like to call him). Look at that hat! Don't you just want to eat him up? Chris is holding up one of the bands.

I love this photo, father and son banding together while an osprey waits its turn in front of them. Chris looks like he's supervising his dad. Mark needs all the suprevision he can get.

Speaking of young people, this was Elizabeth with bander Missy Patty. Elizabeth has a growing interest in biology and banding. I started listing all the great places Elizabeth can go. I'm not sure her mother appreciated all the advice, if I had kept going, I would have had her driving young Liz all over the state and even suggested that she skip school in the fall to go to Hawk Ridge on days when there's a northwest wind. There are so many opportunities for young people to get involved now, especially in Minnesota. Elizabeth is well on her way and has already volunteered with Featherfest at Waldorf Schools. Elizabeth, come to banding on Fridays at Carpenter, you know you want to! All the cool birders are doing it.

And I wonder why more people don't let me around their kids.

"GRRRR! I'm so fierce! Fear me and let me crush you like the bullhead you are!"

Now, on to gratuitous young osprey photos. The birds in these photos are around five weeks old and won't be flying for another three weeks. They're so funny at this age, they are just starting to learn what they can do with their feet and aren't very agile.

Missy Patty said that their muscles aren't strong enough to hold up their wings yet, so they just kind of hang on the sides. Doesn't this kind of take you back to eighth grade and all your adult body parts are coming in and you're growing and not used to taking up so much space? I feel for ya' dude. Instead of acne, these guys have to deal with all their feathers growing in at once. Feather quills coming in all at once have got to feel strange.

This bird was Mr. Bitey McBite Pants. It was the oldest and put up the most struggle. Since it didn't quite know how to use its feet yet, it bit everything--including its own toe! Toe biting with talons just doesn't work well at all and sure enough this bird got a minor puncture wound--man that's gotta be one heck of a canker sore. So, to keep the chick from biting itself anymore, Missy sacrificed her finger. It actually didn't hurt that much--with birds of prey, the talons are always what you worry about, not the bill.

"Wait, what do you mean you need a blood sample?"

Mark and Missy also took blood samples for all the birds for DNA testing. I'm not sure where that goes, but it's smart to start that now and keep track of bloodlines. It would especially be important if ospreys ever need to be bred in captivity again. Osprey reintroduction has been a smashing success in Minnesota. The most successful nest in the Twin Cities is at a private residence. Mark calculated that this particular nest has successfully fledged 33 birds since 1991--including three today.

One bizarre thing that young osprey do as a defense mechanism is what's called pancaking. You can see a young osprey doing it in response to my hat in the above photo. When the young birds hear the warning call from the adults or fell threatened, they kind of flatten out and tuck their heads down. What purpose could this serve? Are they just fainting and pretending to ignore the danger? No! Check out what they look like from above when they do this:

Kind of brown and nondescript. That blends perfectly with the inside of an osprey nest. So, if a potential predator is flying over, at first glance the predator may not notice any young in the nest with their white faces tucked away. Very clever.

I actually got to help and hold one of the young ospreys today. In my excitement and eagerness to help, I forgot to unclip my binos from the harness. When I was finished, they were a little messy:

Look at all that dander, shaft flakes and bird oil (that smells like fish because that's all the birds eat)--thank goodness for lens pens! Glad the talons didn't nail the lens--although, that would have been covered in the no fault warranty and I could have got them repaired.

Here we have a frog who made a cameo appearance during the banding--so tiny! I at first thought it was a spring peeper, but Missy and Mark thought it was a wood frog and with that mask I agreed. However, my Reptiles & Amphibians of Minnesota Field Guide suggests that it is a western chorus frog. If there are any frog experts who disagree, feel free to drop me an email. Whatever it was, it was teeny.

Osprey, a fierce fishing machine and yet goofy looking all at the same time.

A day in Duluth

The lake was angry today my friends. It was chilly and breezy along Lake Superior today in Duluth, but it's late October and in the 30 degree range, what do I expect? There were surfers taking advantage of the waves--and Non Birding Bill thinks I'm nuts for sitting in a box a dark box watching hawks fly by.

Hawks were moving fast and high today. We only got two in the nets, but what we lacked in quantity, we made for in quality--a passage goshawk and a haggard red-tailed hawk. We got the red-tailed hawk in first, early in the morning. We were watching three high in a thermal and at one point each of us was watching a different bird. As one person was saying, "Okay, this one is turning, it's going to come in" another got caught in the net. It was a gorgeous adult with a beautiful rusty red tail, and according to foot size he was a male (pictured right). Interesting was that he had an odd growth on his gape on the lower mandible. The growth looked like a skin tab and grew straight up, like some weird yellow tooth. Who knows what caused it, but the bird has obviously been surviving quite well for years so we let it go after banding it.

The goshawk was a lot of work to get in the net. What is the world coming to when a northern goshawk doesn't come straight for the net with a slight yank of a pigeon. At this particular banding station, we face an open field and can see birds coming for miles. Typically, when a goshawk comes on the field, they make a bee line for the nets but this bird kept doodling along starting to thermalize then getting out of it. Finally it went off to the right up against the tree line. We started to watch for other hawks, but kept half an eye out to the right on the off chance the goshawk came down the tree line towards the net. I looked out the right and there it was like a bird dark rain drop. "It's coming!" I whispered excitedly and it zoomed over the top of the blind, just above the nets and down on the pigeon--we could hear the air passing through the wings. Rick masterfully yanked the pigeon at the last second so it avoided the goshawk's talons. The goshawk landed with a thunk and then leapt up to take off, only to bounce straight into the front net. The pigeon somehow landed in the back net. That's the young goshawk above, the little male kind of reminds me of Sam the Eagle from the Muppets.

Red-breasted nuthatches were crawling all over the trees and the woods sounded like they were chock full of little squeak toys. I meandered into the woods a little bit to see if any small owls were lurking in the trees. Sometimes when my mind is wandering as I walk through the woods, I go on autopilot and absentmindedly pish. As I did this today I felt an odd sensation--I was completely surrounded by red-breasted nuthatches, black-capped chickadees, brown creepers and white-breasted nuthatches. The red-breasteds were within two feet, was I being stalked...or mobbed.

Another sign of winter was all the snow buntings on the sides of the roads (pictured right). I do love those guys. I tried to digiscope them, but I didn't spend as much time on them as I liked, there were some strange people on the side of the road and my scope and camera set up seemed to irk them so I took my birding elsewhere.

Birding with Neil

Periodically I am asked if I am really friends with Neil Gaiman. Yes, I am really am. And to prove it, I took Neil up for a day of hawk watching around Duluth, MN to experience the thrill of thousands of migrating birds of prey. First we stopped at my friend Frank Taylor’s hawk blind to band migrating hawks and then we headed to Hawk Ridge. Many don't know this, but Neil is quite the birder and has a way with passerines (note Neil with the song sparrow on the left).









Neil sits in the hawk blind to help watch for hawks flying over the field. There were a couple of times when he confused blue jays with sharp-shinned hawks but he got the hang of it before the end of the day.









We banded a passage female merlin. She graciously posed for a photo with Neil before continuing on with her migration.











Neil meets some pigeons at the banding station—all of whom never get harmed by hawks during banding due to protective leather jackets and expert handling by hawk banders. He tried to chat with them about their adventures, but being pigeons they were hesitant to speak of their exploits.







After a morning full of banding we stopped at Hawk Ridge Nature Reserve. Neil took a look at the daily totals. He was most excited about seeing a Northern Goshawk and agreed with me that, goshawks are hands down the coolest North American raptor.








The banders at Hawk Ridge got in a Red-eyed Vireo—which are surprisingly aggressive and try to bite anybody. It’s okay because they are insectivores and have soft bills and don’t hurt so much when the bite. This one took a break from nipping for a photo with Neil.










A rare appearance by a Golden-crowned Kinglet at the Hawk Ridge banding station made for a special day. Neil graciously accepted a kiss from this secretive bird.















A fellow birder, Reier decides to make Neil feel like a true bird watcher by making fun of him. This is a good sign that Neil is being embraced by the birding community.















Before the day was done we found a huge mushroom. It reminded me of a smurf house. I wanted to see what it tasted like, but Neil smartly recommended we shouldn’t eat mushrooms we aren’t sure of.


Well hopefully this answers the question of just how well I know Neil Gaiman.

Hawk Trapping

I finally got to spend a day at the hawk blind! This fall has just been CRAZY and I've barely had time to enjoy my favorite part of birding (hawk migration) but I finally had a chance to participate in some hawk banding today. I headed up to Duluth Saturday after a signing with Stan at the Wildlife Science Center (a very cool place by the way--you can have a birthday party with wolves). Well, I was so unfocused I forgot to book a hotel room and decided that rather than stopping from motel to hotel to look for vacancies I would just bunk it with the boys out in the field. Rick was kind enough to offer the back of his truck and Frank was kind enough to offer a sleeping bag. I had plenty of clothes, spare blankets and a pillow in my car and thought this would be what Opie Taylor would call "adventure sleepin'" (you can see my cozy little bed pictured above). It was only supposed to be in the low fifties maybe upper forties so I figured I would be warm enough. Not only that, I had a flask of 15 year old scotch with me just in case I got cold...or couldn't sleep.

The hard part getting to sleep was being distracted by all the outside sounds. I could hear night migrants overhead and that always sends chills down my spine. Then at some point someone in a truck drove by the field with a large flood light, I assume they were shining deer. Other than that it was a pleasant night outdoors snuggled up in a warm sleeping bag listening to the sounds of Duluth.

The trapping was slim pickins'. The winds were pushing the hawks up so high they weren't interested in coming down to the nets and at this point adults start passing through and they are more difficult to get into the nets than the first year birds. We got two hawks in the nets today, one was a passage female merlin. We placed a band her and released her (pictured right). After I snapped the photo, she dropped down and bounced off my arm and headed for the woods, but not without giving us a little merlin shriek before she was out of sight. I wonder if it's good luck to have a merlin ricochette off of you?

Our second bird in the net was a passage female sharp-shin--Oh! She had a really cool flight. Frank and I were watching it high in the sky and it started a straight dive down at a small bird then stopped half way and continued in our direction, but still quite high. As it was right over the blind, Rick pulled the pigeon and it did a straight stoop down! You could see the landing gear (legs) position right in front of the face, locking the talons on the target. Then just mere feet overhead, it dodged and darted from side to side to slow down and not smashing into the ground and in an instant it was in the nets! A really great flight into the net really makes up for a slow bird day.

Since the birds were slow, we closed down the banding station early and Amber, Reier and I headed to Hawk Ridge. It was surprisingly busy, which is good because Hawk Ridge needs all the support it can get. I was so excited, they had shirts--shirts that fit women and don't make us look like shapeless bags of potatoes! So ladies if you are looking for a bird shirt that won't add ten pounds to your figure, get a Hawk Ridge V-Neck. They appear to be available in gray, white or pink.

They wern't getting too many hawks in at their banding station, but they did get some cool passerines into the nets including a golden-crowned kinglet and a red-eyed vireo (left).
Well, this has to be the end of the entry--there's just tons of freaks on TLC tonight. First it's "Face Eating Tumor" followed by "I Am My Own Twin" and to top it off " 101 Things Removed From The Human Body". Now that's what I call quality tv, and it has be educational if it's on The Learning Channel.

That Good Bird Smell

Me smelling a red-tailed hawk. Photo by Amber Burnette

I love the good, warm, feathery smell of a bird. Not all birds have this, eagles for example smell like an empty 35mm film cansiter. (I know, you thought I was going to go for the obvious vultures smell like vomit joke but I'm very serious about the good bird smell). Great-horned owls frequently smell of skunk or at the very least three day old road kill. If you are a bird handler and you have a great-horned owl on your fist you know that when they get stressed they pant and then they have rat breath. Bottom line is that owls, though very cool to look at, stink. Ring-billed gulls and osprey aren't much better as they always smell like fish.

Nothing however beats the smell of a bird that has been in the sun. Red-tailed hawks have a wild alive smell, but it's not pungent. It's definitely an animal smell and lacks the pungent urine aroma that accompanies many wild mammals. Mmmmm.

Today I heard a rumor that just makes me hang my head. I know quite a few people that go grouse hunting in the fall. The word on the street (or should I say path) is that grouse are in low numbers. This year is part of the grouse ten year cycle. Grouse populations peak and are in good numbers and the numbers drop since their isn't enough habitat to support them all. Gradually over 8 years, the population builds itself back up and then by the tenth year the numbers are high and the cycle starts all over again. Since northern goshawks hunt grouse, people unfamiliar with the concept of the food chain often think they are the reason for the decline, however the goshawk population is on a similar cycle. When the grouse population drops, the goshawk population drops and when the grouse population rises the goshawk population rises. This year, someone said they heard from a DNR worker that the reason is that the bald eagle population in Minnesota is so high they are eating the grouse. Though it is possible for an eagle to go after grouse--it's highly unlikely, they just don't have the hunting tools a goshawk has. Grrrrrr.

Forgot one photo

Okay, so several photos will be showing up on here from hawk trapping in the next few days after Amber and I start swapping, but I forgot to post the peregrine falcon with a a weird bill photo:



Who knows what happened to this bird. The injury to the lower mandible looks like it broke long ago and healed at an odd angle. Because of this the top mandible didn't get worn down as it should have and became overgrown. My personal theory is that the bird probably flew into something like a building when learning to fly or chasing after prey. Looking closey at the falcon you could make out a line on the lower mandible where it had been bent back. The bird still managed to feed as the injury healed which is a testament to how well birds get on, even at times without human intervention.

This peregrine was banded and released as is.

Home Again

I'm home from another weekend of hawk trapping. For the first time I got caught in nasty traffic on 35 south from Duluth. At one point it took Amber and I an hour to go ten miles. They had part of the highway down to one lane to work on a bridge.

There are always heroic tales at a hawk banding station. Some hawks sneak up into your nets out of nowhere, some hawks start as pepper specks in the distance and gradually appear before your eyes and into the nets, and some birds seem like they are sure things as they fly straight to the net and veer off away at the last second. Hands down, my favorite birds was an adult male goshawk that came into the nets out of nowhere. Amber and I were behind the blind taking photos of a recently banded red-tailed hawk when Rick told us to be quiet as he drew in a hawk in the distance. He yanked the bait pigeon, and before any of us could breathe the goshawk was in the net. Rick had been targeting a different hawk all together when this guy dove in. We've never gotten one of these in the net when I have been there and I have always wanted to see one up close, they are one of the most beautiful hawks on the planet:



Look at those blood red eyes, they just say "must kill".

We also got in three juvenile goshawks. Goshawks don't get their gray adult plumage until they are two years old. The young are brown and white with yellow eyes instead of red:



Note how the mouth is wide open? These birds are screamers. Literature on the goshawk will say that they are usually silent, this is true unless you are holding one in your hand. In that case they will give a piercing scream that makes banding tricky and the desire to take numerous photos wane.

One very photogenic and compliant species is the red-tailed hawk. This bird will always keep it's mouth open during the banding process but makes no noise.

I tried to do an arty shot with this red-tailed hawk to give the impression of what prey must feel like before it's captured and eaten.

More banding photos

Here are a couple more photos from hawk banding on Sunday. These are both sharp shinned hawks, one immature and one adult.

Here is one of the merlins we banded. He's just a fierce little killing machine!

Hawk Trapping

Fall is the most wonderful time of the year. I spent a good portion of the weekend banding hawks. I arrived Saturday night after work and checked into the Inn on the Gitch Gumee in Duluth. The light from the moon danced on Lake Superior and overhead you could hear peeps of migrating songbirds.

Sunday was terrific for banding, our little station netted 40 hawks including sharp-shinned, Cooper's and merlins. It was an action-packed day as sharp-shins were everywhere in the sky and sometimes we would focus on one hawk and not realize until too late that another hawk had spied the bait and landed in the net. One of the highlights was a first year peregrine falcon that sped into the field and made about eight passes in front of the blind trying to get the bait pigeon. The falcon was too smart for the nets and evetually left to find food elsewhere.

One of the things I love most about hawk trapping is getting to watch the hunting techniques of various raptors. You spot these hawks in the sky miles off in the distance and watch as they catch sight of the bait pigeon and eventually hone in and come for the kill. You see the moment when the hawk sets its wings and goes from being a speck to life size and in your hand.


Here is a photo of an adult male Cooper's hawk that we banded.