The red-winged blackbirds are arriving in larger and larger flocks in Minnesota--spring. I got this photo on Monday while filming a segment with weatherman Rob Koch from KSTP. We were doing a segment on migration and I figured our best bet would be at the Minnesota Valley NWR--sure enough, there was a flock of red-wings. This female downy woodpecker hopped over to a male red-winged blackbird and the two birds stared at each other for a moment. It was almost as if they were having a conversation:
Downy: Oh hey, when did you get back in town?
Red-wing: Just arrived last night, still gotta go another 70 miles north Hinckley, any good grub around here?
Downy: Not to many insects in season yet, but the peanut suet isn't bad down at the feeders.
Common Western Birds Seen At The San Diego Bird Festival
I thought I had planned my bird festivals so well this winter. Florida and San Diego--what better places could a Minnesota girl go to in January and March? Alas, both were a bit chillier than I expected. Florida had a record setting cold snap. And well, San Diego was still really warm at 50 degrees compared to where I live, but not shorts weather. Part of it was that I did many field trips where it's expect to be chilly, like on a boat or in the mountains.
While on the woodpecker trip for the San Diego Bird Festival in the mountains we looked through my scope, we could see the top of the mountain was covered in frost. Glad we weren't going to the top. It was pleasantly chilly enough where we were. I have to say, I had some of the best field trip grub ever at this festival. The best part was all the Laughing Cow Babybel Cheese. Nothing like enjoying great birds in the mountain and eating cheese.
I'm so excited! I found another photo of a Brewer's blackbird that I forgot I took in my iPhoto stash. He's so pretty, shining in all his iridescent glory of the full sun. This bird was part of a flock hanging out at a picnic area. I got to feed them as I tossed bits of my sandwich to the flock. Ah, one person's trash bird is another birder's treasure.
Another bird I was excited to spend time with was the western bluebird. We get tons of eastern bluebirds where I live and westerns are different because their rufous coloration extends to their backs. Eastern bluebirds just have the sky blue down their backs. I was happy to find a male western bluebird that wouldn't turn around and just show me his back.
Check out this super cute dark-eyed junco (the western version sometimes known as Oregon junco). They were flitting around all over the ground and this one paused to get a sip from a small puddle of water. It's the same species as the dark-eyed junco I see here, just a different color. Dark-eyed juncos used to be divided into five different species, a few years ago, this would have been a countable bird, but now the five are lumped into one. I wonder how long until they are divided again?
There were some common birds for me that others on the field trip where excited to see, like this male purple finch. He's beautiful, but he was a lifer for several people on my field trip. And we had to work to see this dude. I'm used to peering out at the feeders at Mr. Neil's and there they are. This one was singing at the top of a tree and it took some time to find the right angle for folks to see him. I giggled at working so hard for a feeder bird. He was singing his territory song, and I managed to get a video of him singing:
Such a pretty song and it's lovely to hear territory song after a long winter.
Anna's hummingbirds were all over the place and we found a female who appeared to be incubating eggs on a nest. She must be well habituated to humans. This nest was at about my eye level in a bush. The bush was in the corner of a "V" where two well travelled paths intersected and people walked by unaware as we watched.
We saw quite a few red-tailed hawks. Many were grabbing thermals and starting to do pair bonding activities. In Minnesota, these guys are setting up territory now. Females should be laying eggs soon. The red-tails in San Diego looked like they were on about the same schedules.
We did see some mammals out on the trip. This was a ground squirrel watching the birders as we were watching the birds. Something about his posture made it look like he was plotting our demise.
The Woodpecker Field Trip At San Diego Bird Festival
Don't forget that this Thursday at 6pm at Merlin's Rest is a Birds and Beers (Birds and Beers is an informal gathering of birders to sit down, have a beverage, and talk some birds). If you are remotely interested in birds, from the hardcore lister to the backyard birder to someone who saw a bird once, this group is for you.
I was really excited to do the Woodpecker Field Trip at the San Diego Bird Festival. I was hoping to see some new species like white-headed woodpecker or Lewis's woodpecker. I got skunked on both but had a fabulous time--that's the way it crumbles, cookie-wise when birding. Ah well, another bird for another day. I did have a great time with all of the acorn woodpeckers and several other species.
We had a great moment with a western variety of northern flicker (this is a red-shafted variety). Where I live, we get the yellow-shafted version of this species. The red-shafted version of the northern flicker is different, the shafts of wing feathers are red and the males have a red moustache and not a black moustache. Note the above male. Now, here is a photo of the yellow-shafted that I'm used to. See the difference?
We had paused for a break in the trail and could hear this bird in the distance. We played its call once and it flew in and immediately flew in and started to drum on the trunk to announce territory. I got a video of it:
What amazes me most is how little movement the flicker appears to be making and still manages to create quite a sound. The birds look for a good, resonant tree but still the sound is remarkable.
We had a spectacular time, the view was beautiful up in the mountains surrounded by burnt trees. One of the field trip leaders was Steve Shunk head of Paradise Birding. He's got a woodpecker festival going this June in Oregon and says that he could easily get me white-headed woodpecker there...was that his plan? Maybe he was keeping the white-headeds away on this trip, so I'd have to go to Oregon in June? Doubtful, since I've never met a man so gung-ho on woodpeckers...ever. Seriously, this guy needs to be seen to be believed. I have never seen a grown man get so excited over seeing a downy woodpecker, as Steve Shunk.
I did get one new woodpecker species and that was a Nuttall's woodpecker. This is such a cool woodpecker at least the one I was was watching. She was gleaning insects off of the leaves. They do peck like other woodpeckers, but some do go for the bugs crawling on the foliage. I got a video of her foraging. In the background, you'll hear Steve talking about a sapsucker, he's not talking about the Nuttall's--you can hear his excitement (that's the same excitement he would have for a downy woodpecker), he was on the trail of an odd looking sapsucker:
One of the cool things for me, being a Midwestern girl is that when I go to the coasts, just walking out the door of my hotel room brings exciting birds for me like the young Heerman's gull (it was foraging on the lawn and pandering for a handout). Have you ever seen an adult Heerman's gull? Check out this link, it's a pretty classy lookin' bird.
Okay, mallards are not the most exciting bird on the planet but I did think it was funny that a pair was hanging out at the heated pool at night--yes the pool was heated, it did get down to 40 degrees at night. This male must have quite the line going with the hens, "Hey, baby, I know a place we can relax. It's fenced, far from predators, we can get some snacks, and nothing but class all the way."
Okay, this I thought was very cool. At first, "I though, are those cell phone receivers tacked onto palm trees?" Then I realized that the trunks were wide and realized that they were fake palm trees. Cell phone towers disguised to blend in with the landscape--and no guy wires to kill birds. Check it out, there a bird perched on top of one of the trees.
Thanks to the magic of digiscoping, we can see that it's a Cassin's kingbird. That must be a great place to watch for insects.
My buddy Clay chuckled when I got a photo of a Brewer's blackbird. "You can tell those Easterners gettin' a photo of a Brewer's blackbird." What can I say, it's different.
Black skimmers were roosting in the afternoon on a beach near the convention center where the San Diego Bird Festival was held at Mission Bay.
A pleasant surprise for me was seeing brant swimming around near shore. This is one of those birds I could never see, but once I finally saw them, I see them everywhere now. They were on their northward migration.
Willets were all over. I took this photo off the San Diego river, it was foraging and when another willet walked nearby, it stopped feeding and then sat down and was still until the other willet passed. Was this some sort of submissive behavior?
There are also the numerous brown pelicans, anyone can get an award winning shot...
So why not get a shot where they look really goofy and not unlike that rarely remembered Showbiz Pizza Place character, Uncle Klunk.
Back to more fun at the San Diego Bird Festival! Last time I talked about all the wood duck action at Santee Lakes. I did get quite a few photos of wood ducks, but the main bird species seen at Santee Lakes (and my hotel) was the American coot. While we were at Santee, families came to "feed the ducks." I thought about pointing out that they were actualely "feeding the rails" but abstained. The coots get an odd diet of bread and I even watched a kid toss them some gummy bears. Perhaps gummy bears are kind of like the aquatic insects and animals they are supposed to eat?
Santee Lakes is a beautiful little chain of lakes. The palm trees were a welcome site to this Minnesota girl. The San Diego Bird Festival originally was held in January. Last year they were kicking around the idea of moving to March. Someone asked, "Who wants to come to California in March, when it's practically spring?" I added my two cents worth by saying in my area of the US, it's still very much winter in March--and it is. As I type this, it's five degrees in Minnesota.
A treat for me was being able to watch ring-necked ducks up close and not freezing my tail off! Some readers of this blog may remember a series of photos I put in the blog last year from my buddy Clay Taylor of a ring-necked duck trying to swallow a snail. Clay got that footage here at Santee Lakes.
We were so close, we could kind of see the ring around the neck for which the duck was named...again, those wacky ornithologists naming a bird for a hard to see feature and some something obvious like ring-billed duck.
Keeping with the theme of ultra-mellow birds, our group found a rather easy going pied-billed grebe. In many places, you so much as make one furtive sidelong glance and they dive. Not this grebe, it went as far as to go into a ten minute preening session.
Then came the stare down. It was fun and I never really noticed the black chin on a pied-billed grebe before.
There were some ruddy ducks out on the lakes too--but they were much more camera shy, or just tired. Many of the males with the bluest bills were more interested in sleeping and preening. I started to video a male as he was swimming around and towards the end of it, he started doing his mating dance--he raises his tail and two little tufts on his head. He creates some bubbles underneath his body and then slaps his bill against his chest several times while making To attract a female the male swims around her, his tail tilted forward and neck outstretched. He then slaps his chestnut-colored chest with his bright blue bill while making his courtship call. The video didn't capture the call, but you can hear it at Xeno-canto. Here's the video:
The park is used by several members of the public, it's not a quiet park, but there's room for everybody from birders, duck feeders and people who like to go fishing. As we were working the lakes for digiscoping, there was a guy who was fishing--his line even got stuck in the tree and Clay helped him get it out. But we birders must have out stayed our welcome because he started to complain about us. I heard him behind me mutter to his friend, "I think watching birds is stupid, you can just go to the pet store and buy them. Why don't these people go and just buy some birds and leave us alone."
Irritated that he was complaining about us, even after Clay had helped him, I started to defend our group by saying, "You can't buy these birds in a pet store."
And he retorted, "Yes you can, bird watching is stupid."
I turned to look at him and he was not facing me.
But based on what I saw, I chose not to engage any further with a man whose butt was hanging out of his trousers. Perhaps he is not the world's authority on whether or not bird watching is stupid.
I was grateful when a western scrub-jay popped up as a nice cleansing bird.
Well, the San Diego Bird Festival put on by the San Diego Audubon Society has wound down to a a close and it was an action packed festival from workshops, to games to, movie sneak preview to even David Sibley himself. One of the field trips I went on was with my buddy Clay and it was in depth digiscoping. He did a class (above) and the next day he took a group out for field trip that was geared to getting shots of birds in great light. I must admit, it was a refreshing change for me, to just be able to go on a field trip and really take time with birds, not just go out and tick off as many species as possible.
We went to Santee Lakes for part of it and I was going over my photos, I noticed I had several shots of wood ducks!
The wood ducks were used to people coming around to feed them. As I was standing on a bridge looking out at the waterfowl, this male wood duck swam up and gave me an expectant look. I didn't even need to use the digiscoping equipment, he was too close. He stared momentarily and when I failed to produce anything remotely resembling food, he moved on looking for accommodating human.
Everyone in our group found a drowsy adult male wood duck on which to practice their digiscoping mojo. Another case of a bird behaving differently in another state. Wood ducks in Minnesota are rather cagey, but have a friendlier attitude in sunny San Diego.
As we were taking his photo, he suddenly perked up. You can't see in the photo, but not too far in front of him, a pair of wood ducks is waddling by. He started doing his wood duck whistle. As the pair continued without paying him too much mind, he started to settle back down on one foot, but still continued to whistle. I took a video. You'll hear Clay talking in the background as well as a great-tailed grackle:
Did you catch the size of that great-tailed grackle walking behind the wood duck?
I think this is my favorite of all of them. I love head-on shots of birds. More San Diego Bird Fest fun (and Guatemala) is on the way.
And now back to the continuing saga to see a horned guan. If you missed Part 1, it's here.
I need to start this by dedicating this post to Gustavo Cañas-Valle of Neblina Tours in Ecuador (that’s him above on the right with one of our local guides, Hugo Enriquez on the left). I had actually met some of the guides from Neblina at the Space Coast Bird Festival, they had a booth there. I have an interest in going to Ecuador, but based solely on the kindness (and humor and bird knowledge) of their guide, Gustavo, should I ever make it to Ecuador, I will use Neblina, you'll learn why a few paragraphs in.
Our local guides up Volcan San Pedro were fabulous. We were escorted by Hugo Enriquez (in the above photo with Gustavo) and Irene Rodriguez of Operador Latino. Irene made sure we were as comfortable as we could be as well as knows her birds. Hugo knows his birds, but I gotta say that if I were a single lady, he’s not a bad companion to have in the woods. He has an easy-going manner, a warm voice with a Spanish accent, and beautiful eyes. When asked about where we’re going to bird for the day, he’ll say things like, “Well, it is up to you, we can do what you want.”
Just sayin', ladies. But I digress from the horned guan!
We started our trek on Volcan San Pedro looking for the horned guan with a few stops to look for local bird specialties, but then we didn’t stop for birds anymore and the trails became much steeper. It was switchback after switchback. It was dry and the volcanic dust made for powdery walking conditions. I toiled up the trail and began to question my sanity. As my pace slowed, the sound of our group ahead became more and more faint, I realized I was loosing ground. There was another person in our group who seemed to struggle with the climb along with me. I was grateful for the company and to not to be the pokiest of the little puppies.
Local farmers loaded with burdens of fire wood, corn or coffee moved swiftly passed us on the trail. Many looked to be twice my age which made me feel worse. I bike ride, I lead nature hikes (not just bird walks), I haul bee equipment and this trail was turning my legs to jelly. It was relentless in its incline. I was desperate for a flat surface.
After much sweat and panting we caught up to the group at another resting spot. I hoped that we were half way up and was saddened to learn that we were only a third of the way, with another three hours to go. It was at this moment that Gustavo from Neblina Tours told me the sweetest lie, “I’m having trouble staying balanced on this steep trail. Would it be alright with you if I took your scope and used it as a way to balance myself on the trail?”
I knew it was lie. He carried more on this trip than I did: he had two massive field guides (yeah, he carried Howell and Webb (a bird guide so thick, it makes the Sibley guide look like a pamphlet) and the National Geographic out in the field besides his binoculars, lunch, water, recording equipment, etc). I knew it was a lie and I was too sweaty and tired to care. I gratefully accepted his offer and continued my slow lumbering walk up the trail.
We eventually made it to a halfway point. I sat on the floor of the observation deck and used the wooden railing to prop my head up and looked out at the beautiful view. It was at this point when I realized how much I hated birds. I likened myself to a drug addict who puts themselves through terrible tortures, for what? For the high of seeing one rare bird. I was not forced to do this, I signed up--willingly. What’s worse is that I could have stopped at any time. I could have just stopped walking on the trail and said, “No more, I’ll wait here in the shade, watch some foliage-gleaners and pepper-shrikes and wait for you on your glory walk down the trail after seeing the guan.” One of our group already had given up the trail due to a bad knee. It was the honorable and safe thing to do.
But I willingly continued. Quitting this steep upward battle was never an option to me. I looked at Jen and said, “I need psychological help. This is like hitting yourself with a hammer because it feels so good when you finally stop.”
We both laughed and Mike Bergin warned that we should probably save our oxygen.
There were three of us lagging behind now, Jen and I practically held on to each other to stay upright. Ana Christina from INGUAT sensed our waning resolve and anytime Jen and I paused she would call in her sweet Spanish accent, “Jen, Sharon, come on, the horned guan is right up here.”
We fell for it once and scrambled up, but realized she was really a cloud forest sprite beckoning us forward. It worked. At every switchback we would pause to try and get some order to our respiratory system, Ana Christina would be another switchback ahead of us calling, “C’mon Jen. C’mon Sharon, horned guan is waiting for you.”
Our group did flush an owl on our way up. I never got a headshot of it, but the back looked like a barred owl. It’s the Guatemalan version called a fulvus owl.
We finally reached the horned guan appropriate elevation. I sat in the dust. Gustavo smiled and pointed out how dirty my face was. I really hated birds and really hated cameras. Part of our group rested, while the rest did an initial search. No guan. We needed to go higher.
WTF?? Higher? Noooooooooooooooo!
Up we went. It dawned on me that we could go all this way and not see the horned guan. Or only see a tiny bit of it. I really, really hated birds now. I couldn’t imagine doing this climb more than once. We actually passed other hikers, oblivious to the guan. They took the trail simply for the view. You know, there are a lot of views out there. I don’t know if I need to go through all of this muscular torture for this particular view.
We paused once more. Hope was fading in the group. Mike of 10,000 Birds (above) still held out some sweaty hope, but the rest of worried that we’d been talking too much or paying more attention to our body and foot aches and completely missed the turkey sized tree chicken that was our quarry.
Then an anxious whisper came from above the switchback in front of us—Mel de Piñeda a participant in our group found the guan (Mel’s an awesome dude, he takes blind people birding in Texas). All of us suddenly forgot body fatigue and dashed up the switchback—where had this new found energy come from? The light broke through the trees and shown down upon us, as we watched the horned guan in all its glory.
Wait, I can make out the body, and the foot! That’s totally a horned guan foot, it’s countable.
Finally, a little head poked out. I see the horn, the little red horn where the guan gets its name! Whoot! And check out at crazy yellow eye. I can’t believe I saw the face and got to digiscope the face. This was a great look, worth the climb. It was a challenge to jockey for position for a photo of the guan on the narrow path with my tripod. But thanks to Gustavo, we got the guan in scope view several times.
Even our police escort was impressed. Did I mention we had a police escort? And that they came with us everywhere in Guatemala? And that they even climbed the volcano as if it were nothing? It was sad the many times I would be doubled over panting, waving the officer on, but he would stay by me so as not to get too separated from the group.
Eventually one of the flock came out into the open and Gustavo set up my scope to get this shot. I would not have gotten it without his help, I would still be struggling up the side of the volcano had he not offered to take my scope. This was more than could be hoped for! The future of the horned guan is uncertain. There is so much we don’t know, but we think we know some things like there are less than 2500 in the wild, their populations are severely fragmented and they face several challenges: farmers using their habitat for firewood or subsistence farming or using the guan themselves as a source of food. You can read more about it at BirdLife International.
At first we thought there were two guan, but eventually, more and more came about. They even started vocalizing, making strange clucks, bill clacks and even a few flatulent sounding tones. Chris Benesh has a great guan photo and recordings of the vocalizations here.
Below is a video I got of the horned guan. You can see the bills moving, but my little point and shoot could not pick up the sounds. I think the horned guan move like dinosaurs, or at least what I imagine dinosaurs probably moved like way back a few million years ago.
So, how did we react?
Well, my little head exploded with birder wonder and awe. It was worth the climb and I got better looks at this rare tree chicken than I ever expected.
And after all of that, we had to go back down! Certainly it would not take the four hours that it took to get up to the guan, but it would still take time. My legs are only used to flat surfaced and had been trudging uphill for four hours non stop. And now I had to go down, something I still wasn't used to. Every muscle in my legs vibrated at any moment I stopped. I kept going, but the decline and volcanic ash still caused me to slide and fall. Every time I did fall, a large cloud of dust preceded me, causing Hugo to cross his arms and shout, "Safe!" as if I were a baseball player sliding into home. Thanks, Hugo. After watching me do this twice, Gustavo refused to give my scope back. He was skeptical that the Swarovski would be able to survive me.
Some way, some how we made it back down the trail to our meeting point with the vehicle, our water bottles depleted and lunches eaten. Ana Christina and Irene took us to a local watering hole for some refreshments.
In our dehydrated state, we should of have water, but what better way to celebrate a rare tree chicken like the horned guan than with a chicken themed beer. Giddiness soon set in with most of us, especially for me--I NEVER HAVE TO DO THAT CLIMB EVER AGAIN. It occurred to me that a horned guan is a bird that I will only see once in a lifetime and I had a pang of pity for guys like Rick who would have to lead a tour here again and take people up that volcano. Ah well, that's one of the many reasons I'm not a pro bird guide, and I'm okay with that.
Our groups' giddiness was soon detectable to the locals and many swarmed our table with scarves, skirts, sunglasses holders, headbands, you name it to try and sell us.
I think almost all of us ended up getting some souveniers. When it was time for us to catch our boat back to the hotel, I stood up and a Mayan woman wrapped a skirt around me and tied it on telling me how pretty it was and it was great because it had pockets. It was beautiful, but I laughed at what a dusty mess I must have looked like with this gorgeous light blue skirt askew on my waiste. I had spent enough money that day and had to decline a skirt.
I felt dirty and battle weary on the ride back. I turned to look at Vulcan San Pedro and the sun shone down on it, almost as if illuminating where we had seen the mysterious horned guan. I couldn't believe we actually went up and had great looks at the bird.
It took a very long shower and lots of scrubbing to remove the dirt. After I finished showering, I took my Swarovski binoculars and scope and ran them under the shower. When you've got great waterproof optics, you can safely run them under the shower to get the dust out. Jen had Leica's and her focus wheel got stuck, I advised her to pop it up and run some water in there to get the grit out. Again, waterproof optics allow you to do that. She rinsed them and the focus wheel was fine for the rest of the trip.
That night we sat down to a fine meal (some of the best food I've ever had). We discussed the next day's birding. After getting our stuff together at 4:15am that mornign and birding almost 12 hours, I was delighted to hear that we were meeting at 7am for breakfast before birding (we'd get to sleep in). Bless Mel's heart who asked, "Hey that means we won't get birding until 8 - 8:30 am, anyone for starting earlier?"
Hugo said, "Well, it's whatever you want..."
There was a pause, I decided to break it. "I gotta say that I'm not in favor of that idea and would rather sleep in and rest after today."
I'm not sure if everyone agreed, but after a day like the horned guan death march, I could live with a later start the next morning.
I'm not sure how much to tell you about the horned guan. I had a vague idea of the challenge of the trail to the guan, but I really don't think I fully grasped how hard it would be to see this bird. Now, I debate with myself: "Do I go on and on about how hard it was and will that prevent someone from going to see this amazing bird?"
Because, honestly, if I truly understood what was ahead of me, I don't know that I would have gone for it. That's right, you read that correctly, I don't know if I would have gone for one of the more rare species one can see in the Americas if I had truly understood the work in front of me. Oh, I had heard the stories from Julie Zickefoose on NPR and on her blog regarding her horned guan adventure. I read and heard of Bill of the Birds on his horned guan search. There were tales from some of my buddies on the bird festival trail that it was a brutal climb. I heard of well known, great birders, who I considered to be incredibly physically fit, having to crawl that last part of the trail just to see the bird. I think a part of me thought that was just a bit of exaggeration.
The hike up Volcan San Pedro was saved for one of our final days of birding in Guatemala. Our group had been mentioning it to each other, "Do you think you're going to be able to do it?" or "Sharon, do you really think you can take your scope up the volcano, I'd leave it here."
I heard that Jeff Bouton and Bill of the Birds had brought their scopes, so I should be able to do it too. Right?
I didn't get very scared until the day before. I had found some wireless internet at our lodge in Los Andes and put up a status update on Facebook: Sharon is nervous about tomorrow's climb up the Volcano to see the horned guan. I got a comment from Chris Benesh who works for Field Guides--travels all over the world to show people birds. He was also on the same Ivory-bill Search Team I was on. I considered to him to be very physically fit. He left a comment to the effect of the climb being the toughest he had ever done, it was brutal, but the got the guan.
Okay, if Chris called it brutal, maybe those stories of birders panting and crawling to the top weren't just exaggerated fish tales. I decided to be all Scarlett O'Hara about it and, "I'll not think about that right now, I'll go crazy if I do. I'll think about that tomorrow."
We had one more field trip planned at Los Andes to look for some mannikans, I opted to take the afternoon off, relax a bit so I could be fresh the next morning. I was a rough schedule. We had to be ready to go by 4:15 am, take a bus to Lake Atitlan where we would take a ferry to San Pedro for the climb. The hike up to the guan was going to take four hours, who knew how long the hike down would take.
Gulp.
Initially, all went well. We arrived at Lake Atitlan and watched in amazement at how the local used it. As we were loading our ferry, one man drove in his tuk tuk (tiny taxi car) into the water for a wash, another drove in his truck, a couple of people were bathing right on the water's edge.
We boarded boat, marveled at the beautiful volcanoes that surrounded the lake and laughed as the cool water sprayed us as we hit waves. Outside the boat we looked to pad our species list with lesser scaup, brown pelicans, and ruddy ducks. As we approached the other side of the lake, we watched in amazement as Volcan San Pedro loomed over us. Yes, we would be climbing this extinct volcano. Hugo, our guide tried to alleviate our fears since many of us were not accustomed to this altitude. In his quiet, spanish accent he said, "Yes, we will go slow. It will be slow, slow walking, then looking at birds, slow, slow walking, then looking at birds."
I felt some comfort in this. Perhaps the four hours was not all climbing but just such a slow pace of birding that it would seem steep, but not be that bad.
When we landed in San Pedro, I saw more tourists here than in any other town. Peddlers were ready for us, a Mayan woman greeted us with a basket full of baked goods. I looked at the steep streets in front of us and wondered if we were going to start right away, but Irene and Ana Christina said that a bus was coming to take us.
As we waited for a bus, we noticed some expatriots in a nearby cafe, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. Mike tried to ask were the gentleman in the shorts was from, he replied, "Mexico." in a rather non-Mexican accent. He the answered, "I'm from nowhere, man." Gotta love those expats!
I made friends with a great gal on the trip—Jen Sauter. She’s helping to organize the Midwest Birding Symposium this fall and has a wonderful, giggly sense of humor. We noticed a truck stopped and several locals including school kids loaded into it. Jen said, “There’s our bus!” We laughed at the prospect of standing in the bed of a pick up truck to go see a bird…then our vehicle arrived.
And we laughed some more! We were going to stand in the back of a pickup truck afterall, piled with 10 birders.
I love this photo. We’re all so happy, so giddy, so blissfully unaware of the horrors and sweat that await us. That’s me with Mike Bergin of 10,000 Birds, Jen Sauter, Hugo our guide and even a part of Rick Wright. It was all just an exciting adventure then.
We began our drive through the narrow cobblestone streets of San Pedro, up and up we went.
We passed many locals taking the route on foot, many carrying heavy burdens of goods on their backs. What is it like to be acclimatized to this? This poor guys was carrying what appeared to be drippy wet blankets.
We arrived at the reserve for the horned guan. We readjusted our packs with our lunches and our bottles of water and began the trail. The day was sunny, the birds were numerous and we made some stops.
We found a spotted a load with western tanagers (more of those North American breeders).
I was excited to get the rufous-capped warbler. I had actually seen one of these earlier in our journey, but was the only one who had. I was glad others got to see it and this time I even got to digiscope it.
We also got great looks at this ginormous squirrel cuckoo—it was much bigger than the black-billed and yellow-billed cuckoos I see. And so beautiful too—reminiscent of a brown thrasher. As we stopped for this birding, I started to think, “This isn’t so bad.” I have short legs and I was not used to the elevation. I did lag behind the group but managed to catch up with enough time to rest along with them before pressing forward. I felt that I could do this.
I've had a couple of peeps ask me why this small finch is called a redpoll. Is the bird going out to survey people on how they feel about politics? No. Poll is another word for the top of the head (not used for that too often these days). So, the bird has a small red dot on the top of its head and you get get redpoll.
I need to burn through a ton of redpoll and siskin photos before I leave.
Non Birding Bill and I are knee deep in sorting through the oodles of blog entries that came in. I got a much bigger response to the contest than expected and it's going to be tough to narrow down to the top ten. These will start showing up once a day on February 18 and then post once a day.
I have no idea what my internet situation will be while I'm in Guatemala. If I find a chance to upload a photo or video, I will. However, I have a feeling that my chance to blog while there will be narrow. Watch for updates on Twitter.
I'm watching all the winter finch activity and wondering if they will still be around when I return at the end of the month. When we were at Mr. Neil's last week, there were so many finches descending on his feeding station that when the flock suddenly took off in fear of a predator, the culmination of wings made a jarring "woosh" sound. So many tiny birds makings such a mighty sound just with feathers.
The pine siskins went after all sorts of food, from finch mixes to this woopecker mix in the wire mesh feeder above. This mix has sunflower seeds in and out of the shell, nuts, and dried fruit. Many of the pine siskins at the feeder have a hint of yellow, but some really stood out.
Check out the yellow on this male! Oh he's splash of bright during the winter.
Okay, I seriously need to pack for Guatemala. I'll be posting a few more thing before I go, but NBB is telling me to get my pack on.
While I was in Florida, common redpolls were being reported in the Twin Cities metro area. Last winter they were showing up in good numbers up at Sax Zim Bog and Mr. Neil even had one at his feeders.
There have been a few hanging out at Carpenter Nature Center. When we were trying to band birds last Friday, we saw a flock of about nine birds. We were almost completely skunked, we only trapped one lone junco and it was a retrap. We would see a redpoll fly into the traps, but one was too light to trip the door closed, so we got completely nooged on banding any redpolls.
I just love the little redpoll goatee--combined with the little red spot on the head that resembles a beret, they look like their about to break out a set of bongos in a 1960's looking coffee shop at any moment. I went back to check what the Winter Finch Forecast had been for redpolls: "The Common Redpoll is a white birch seed specialist in the boreal forest in winter. White birch crops are poor in the northern two-thirds of the boreal forest, but seed abundance increases southward. In central Ontario, such as Algonquin Park, crops on white and yellow birches range from fair to good. It is uncertain whether the birch crop is large enough to stop the southward movement in central Ontario about latitude 45 degrees. Some redpolls, including a few Hoarys, may get south to Lake Ontario if birch seed supplies run low."
I guess the birch seed supply ran low.
We even got to see some redpolls at Warner Nature Center during Non Birding Bill's Winter Survival Birthday party. His non birding friends also found them cool when pointed out. What was interesting was that unlike all the common redpolls in the photos of this blog entry (which were all taken at Carpenter Nature Center), the redpolls at Warner stayed below the feeders. They only ate on the ground. I wondered if that flock had come from such a remote region that they did not know how to use a bird feeder.
After our time banding was over, I headed to a nearby spot where the St. Croix River meets with the Mississippi River. It has been a bit warmer and the water usually opens up when that happens. You can sometimes see some fun ducks. As I scanned, I only saw some bald eagles jockeying for position for some food on the ice. Suddenly, some friends drove up behind me, shouting. I had them reenact what they did:
Thanks to Jed and Linda who were the great to reference the blog post about my amusement of people who point out eagles when I'm after some small bird that does not seem as exciting. But I did actually look out and the eagles were doing something kind of interesting:
They were eating a Canada goose. There, are you happy? I took a photo of a bald eagle. lol
I joined Jed and Linda a little further down the Mississippi River to search for waterfowl and we found some coyotes on patrol across the river. There was a third, but it was further back in the woods. We got to watch the two above poop and since they were in the boundaries of the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, I guess we know who pooped in this park.
I got to debut one of my favorite new birding shirts while at the Space Coast Birding & Wildlife Festival. Can I say how much I love the shirts at Magnificent Frigatebird? I blogged about some of these shirts around the holidays. I love the sense of humor that the company has and I love that they don't just carry the Hanes Beefy Tee. On behalf of female birders every where, thank you for carrying a variety of sizes and styles and for not making female birders look like a sack of potatoes with a bird logo. Check out their shirts, there's something for everybody. If you can buy a shirt, please do, we need to support companies that add some hip to the birder wardrobe, because Tilly hats are not helping. FYI, the new way to id a birder is not by the vest with pockets, but by a Tilly hat with the cord strapped firmly under the chin). Above I'm wearing the Birding Slut t-shirt (I got lots of compliments for it--even from a Dunkin Donuts employee).
Speaking of Dunkin Donuts, some may remember my rant a couple of years ago about how many Dunkin Donuts quit making the flavor I loved. When I'm in a new state, I usually stop at one. I love the coffee and a small part of me hopes that I'll find the one DD still carrying the vanilla creme donuts. After birding at the landfill and taking a break before heading to Daytona Beach for some hot all-gull action, I found a Dunkin. I walked in and found that they had both vanilla creme and chocolate creme. It took a photo and sent it to Twitter. I even got a reply from for the Dunkin Donuts Twitter Feed: "@birdchick, we are glad, when you are glad. Please report back when you see a White-tailed Tropicbird or an Antillian Nighthawk."
Wait, DD watches birds?? No wonder I love their coffee and their donuts! Probably just as well that the creme donuts are harder to find, makes it easier for me to fit in the cute birding t-shirts.
Word on the street among gull watchers was that Daytona Beach in late afternoon was the place to be. It's near the Tamoka Landfill. I'm sure many of the gulls we saw there ended up on the beach. The gulls are staging along the beach before flying out to the ocean to sleep at night. Rumor had it that there could be 50,000 gulls coming into the beach. And if you were in the mood for a game of Where's Waldo, you could pick out some interesting gulls among the many common ones like the ring-billed gull above.
Some were easy to pick out right away. Above is a tern and not a gull, this is a royal tern. Other fun ones we picked out included that famous lesser black-backed gull and also the Iceland gull that I blogged earlier.
One of the challenges of birding along the beach was the public. We had joggers plowing though the gulls oblivious to the dozen or so people with scopes aimed where they ran. Kids also thought it was a great time to run through the gulls to watch the flock swirl around them. I can't say that I blame them. Having walked through a few clouds of birds myself, I can totally understand the excitement.
I did have one tense moment. I could see a girl who looked to be about 8 - 10 years old running down the beach scaring up birds. She was running towards us and we had just gotten the Iceland gull into our scopes after working the beach for some time. I tried to signal to her to stop. The two older women with her (I assume one was her mother) were oblivious. The young girl slowed her pace at my hand signal, but got a mischievous glint in her eye stopped right in front of where my scope was aimed, blocking the gull. I turned my scope to the side and stared at her. I figured if I moved my scope, she would move on. She had slowed enough so the flock wouldn't move, but she stayed, and the battle of wills had begun. I heard one of the women call behind me, "Baby, you keep dancin', ignore those people, it's okay."
A confrontation was out of the question, the two women could have easily pummeled me had I said, "Oy! We're trying to photograph a bird here." The young girl stayed put, smiling at this odd game of wills. I was surprised she stayed, "Seriously, you just gonna stand there and be a stinker?"
Then, it suddenly hit me, "Duh, Sharon, now is your chance!" I called to the girl, "Hey, you want to see a super rare bird through my scope?"
She smiled and shook her head yes and ran over.
I got the Iceland gull centered in the scope. I told her that this bird came all the way down from the Arctic to Florida and it was very rare to see one here. She peered through the scope and turned to look at me with wide eyes. She seemed genuinely wowed. The two older ladies came over and looked too. They were very excited. They said that they had noticed many people with scopes and wondered if we were a photography club. I told them about the different gulls and they were surprised.
I also pointed out the glaucous gulls. There were a couple and they were such a stand out to the naked eye. The women took down the name of both the gulls and told the little girl that they would have to learn more about them on Google when they got back home. Who knows, maybe that little girl will be a future birder, or worse, gull watcher. I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner when she first came down the beach. I came dangerously close to being the cranky old woman who shakes her fist at the young kids who don't understand and didn't do it as well as when I was a kid.
The glaucous gulls were quite helpful for our gull watching. Since there were so many birders out with their scopes and some of us were digiscoping, many people on the beach came up to ask what we were doing. Since the glaucous gulls stuck out even with the naked eye, I just said, "See that big white gull, it's not supposed to be here."
That almost always did the trick. It's so much easier to point to a big white bird and say, "See that one that's obviously different, we birders are really excited about that." It's the young first year gulls where you say, "See all those brown looking gulls that are all the same size? Well, the one in the middle has wing tips that are slightly less dark brown than all the others. We birders are really excited about that one!" That's when a non birder backs away with that frightened look in their eye that they have just encountered someone who is either high or relatively unstable or both.
I must say, I had a lot of fun with the glaucous gulls, there were two of them and both were fairly light. It had finally warmed up at this point and we were enjoying the breezes on the beach. What a difference to watch a glaucous on a balmy beach in a t-shirt instead of bundled up in sub zero weather on a patch of open river near a power plant.
As the tide started to come in, the gulls came closer to us. This glaucous gull got so close, I couldn't fit the whole body in my field of view. I took the opportunity to take some head shots. The glaucous gull really is beautiful. You have the white frosty look, and the beak and feet are a pretty pink. See it in the bill?
I don't know if I'm going to be jumping onto those hardcore birding listservs where they discuss an unusual gull for about three weeks, but I'm not going to shy away from them either. I once met someone who said he tried to learn 3-4 warbler species each spring. Then after ten years, he'd have them down. Perhaps I should treat gulls the same way. Just learn a few each year and then in a decade, I might have them down.
We take a small break from gulls to talk about a few other species.
I have a few more birds to share from our second field trip that we led to Viera Wetlands while at the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival. One of the funny things was after I got my lifer limpkin earlier in the week, I kept getting them again and again and again. I could not escape the limpkin. It's funny how some birds are like that: so tough to get in the first place and then once you have them on your list, they're everywhere! I even got to hear their crazy loud calls, which was a bonus.
I was doing a bit of reading on limpkins on Birds of North America Online and I must have been making sounds while reading because Non Birding Bill asked what was so interesting. I read to him, "Limpkin has previously been allied with a wide range of bird families, including with ibises and spoonbills based on bird lice. Relationship of finfoots and sungrebes to other gruiforms and Limpkin has caused confusion."
To which he started laughing. I'm not sure if he was laughing about birds having allies, or birds being classified based on lice, for the idea that there is a bird species out there called finfoot or just laughing at birding in general (as is his usual fashion). Anyway, the bottom line is that no one can seem to agree as to where this apple snail eatin' bird fits taxonomically. Is it a rail, is it a crane? Who can say?
Oh, I've been asked to clarify something about Viera Wetlands. It's not a sewage treatment area, but the wetlands filter for the St. Johns River. Years ago, this area was drained for crops and cattle. The wetlands' plants absorb metals and other contaminants, a cheaper way to filter waste water than mechanically at the sewer plant. Whatever it is, if I were going to introduce someone to birding, this would be a great place to take someone, great birds, crazy looking birds, close and easy to see. Many bird photographers love it because the birds are accessible and the lighting is fabulous.
Check out this little sora. It crept out of the reeds and put on a show for a good portion of the morning. I couldn't take my digiscoping equipment off of it. How often do you get a sora posing for you out in the open. They're nothing but a bunch of Lurky McLurkLurks up in Minnesota. These are amazing little rails that walk about in marshes eating mostly vegetation, although they do eat some invertebrates. Their feet are about as big as their bodies. It's legal in some states to hunt them, but I can't imagine that you would A. get very much meat to eat and B. that they would not taste very well.
We had a film crew that was out with this particular field trip and they even got some sora footage. Not being birders, they didn't have an idea of how hard it can be to see a sora, much less film one. While watching the sora, I looked up and noticed some movement in the reeds not too far away...
...low and behold, it was an American bittern. I think I've been to Viera about four times now and every time I go, I see a bittern. This was kind of a bonus bittern, we saw one earlier in the morning but didn't get a great look. We only saw it when it flew and then it buried itself proper into some reeds. This one had the sun right on it and was easy to get in the scope. The American bittern was nice, but when we asked our group in the morning what bird they'd like to see, almost the whole group answered, "least bittern." Word had spread through the festival about our success earlier in the week at finding a least bittern and this group hoped for the same. While our group was going around the ponds, we ran into my buddy Clay Taylor. I told him to give me a call if he happened to see the bittern so we could bring our group over.
Later in the morning we got the call. Clay had the least bittern and our group should drive over. After a few missed directions, we made it towards Clay, he had stayed on the least bittern for us. He instructed me to stop the bus an for all of us to get on the opposite side of the bittern and approach him slowly, the least bittern was a bit nervous. The group snuck over about as well as a group of anxious 20 twenty birders could sneak and we got he scopes on the least bittern.
And there was the tiny bittern yet again. It was nice of Clay to stay on the bird for us, even though he wasn't part of the field trip. I joked to everyone that if this was a life bird, it was sponsored by Swarovski. I made sure to treat Clay to dinner at Dixie Crossroad later as a thank you. Check out the crazy yellow eye that least bittern has going on. Awesome bird!
The whole trip wasn't just about rails and herons, we did have some sparrow action. If you had never experienced a savanna sparrow, Viera wetlands was a great place to go, these birds were everywhere. If you stood in one spot, you could easily find one foraging near you in less than two minutes. As we were winding up our trip, we noticed Clay had his digiscoping equipment up on another bird...
...he loaned me the photo of the great egret trying to eat a huge frog, isn't it awesome?! And now that I think about, Clay has a knack of digiscoping birds trying to eat food that's too big for them. There was the recent anhinga vs fish and a while ago there was the ring-necked duck trying to eat a large snail. I didn't get to see the egret finish eating the frog, too many eyes were watching it. It's hard enough to eat large food, but this egret must also contend with other birds that would want to steal the food from it. I kind of giggled watching the egret. When you looked at it without binoculars or a scope, it looked kind of like it had a little man in its beak.
One of the pleasures of this trip was that we also had Jonathan Rosen along with us. He was a keynote speaker for the festival. I unfortunately missed it, I had to meet a field trip at 4:30am the night he spoke and went to bed way early. He was very understanding and it was great to spend some birding time with him. I haven't read Life of the Skies, but I really want to now. I hope we get to see him more on the bird festival circuit.
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.
Before I went to Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival, I listed all the field trips that I would be on and one of them was a gull id workshop at at Tomoka Landfill. See all the gulls in the above photo, that landfill was jam packed with birds! I had a bit of a panic, gulls are not my strong suit and let's face it, if you are on the outside looking in at people who enjoy watching gulls, it seems kinda nutty and impossible to do. I used being on the workshop as an incentive to learn my gulls (at least in Minnesota) and I have increased my gull power but fortunately on this trip there were several great local guides and one brought in from the big leagues--Alvaro Jaromillo, author and professional guide for Field Guides.
Now, in the above photo, Alvaro almost looks like he's saying, "Yeah, gull watchers are cuckoo." However, he is describing facial features to look for on herring gulls. One of the awesome things about this particular birding trip was that all of the guides were nice, acknowledged that gull watching was hard and if you made an error, they nicely helped you hone your skills. There was no attitude of "I can't believe you thought that was a herring gull, give back your birder card, loser." Alvaro strayed from the traditional terms used for gull id like "primary projection" and used phrases like "does the face look kinda goofy" or "does it look angry like it would kill you if it could." He admitted that these were not terms that you would find in gull guides, but they work. All of us begged him to write a beginner gull guide to give us hope. He did such a great job of making the identification of gulls approachable and more importantly, fun. In truth, all the guides made it fun.
So, essentially gull watching and identification is really a cross between Where's Waldo and logic problems. You look at all the common ones and really learn them and learn them well. Above is a large flock of laughing gulls with a few ring-billed gulls thrown in. There were also quite a few herring gulls hanging out at the landfill as well.
So, you look through all those common ones and you try to find that Waldo, that one gull that isn't quite like the others, that is different. Note the above, we have several large adult herring gulls and smaller adult ring-billed gulls, but then we have someone in the middle who is different. Now the logic problem end of this comes in. You ask yourself why this isn't one of the common gulls. First you can tell by it's plumage that it's a younger gull. It's large, so why is this not a young herring gull? The legs are pink like on a herring gull...but Alvaro told us to look at the beak, it was all black, chunky...not quite herring gull. Another guide, Mike Brothers mentioned that this bird didn't have the "smudgy look" on the back like a young herring gull, it was more patterned (it's hard to tell in this photo). So this was identified as a young lesser black-backed gull.
If you don't see it, don't worry, you'll get there when you're ready. Here is one that might be easier:
We have some smaller laughing gulls on the left, a large herring gull (with a ring-billed gull right behind it) and a large lesser black-backed gull. Again, you're looking for the Waldo, the gull that is different from all the common ones. So you see already that there are two large gulls. One is light gray on the back (that is the herring gull) the other is darker (that is the lesser black-backed gull). Also, note the leg color too. The herring has pink legs, the lesser-black backed has yellow legs. Alvaro and the other guides freely admitted that there will be weirdos that don't fit the books, they could be hybrids or they could just be weird, some will have to go unidentified and it happens to the most expert of gull watchers. My buddy Clay Taylor told me about some herring gulls that were observed at a fish processing plant and all had yellow legs (how exactly were those fish being processed if the herring gulls were eating the leftovers and turning their pink legs yellow?).
Besides all of the gulls, there were TONS of other birds hanging out at the landfill. When you looked at the piles of trash with your naked eye, you saw movement that you thought was maybe some white plastic bags waving in the wind, but looking through the scope, it was thousands of birds of several different species. I posted a video of it earlier. I expected gulls, vultures, crows, starlings, grackles and even a few bald eagles. The surprise to me were all the ibis, herons, and egrets. Earlier I blogged about how Florida is a study in specialist birds like the Florida scrub-jay who need a very specific and exact habitat in order to survive. Species that learn how to expand their food foraging ability are the ones that will continue to survive.
Earlier someone commented on the blog about how sad it is to see these birds crowding for food at a landfill eating food that is bad for them. I'm not sure how bad it is. These birds have been eating at the landfill for decades and a quick glance at Birds of North America Online showed that most of the species we observed are experiencing a population increase. The few that were on the decline were down more for water management issues disturbing nesting habitat. I'm certainly not saying that this is the best idea ever for birds to be eating at a landfill. Sure a bird like a turkey vulture has the digestive system to be able to eat that rotten chicken tucked away in the garbage bag, but what may have spilled on that chicken? Old chocolate sauce? Did that old bottle of detergent that didn't get recycled leak a bit on there? Tough to say, we don't have the answers at the moment.
And as we were enjoying all of these birds (like this cattle egret above) and trying to learn from the wise Alvaro, we had a challenge from not only the din of calling gulls, crows, and eagles but the Dayton 24 race was going on nearby and roaring cars rivaled the sound of thousands of birds. One birder mentioned allowed that race fans must not be that bright to sit and watch cars go round and round in a circle. I thought that was fancy talk coming from a man spending a sunny Sunday morning in a landfill to watch birds.
One of the pluses of birding with a group at a landfill is that it's super easy to point out birds. You could point out the oddball gull quick and easy by the many landmarks. You could say, "From about two o'clock of the pile of boxes is a bright green piece of plastic, it's just to the right of the plastic. It was also interesting to note things like a pile of cardboard boxes with a bald eagle perched on one side and a great egret on the other.
There were dozens of bald eagles all over the landfill and they perched on anything that wouldn't move. Periodically, young thug eagles would fly over the gulls and cause them all to fly into the air in a tizzy.
When we drove around in the morning, the trees were chock full of birds from black vultures to grackles to cowbirds to starlings. This must be a popular roosting area, not too many people come in at night to disturb them.
The birds had a relatively aloof view of humans. These black vultures were not digiscoped, I took this photo right off the road from my car window. To them, humans (especially in vehicles) brought more trash/food. So unless you were running right at them, they were too concerned with you.
This trio was watching us as were watching the gulls, almost wondering what could we be doing if we weren't delivering food.
And though I should have been taking photos of gulls, I could not keep my digiscoping equipment off of the turkey vultures. Even if you are not into gulls, if you go to the Space Coast festival in the future, sign up for the landfill trip, you get close to some crazy birds. And though there is a viewing area specifically for birders, the landfill made a special exception and we were allowed to go on top of areas that birders are not usually allowed on, like Mount Trashmore a high hill of covered garbage (that leaks out methane so absolutely NO SMOKING there). The methane from that his is also channeled to help run the landfill and the leftover energy is added to the local power grid.
As the day got later, many of the vultures, crows, and gulls took flight and circled on the thermals (warm currents of air that spiral upwards). With so many scavengers overhead, you couldn't help but feel a little like a dying animal.
Overall, I had such a great time with the gang and watching gulls, I wasn't ready for it to end. Word from the local guides was that Mike Brothers had discovered that about 50,000 gulls came into the nearby Daytona Beaches to stage before flying out to see to roost for the night. The show started at about 3pm. It was already a little afternoon 12pm. I was supposed to head the 45 miles back for a social at the festival, but the guys had me hooked on gulls, so I decided to relax a bit in Daytona and watch the evening gull show.
Okay, this post was meant to be about a field trip to a landfill to see gulls and a few other species at the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival but I did not realize how many turkey vulture shots I took at the landfill. I never get this close to them where I live (well, apart from the education turkey vulture at The Raptor Center).
It's easy to understand why so many turkey vultures are attracted a landfill, they find food by smell. Human waste is stinky and smells edible to them and they must find quite a bit to eat in our refuse based on the sheer number of turkey vultures present.
This bird was sunning itself near our group. They were not terribly bothered by humans, most of their human contact at the landfill is by the workers dump and moving the trash. Usually a human is a source of food. I've heard two different theories of why vultures sun themselves. One is to get rid of feather parasites, the other is that vultures can soar so long and the feather tend to flatten out. Holding the feathers in the warm sun puts them back into the proper curvature. Not sure which one is true.
When you go birding in Florida, frost is not what you expect to have to deal with. Before I headed to Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival, I was sent emails regarding the weather. I noticed that the lows were in the thirties with highs in the 50s, but after dealing with -21, I figured I could take it. However, Florida ended up being a bit colder than I expected, apparently it was a record cold snap, the likes of which haven't been seen for 14 years.
The field trip I signed up for was called the South Brevard County, and the timing was brutal: the bus left at 4: 30 am and returned at 4:30 pm--couple that with temperatures in the twenties, it made for a rough morning. I needed to be on this trip, there were two birds in particular that I wanted to see: Florida scrub-jay and red-cockaded woodpecker. I think sometimes people assume birders love getting up early to watch birds. I think for quite a few of us, we don't love getting up early. The hotel had a breakfast area set up for us starting at 3:30 am, but who wants to eat at that hour? At 3:45 am, I found myself staring into a bowl of Raising Bran, thinking, "What the hell am I doing with my life, why the hell am I here? What is wrong with me?"
But we had to bundle up. I did not bring my winter coat with me, but I did have a sweater and a couple of fleeces. I also stopped in to the local big box store's hunting and fishing section and picked up some hand warmers and proper gloves. Keep that in mind, folks, when you travel--if you need gloves or other outerwear to keep warm and the stores are telling you they have clearanced out winter because it's spring (even though the calendar reads January), you kind sensible outdoor gear in the hunting and fishing section.
Our tour bus headed to St. Sebastian River Preserve State Park, a small patch of habitat suitable for both of my target species. When we arrived, they let the group into the visitor center. The naturalists said that with the cold temperatures, even the woodpeckers found it more sensible to sleep in a little later, tucked into their tree cavities. As the sun started to peak up from below the horizon, it was time to head out. Because of the rough terrain, the tour bus could not take us to the red-cockaded woodpecker spot, it was quite a distance to walk and not all of our group would have been able to make the walk, so they loaded us into the backs of pick up trucks and we bounced our way there in the cold air.
We stopped at a group of trees known to be cavities of red-cockaded woodpecker. After about 10 minutes, one poked its head out, looking as though he felt the way I had felt a few hours earlier. This woodpecker is an endangered species. The cavity above is actually a "human made" cavity. The naturalists explained how the woodpeckers will reuse previously made cavities for years and they have devised a way of implanting a fake cavity into a live tree--without killing the tree. The red-cockaded specializes in mature open pine forest. Most of the woodpeckers we see in the US tend to go after dead and dying trees, this ambitious species makes it roost and nest cavity in a live tree (although the pine needs to have red-heart fungus, that does make it a bit softer). Now, that would not be a big deal if the bird had a beak like a pileated woodpecker, but this bird has a tiny beak, not unlike a downy woodpecker.
Above is a cross-section of a cavity pecked by an actual red-cockaded woodpecker. It's kinda tiny. The tree came down in a storm and the park uses it as a display. The tree needs to still be alive because the adult will peck holes around the cavity entrance, causing sap to flow, and making it harder for predators like snakes to slither up to the cavity.
The woodpeckers eventually came out of their cavities, but did not seem to want to stay in one spot. Much like humans, it's easier to move around and stay warm than just stand still. I didn't get the best photo, but it was still a treat to see this endangered species and you get an idea of what it looks like. Now, if you're like me, you might be wondering what the heck the red-cockaded means in the birds name. Boy-oh-boy-oh-boy, it's up there with the red-bellied woodpecker! First, a cockade is a knot of ribbons, usually on a hat. So, where is the red that would indicate the red-cockade on the woodpecker? Well, if you hold a red-cockaded woodpecker six inches from your face, you can see a tiny dot of red on the edge of the white cheekc patch where it meet the black on its nape (only on the male).
After watching the red-cockaded, we headed to more open scrubby area with shrub oaks and palmettos, habitat of the Florida scrub-jay. This particular species needs very specific habitat that Birds of North America Online describes as, "Extremely habitat-restricted, occurring only in scrub and scrubby flatwoods of Florida." Some of the essentials include: myrtle oak, runner oak, rusty lyonia, and Florida rosemary. The ground cover needs to be sparce, dominated by palmettos. The open sandy patches are needed for the scrub-jay to hide its cache of acorns. Very, very specific needs for this particular species.
But a very beautiful and cooperative one! The scrub-jays would pop up and just pose in the sun--much easier to digiscope than the red-cockaded woodpecker. The sun was getting higher at this point, the air was getting warmer. Looking at this gorgeous blue creature, I found myself answering the question I asked at 3:45 am, this is what I'm doing with my life. As I was watching my second endangered species of the day, I started to think about how it's incredibly unsafe to be inflexible. Florida is a study of inflexible creatures. Red-cockade woodpeckers have carved our a niche in a specific type of tree--so specific, the tree must have a specific type of fungus. The scrub-jay needs specific shrubs, but also specific spacing to store their food. Or think of the snail kite that only eats a certain type of snail. For species survival, it does not pay to be inflexible. It's important to get out of that comfort zone and generalize--hence the rock pigeon.
We did see several other species on our trip, like great views at a red-shouldered hawk above. If it looks weird, that's because its nictitating membrane is over the eye. Our local field trip leader was David Simpson and he was a good low key guide. Since it was a long field trip, he did a great job of setting our pace and birding so we could get good looks at the birds and more importantly, not get completely worn out. If you're ever looking for a good Florida bird guide, you should check him out.
Because it was so cold, the naturalists told us that we would probably see manatees if we went to the canal, the water was deeper and would be warmer. We headed over that way and there looked to be at least 60 manatees in the water, bobbing up and down, spraying water, and occassionally splashing their tails. That was the third endangered species of the day! After our field trip was done, I was heading back to my hotel and a wood stork ran in front of the road (well, as much as a wood stork can run). That was endangered species number four. I did not get a photo, because I was driving and concentrating on not hitting the stork or surrounding vehicles. But I do think that this is the first time I have seen four endangered species in one day.
Hey, want to learn how to digiscope refine your digiscoping techniques? Ibis and egrets may not be on hand, but other cool birds like eagles should be around.
On Saturday, January 31st at 10AM I will do a digiscoping workshop at the Great River Road Learning Center in Prescott, WI (just across the border from Hastings). Digiscoping is the art of taking awesome photographs using a relatively inexpensive point & shoot digital camera in conjunction with a powerful spotting scope. We'll start with a powerpoint that shows how to take great photos (and bad ones) and then actaully practice on the birds at the feeders as well as the ducks and eagles on the river. Who knows, maybe we'll get a chance to digiscope a harlequin duck!
The Learning Center recently acquired an excellent 80mm spotting scope and digital camera suitable for digiscoping. Persons who attend the program will have the opportunity to use this equipment to take some of their own photos. Bring your binoculars and cameras.
Please call the Learning Center at 715-262-0104 to reserve a spot so we know how many people to expect at the workshop.
Well, my adventure in Florida is winding to a close. This morning, I'm packing, starting to deal with email, and sorting photos for blog entries about the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival. I have over 1300 to sift through from the festival from beautiful places like scrub oak habitat to unique places like a landfill in Daytona. Many more blog entries about the magic of birding in Florida are to follow in the coming week.
For the moment, I share these FABulous photos from my buddy Clay Taylor took of an anhinga trying to eat a fish that is entirely too big for it:
I ran into him during one of our field trips to Viera Wetlands. We were trying to get our field trip a least bittern. I saw Clay up ahead photographing like crazy and wondered if he had it. When I approached, he pointed our on the water and I could see what had peaked his interest. Check ou the above anhinga and the size of fish between its beak! Here's a zoom in:
Our field trip had watched a few anginga and cormorants with fish seemingly too big for their mouth and eventually swallow them. Clay had been on this anhing for quite some time and it was getting tired. The fish flipped wildly to escape being eaten, but the anhinga was determined not to give up such a prize catch.
The anhinga valiantly tried to swallow the enormous fish, several times, but alas, the fish would not be swallowed. No matter how wide the anhinga would make its mouth, the fish would simply not fit through. The anhinga held on to the fish and put it under water to try and get a better grip, but the fish won out.
Here is an upclose shot of the Gulp FAIL. Clay got some fantastic shots of this scene digiscoping with his SLR camera and scope!
I have so much to blog about the Space Coast Bird Festival, but I'm still here in Florida and birding like crazy. Monday is my final leg of the festival: a pelagic birding trip.
Sunday, I had a major breakthrough in my gull identification ability. Part of it was really great teachers (who don't make you feel bad for misidentifying a gull). I'll go more in depth about that later but here is the moment where I realized I don't completely suck at gull id:
The beaches at Daytona are an evening staging area for thousands of gulls. They congregate there before roosting offshore. Several of us were combing the beaches for lesser black-backed gull, Thayer's gull, and Iceland gull. My buddy Clay had just arrived when someone reported an Iceland gull waaaaaaaaaaay down at the other end of the beach. Several of us booked it there on foot as fast as we could. In the distance, we could make out one birder frantically taking photos, we figured he had the gull. As we approached, we saw people running towards the gulls (it's a public beach) and the whole flock flew up and away. The birder who had been taking photos was in a vehicle, so he drove over to us. He said that he watched it take off and had a general idea of where it landed. His vehicle was packed with equipment, but he offered to let us stand on the floorboards and hang on as he drove to the far end where it landed.
Above is a reenactment. Four of us clung to the vehicle as it headed down the beach. We all watched and scanned for a lighter gull that could be an Iceland gull amid the darker laughing, herring and ring-billed gulls. Then, as we were coasting down the beach, with my naked eye, I spotted it. The vehicle came to a stop, we jumped off and...
We got some great looks and great shots of the Iceland gull. I can't believe I picked it out with my naked eye. Gulls are not so scary after all! I blogged about this particular species of gull earlier this winter, only it was much colder and in Minnesota. The gull was also much further away. Having one so close on a balmy beach was so much better. This is a first cycle (hatched last summer) Iceland gull, it is very pale and frosty looking, note that it does not have dark wingtips, making it easier to distinguish of many of the other gulls out there.
I promise this won't be an all gull all the time blog, but let me assure you, it is possible to gradually learn your gulls.
Now, here's hoping I don't barf on the pelagic birding trip.
On the off chance anyone needs a cleansing bird, how about a sandhill crane head? Check out that red patch of bare, red skin. Look at the nares (nose hole) you can see right through it, just like you can on a turkey vulture. Those yellow eyes are mesmerizing.
You can get so frickin' close to the birds here in Florida. I'm now asking myself why I have led trips for the past ten years to Nebraska (to an incredibly cold blind) to watch a several thousand mostly at a distance who freak out when you get too close. Here in Florida at the Space Coast Birding and Nature Festival, they kind of look at you and almost seem offended if you only take a few photos.
I think this male red-bellied woodpecker was feeling what quite a few of us were feeling Tuesday morning at Viera Wetlands (aka Viera Sewage Treatment Facility) during the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival. BRRRRRRR (a cold snap has hit Florida creating temperatures in the low thirties with wind chills in the twenties) Br! I left a good chunk of my hardcore winter gear at home and kind of regretted it. My toes and fingers suffered. Most of the stores were out of winter gear, but you can usually find some good winter stuff if you look in the hunting section of a Walmart. Reluctantly, I headed to the Big W and I was not disappointed. I found some sensible gloves and even my favorite Hot Hands warmers in the hunting section. So, all should be good when it's the same temperature in Florida on Thursday morning as it is in Minneapolis and I'm out hunting for red-cockaded woodpeckers.
But it was not all cold and suffering, how could it be when our field trip group ended up having a double bittern day and I even got a lifer - a limpkin (above). Of course, now that I have finally seen a limpkin, a bird that has eluded me at all previous opportunities--I'm seeing them regularly now. At one point, we passed someone's yard in a trailer park and it there was a limpkin having a stand off with a black-bellied whistling duck on their dock. That's not the only bird that was in this person's yard--there was also a big flock of sandhill cranes. How's that for a yard list?
We saw quite a few great birds, but the highlight for many was the least bittern that Jeff Gordon found for the group--it was so, so tiny. Looked to be about the size of my fist. Because we were so close and there were many cars jockeying for position around our tour bus, we opted to stay inside to get a look at the bird.
I was amazed that I was able to contort my scope's tripod in my seat to get a somewhat in focus photo, but I did manage. It's a young one, since the back is not black, but he was a cutey.
Another participant on our trip managed to find the larger American bittern blending in perfectly well with the surrounding vegetation. I put my scope on it for others to see and at first they would say, "I don't think it's there." Then a few seconds later, much like looking at a magic eye puzzle, they would exclaim, "I SEE it!"
I'm writing this post on a Wednesday night to be published on blogger Thursday morning. I have to meet our next field trip bus at 4:30am and looking at my clock, I need to hit the hay.
I arrived on Tuesday for the annual Space Coast Birding and Nature Festival. It's my first time for the festival and word on the street is that this is one huge mama jama on the bird fest scale. Rumor has it that over 4,000 people are expected to attend (how's that for a rough economy). People are coming from all over the word. I met someone who came all the way from China for the festival, and I'm fairy certain the four Japanese guys in the room below mine are here for the fest too--Sweet!
I did a little pre-festival digiscoping. After being cooped up in the sub-zero weather last week, I'm just happy to be here...even if the temps are between 40 - 50 degrees Fahrenheit--I'll take it! Before our trip leader meeting on Tuesday night at the fabu Dixie Crossroads restaurant, I dashed over to Merritt Island (a mere hop, skip, and jump from my hotel). That's where I took the photo from the previous entry asking you how many birds are in the photo. There are 2:
Not sure what other birds some people were seeing the photo--or drinking while looking at the photo ;)!Spotting the snipe was the weirdest thing. First I saw some killdeer (that's one in the above photo, bottom left). When I pulled over and scanned (without binoculars, I saw the lump behind and thought to myself snipe). I dashed for my scope to try and get a photo.
It as challenging to get a photo because it was super windy. But I did manage to get a few without the snipe taking off for the hills. I've said it before and I'll say it again--birds in Florida are just more mellow and laid back than in Minnesota. You pause for just one second on a snipe in Minnesota and there off. Here, they sit there and wait for you, like it's expected. I even found three more snipe lurking in the surrounding grasses.
I love this shot. The way the grass is bent in the wind, it almost looks like this snipe has a mustache its about to twirl while it tells you its nefarious plans. As I took the photos and stood in the cold wind, I asked myself how I knew these were snipe. I'm in an entirely different state, different habitat, but I just knew at distance these were snipe, deep in my gut, no question. I think it was the size in relation to the surrounding killdeer, the general shape, the lurking, the big head and long bill. GISS birding strikes again.
But back to the pleasures of birding in Florida, the birds just don't care. I was able to get some reasonable shots of pintails, even with wind and explaining my digiscoping setup. As I was just snapping away, a couple came up to ask about my set up. They had the same Swarovski scope that I use, but weren't sure about the adaptor. I put the scope on the northern pintail and took several shots.
Look at that sassy duck! It's as if he knows he's the hottest piece of pintail on the lagoon. Here's hoping that a red-cockaded woodpecker will do the same for me on Thursday!
While on the Wildlife Drive at Merritt Island, I came across a huge raft (folk name for a flock of coots) of American coots. That's not even all of them. There were two more smaller rafts gradually joining this large one.
They were feeding on something and it almost looked as though the large group was driving at some kind of prey just below the water's surface. You can see all kinds of splashing was going on in the above photo.
I tried to get a shot of the coots from smaller rafts, scurry/flap across the water's surface to join the larger group. You can see by the large splashes, that one has already left, and the second one is chasing after it. You know, I've never seen a huge flock of coots fly. The closest I have ever seen a coot fly is the splashy run they do across the water. They must fly. In Minnesota in the fall, you'll be on a lake one day and there's relatively few waterfowl. The next morning, tons of coots. They seem to stick around until the water freezes, then magically disappear. They must only fly at night. I wonder if they are messy and haphazard flyers. Taking wing high in the sky only in the cover of darkness, because they would be easy targets for eagles, hawks, and falcons. What do they look like when they fly? How high can they go? Are they in formation?
So many cooty questions. Have any of you seen coots fly--like above tree level?
Check it out, it's an upside downy woodpecker! Har har, I slay myself.
I have time to digiscope, but I gotta tell ya' it's hard on those digisocping batteries! It's currently -7 (Fahrenheit) and I'm lucky if I can get one full minute out of my camera batteries--and that's keeping hand warmers around my batteries and camera.
I'm focusing my Chi and getting excited for my trip to Florida next week--which I plan to bird the crap out of to make up this week. Space Coast is now the largest bird festival in the country and word is that over 4000 people are expected to show up in Titusville for the event. Not bad for a bird festival in this economy!
If you have any bird requests for digiscoping, let me know and I'll try and get a photo of it in the blog.
I woke up this morning with a headache and the news about the selection of the new Doctor Who doesn't help. I think this picture sums up my thoughts on the matter. However, lots of robins were bustling around the tree branches outside the window and that perked me up a bit. I could not resist my digiscoping equipment and tried for some photos through my dirty storm windows:
Every winter we get robins around the Twin Cities. This winter we seem to have more centered in the heart of the metro area and I wonder if our trees are having a bumper berry/nut crop this year. I see flocks on a daily basis in our neighborhood. Sometimes you can hear one robin quietly singing to itself. I wonder if these are birds hatched in the summer of 2008 and practicing their territory songs for the breeding season of 2009?
This robin had a black bill. I wonder if it's from eating berries? I tried to read through some of the food habits of American robins on Birds of North America Online, but was unable to find anything conclusive about winter food habits. In one study, plant material consisted of 90% of their diet, but varied in other areas. I could guess that they could find some animal material. When I worked at the bird store in Wayzata, there was a bait shop in the same mall. They would toss out old minnows and in the winter, robins would fly down and eat them. They are resourceful creatures. I should go out there and see if I could digiscope that.
Mostly, the robins were eating snow on the roof of the apartment building across the way. Birds will eat snow for moisture if they can't find open water. I got a video of it (and you can hear some Ting Ting in the back ground):
Stumbled down to the kitchen this morning and there were birds everywhere and the first bird seen and identified was a pine siskin. Well, technically there was a junco too, but couldn't fit it into the shot. So, I'm going with siskin.
Also, in my inbox this morning is an interesting story from the Telegraph of a kingfisher photographed eating six different kinds of fish! Check it out. Thanks for sending it, Laura.
Hope you all had a good time last night and here's hoping for getting along, good bees, good bunnies, good times and good birds in 2009. We had a quiet night of me, Non Birding Bill, and Mr Neil playing Wii Fit and watching Father Ted and The Muppets. It was a quiet highbrow affair until about midnight when...well...I think the Muppets did a fine reenactment here.
That Wii Fit is mean. It assessed me out to be a 50 year old, overweight, unbalanced tart. Mr. Neil and NBB both assure me that as I play more and figure out what the Wii wants, I'll get younger and fitter. I've never had a bird do that to me before. Perhaps I will stick to trudging in the woods.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, when you digiscope, you get hundreds of not quite perfect photos. If you're just trying it out and you feel that most of your photos are crap, don't feel bad, it takes several tries and maybe even a little tweaking on the computer to get good shots. The other day I was taking shots at a feeding station at a local nature center. When you plant yourself in a chair with your spotting scope and digital camera, people have questions. So, as I was shooting, I was chatting. When I downloaded the photos, I discovered a disturbing amount of chickadee butt photos. I'm not sure what my subconscious is trying to tell me.
I stopped at Richard Nature Center for a bit of digiscoping. When I arrived, the place was chock full of turkeys and like the flock at Minnesota Valley, they took turns fluttering up to the top of a feeding station to get at the seed in the flythru. A flock has been regularly seen at this feeding station, coming and going, but the turkeys are now rather stationary. They fed and roosted and didn't seem too interested in moving on. Many of the turkeys were dozing off right under the feeders.
I don't know why, but this drowsy turkey just makes me laugh. She looks like she should be listening to a Morrissey CD.
As much fun as turkeys are, there was a long tailed sparrow lurking under a cedar tree that caught my attention. I got it in the scope and was surprised to find a white-throated sparrow still around. They are usually out of Minnesota by now. Hopefully, this bird will find a good food supply, a nice place to roost and evade the sharp-shinned hawks and survive the winter. I tried to get a better photo of it...
But the turkeys kept walking between my scope and the sparrow! That big dark blur above is a turkey--thanks, dude.
Earlier, I posted a photo of squirrel in the flythru feeder with a turkey on top. I asked the question, of the squirrel and the turkey, which one would come out victorious in the fight for the feeder. Well, here's a video with the answer, I was surprised:
The turkey gave up without the squirrel putting up too much of a bluff!
It was enough to make a downy woodpecker go "Baroo?"
The squirrel eventually made it's way over to the suet feeder and after filling up on some beef fat...
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.
One of my favorite things is to watch a really active feeding station. Even if it's birds I've seen a bazillion times, I love watching bird feeder activity, especially in winter before we get a snow and birds are coming from all different directions. Tuesday had subzero temperatures and the start of snow fall and birds were ready to take advantage of a feeding station. I laughed when I arrived at the Minnesota Valley NWR visitor center because of the turkey activity. Note all the turkeys on the ground and all the songbirds crowded into the feeder on the right. Now, note the turkey on top of the feeder on the left...and now songbirds!
It was fun to watch the large bird balance its body and avoid sliding as it went after the food in the platform feeder. Periodically the turkey would slide down and then feed on the ground for a bit. But soon it would again try for the food on the feeder. The activity of all the birds and the snow was intense. I tried to get a video:
It was a steady stream of turkeys, house sparrows, cardinals, blue jays, woodpeckers and chickadees.
Some of the turkeys would just park themselves right next to the windows and sit there. I'm not sure if the bird was looking at its reflection or feeling some of the heat off the building. I've always found it curious that turkey vultures migrate out of Minnesota, but wild turkeys stay. Turkeys have bald heads, but they do have some bristly feathers and from the above photo, it looks like those are enough to keep them off the face.
A big surprise to me was a small flock of about 16 brown-headed cowbirds hanging out. They really looked like they were hating life. I'm sure they were asking each other, "Okay, who had the brilliant idea of not migrating because it would cost too much energy and be dangerous?" The mostly stuck to roosting in the trees and the few who came to the feeders were not their usual bossy selves. They were slow and lethargic. One lone male kept feeding on the ground and almost got stepped on (or tasted) by a turkey.
I like sit on the visitor center on cloudy days in winter. If you sit inside you can watch the feeders without the sun directly behind them. So, I was able to sit inside, get some decent photos, and stay warm.
One challenge is that the heaters are right next to the windows, so you do have to deal with a little heat shimmer, but that combined with the snow can make for some arty photos like the above digiscoped image of a female cardinal. And though the birds were active at the feeders full of sunflower seeds, there was plenty of other food around:
Tree sparrows (above), cardinals, and juncos were feeding on seeds in the grasses. It's a myth that if you start to feed birds in the fall that you have to do it all winter or they will starve to death. They find plenty of food in plants that we look at and see nothing. I think that falsehood was started by some seed seller out there to try and keep his customers coming all winter.
If you have to go for a bit without feeding the birds, they will get over it, some birds like the above blue jay stash food away in a cache for just such an occasion. That said, birds may not visit your feeder as regularly as one that is always filled, but they will come back and they will not starve. They treat your bird feeders the way we should treat fast food restaurants. It's a convenience, but not a sole source of food.
Here's a downy woodpecker on a mullen. The woodpeckers mostly perched on this but they would peck on it from time to time, so I wonder if they were getting some food out it as well?
The mullen also made nice perches for the juncos too. It was just a gorgeous snow scene.
I just have too many photos that I took Tuesday during what the local weathermen are calling "an inconvenient snow" (because it was only 2 inches that fell, but it hit during rush hour snarling traffic in the worst way). The first was the snowy owl and then I headed over to the Minnesota Valley NWR Visitor Center. I figured the feeders would be active between the snow and the sub zero temps.
They were so active, I have to divide up what I saw, otherwise we might get 45 photos in one blog entry.
One of the coolest things that happened was as I was leaving the visitor center. A young red-tailed hawk (young because the tail is brown and stripey, not brick red like it would be on an adult) was perched on the parking lot security camera. I wanted to get home because it was after 3pm and I knew with the snow, traffic would be snarled. I took a few shots and walked to my car.
I tried not to stare at the hawk while I walked to my car. Staring can make a bird nervous and this one seemed to be actively hunting and I didn't want to add to its effort in the cold and snow. It paid very little attention to me and I digiscoped one more image before my aching, freezing fingers alerted me that they had had enough. I opened my car door and turn to load in my scope when I heard what I can only describe as hawk wings hitting something (I hear it from time to time at The Raptor Center and at the hawk blind). I looked up and saw that the red-tail was no longer on the camera post and at first thought that it had flown away, but that would not account for the sound I heard. Then I looked to my left and just a few yards away in the grass I saw...
The hawk with some sort of prey, I think it's a mouse! Fortunately, my scope was still up, I quickly slid the camera adaptor back on the scope (thank goodness for that DCA adaptor) and got the above photo. My camera batteries finally died right after I took it but I watched the hawk swallow the rodent whole and then it took off.
It took a good five minutes before feeling returned to my fingers and I got stuck in traffic, but it was so worth it to see that!
Last week at Birds and Beers, we talked about snowy owls that are usually seen at the Minneapolis/St Paul Airport in winter. None had been reported at the airport yet (they've been showing up all over elsewhere in Minnesota and in Wisconsin). I've been checking the airport a few times a week (I live nearby) and we had a couple of people who actually work at the airport show up to Birds and Beers and they had not seen or heard any reports. Then, last night someone reported on the local birding listservs that they saw one on Cargo Rd.
When I finished my volunteer shift at The Raptor Center at about noon, I headed over to try my luck. Normally, I would search of the owls after 3pm, since they are more likely to be seen later in the day but the temps were below zero degrees Fahrenheit and a snow storm hit, so I figured my chances were good.
And they were! I drove right underneath a snowy owl! The challenge at the airport is that there are few places airport security would like you to stop and take photos. I think MSP Airport Security must have my license plate on file by now. So many people have made such a big show of writing down my plate number when they see my digiscoping equipment and I never get pulled over by security. They must think, "Ah, it's one of those birders again." I make sure to follow the rules--do what the signs say, like stay six feet away from fences. Also, the glycol plant manager used to collect owl pellets for me, so if I pull over for a photo, I do it in their driveway and only very briefly. I avoid stopping in the road, because it's not safe. Today someone stopped in the road on a downhill curve and I almost hit them since the roads were slick with the freshly falling snow--not cool and the kind of antics that make airport security less forgiving of birders. I'm not sure if the stopped person was a birder or just some regular person shocked to see a huge owl on a light post in the middle of the day.
Not only did I manage to digiscope a few snowy owl photos quickly, but I heard the owl vocalize (some weird bark and nothing remotely hoot-ish) and then watched it dive for prey. Alas, it came up empty taloned, but was cool nonetheless.
The owl returned to the light post and I managed one more photo before airport security pulled up behind me and gave me the hairy eyeball. I paused to make sure he didn't want to come out and wag his finger, but with the temps so cold, he stayed in his truck and glared. I hightailed it out of there to do some more digiscoping at the Minnesota Valley Wildlife Refuge Headquarters and ended up with a general awesome afternoon. More on that later.
When it comes to gull id, I've always depended on the kindness of strangers to point out what birds are in the flock. I haven't had a huge interest in them, they all looked the same and when someone would point out the differences they were seeing on a particular gull, I wasn't seeing those differences and felt that they may have been on some mood altering substance.
Part of the problem is that gull id is hard and not easy to explain. And quite honestly, no one has done a good job of making it understandable to a general audience. All the books that I have found are written by hardcore gull people for hardcore gull people. The books that are currently available are not organized in a way where you can easily do side to side comparisons. They are big clunky and well, just not organized for someone starting from square one. I've even tried looking at websites and haven't found any that are easy to navigate, at least for species in this area. Seriously, I just looked up "gull mantle color" and found this chart--oy! It's not easy for someone to get into. I wish there could be a book with side by side comparisons, a little less natural history info, maybe even flash cards. I'm seriously thinking of scanning my Sibley and making some flash cards.
That said, I'm forcing myself out to get to know gulls. Partly because I want to get over this hump and partly because I'm helping on a gull trip at the Space Coast Bird Festival in January. I really lucked out on Tuesday and ended up having an 8 species of gull night, which for the Twin Cities is pretty darned good.
And might I add that gull watching in Florida in January is going to be 10 times more fun since it will be warm whereas here in Minnesota it's snowy and the temperature is in the teens. I was bundled up, but still got numb fingers while watching gulls the other night.
The power plant keeps the water open and gulls and other waterfowl come in to feed and roost as nearby lakes and the Mississippi River and Minnesota River freeze up. Part of the problem with gull watching is trying to find a place where they are fairly close to try and id. This road next to the power plant is turning out to be an okay place. The birds are fairly close and easy to see...if you have a scope. In the evening, the sun is behind you and you can get some beautiful light on the birds.
So here are some answers that may even lead to debate on the hidden gull in the photos. My goal was to jut be able to pick out a bird that looked different from the expected herring gulls and ring-billed gulls. That's all I wanted to be able to do. I was surprised that I was actually able to mentally id a couple on the spot.
In the first photo, here is the gull in the red circle that is different from the herring gulls and ring-billed gulls. It's in its first-cycle or immature plumage but it's different from what a herring or ring-billed would look like.
Here in the profile, you can see a big difference (and a male common merganser). The bird is pale and it's wing tips are roughly the same color as the back, not dark like the bird below:
See bird in the front that is all gray has dark wingtips? This is a young herring gull.
So, back to our gray, yet very pale gull. The coloration in some ways reminds me of gyrfalcon coloration. When I arrived, another woman was at Black Dog scanning for gulls and she had spotted this one. I scanned and was pleased that I was able to tell it from the other gulls. I noticed that it was pale and I noticed that the wingtips were the same color as the back. I wasn't sure if it was a Thayer's gull or and Iceland but thought I would watch and take photos and check the id when I got home. Other birders arrived and MN gull guru Jim Mattsson came in and called it an Iceland gull. He said that the bird's overall paleness, the wingtips being the same color as the back and having a frosty appearance, as well as a rounded head make this an Iceland gull.
When I first arrived, I found a very large gull, bigger than any of the others. With its large size, checkered back and blunt bill, I felt confident in calling this a great black-backed gull. All the gulls got up and disappeared for a bit so at first I was the only who saw it. Fortunately, it landed again and the whole group got to see it (and I got confirmation which felt good).
I also noticed another super large gull that was really, really pale. Can you pick it out in the above photo?
Here's another photo of our large pale bird. This is a glaucous gull. I really felt good that I was actually seeing different gulls and figuring them out. This is a BIG step for me, I think just picking up gulls here and there at festivals and spending the last week studying Sibley and the overwhelming Gulls of the Americas has helped as well. I'm not as bad off as I thought.
Other birds did distract me a bit. While we were there, we watched the gulls soar around the smoke stack at the power plant. Jim pointed to a pepper speck at the top and said "peregrine":
Sure enough, looking through the scope, you could see an adult peregrine falcon. At one point it even called out. Not sure what that was all about, but it was nice to have the distraction from the gulls. We got a total of eight species that evening: ring-billed gull, herring gull, Iceland gull, Thayer's gull, glaucous gull, lesser black-backed gull, greater black-backed gull and...
...a Bonaparte's gull. This one flew in and I heard a member of group call it out. I found it right away and breathed a sigh of relief that this one was easy to pick out from the numerous gulls on the lake. It was super tiny compared to the others, had a dainty bill, and a little black spot behind the eye. All in all, I felt as thought I would have positively identified all the gulls in my photos when I came, except maybe the Iceland gull (that one I would have struggled between Thayer's and Iceland).
Quite a few other species of birds were out on the water including the trumpeter swans see above and white pelicans.
As the sun began to set, the water became more and more pink--it was quite beautiful.
And don't panic, the usual birds will resume on here soon!
I was out at a meeting today and when Non Birding Bill picked me up he said, "We had a visitor while yo were away today. Then she showed me pictures on his iTouch of...
...a Cooper's hawk. I asked how he got the photos and he said he used my digiscoping equipment. Which is pretty incredible since he's never used my camera, let alone my birding equipment. I've shown him birds through my scope and he's been around when I digiscope, but he's never put the equipment together, let alone got a bird in scope view--which can be challenging if you haven't used one before.
He had a dickens of a time with it when he started. First, my camera batteries were about dead, but fortunately I always have some charging so he was able to put some fresh ones in. His second challenge was trying to figure out how to put the adaptor for the camera on--which only took three tries (and a couple of zoom errors).
Once he had the camera and adaptor together, had it on the scope, and zoomed out the vignetting, he had the challenge of shooting through the window pane, the storm window pane, and heat shimmer coming off the windows from the radiator.
But he got a few good shots and with a little tweaking in iPhoto on my part he got some VERY blogable photos for a husband who claims to be uninterested in birding. I asked how he noticed it and he said he was on the futon and saw it fly right into the tree outside the apartment windows. A few crows flew into the tree but were not seriously mobbing it. He got a video of it too and when it moved, you could see that it had a full crop and must have eaten recently. Also, the bird is sitting on one foot, I think it was digesting. NBB also said it perched in the tree for a good ten minutes. He tried to open the windows to get even better shots, but as he was lifting the storm window, a screen slammed down and startled the Cooper's hawk.
I love this kind of confused look the hawk is giving the camera in this photo. I wonder if this is the same hawk who showed up as an immature bird last year and took a bathe on the apartment building roof across the way from our apartment? Since she's not banded, there's no way to know for sure, but it's fun to wonder.
So, with a little tweaking and a good stationary bird, even a non birder like NBB can use my digiscoping set up.
I don't know if it will be the rip roarin' scotch tasting it was last time, but I can guarantee that it will be fun and we'll talk some birds. We can talk about the MOU Paper Session, the Minnesota Breeding Bird Atlas, owls, crossbills, upcoming bird festivals, bird feeding, Christmas Bird Counts, banding, the topics are limitless. And unlike all the other holiday parties out there--you don't need to bring a gift or baked good! We'll get it all from Merlin's Rest!
Birds and Beers is an informal gathering of birders of all abilities--if you're interested in birds, you're invited. You can meet other birders--maybe find a carpool buddy, ask about where to find target birds, share cool research projects you might be working on, ask a bird feeding question, share life lists--the sky is the limit. It's low key and it's fun.
This morning, Non Birding Bill and I headed out to do some bee stuff at Mr. Neil's. When we were turning onto the final stretch of road, I noticed a lump in the top of a tree and told NBB, "Sorry, if that's what I think it is, I have to get a photo."
Can you guess what it is? It's a raptor...it's a hawk...can't tell? Don't worry, it's hard in that photo. Here it is through the scope:
It's a rough-legged hawk. Something about the lump in the distance just said to me, "Hey, I'm a buteo, but I'm not sitting quite like a red-tailed hawk."
This is the first time I've seen one so close to Mr. Neil's home. We get them in our neck of the woods in winter, but fun to see a rough-leg on patrol so close to his house. Is it me, or does this bird look like it's wearing more eyeliner than Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean?
Meanwhile, pine siskins are still on the rampage at his finch feeders. Between the siskins, the rough-leg and the snow, it's winter!
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."
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."
Non Birding Bill and I are celebrating our usual day long date that we call Naked Thanksgiving. One of the many things I'm grateful for is just some time with each other. It was suggested that bird bloggers post photos of turkeys today. I'm not sure if everyone is going to do it, but I have turkey photos:
Lovely! Although, I took this photo last March when males are in their mating mode. I think they have to puff of those feathers to distract from this:
What female turkey wouldn't want a piece of that?
If you celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you have a great day...and if you don't celebrate, I hope you're having a great day too. I'm grateful to everyone who stops by here from time to time to take a look. I'm grateful for my family, for NBB, for having a roof over my head, for our crazy pets.
Update 1: The above is a female, but based on the comment hilarity, I'm keepin' it! And honestly, the males really don't look better than that. And if you would like to see an actual tom head, check out Bill of the Birds. He's got it goin' on!
Update 2: I found more turkey photos. Here's cute turkey photo sent to my by April Grunspan:
Some of you may have noticed on the blog page that I have a Twitter Update. If you are not familiar with Twitter, it's a form of micro blogging. I can send a one or two sentence update, it cannot be any longer than 140 characters. Sometimes I type an update in from my computer and sometimes I send one from a cell phone via text message.
If you wish, you can get a Twitter account and follow anyone you know or find on Twitter. For example, you can follow people like friends or bloggers you know like Born Again Bird Watcher or Picus, or you can follow celebrities like Stephen Fry or Jonathan Coulton, or characters like Darth Vader, companies like Dunkin Donuts, your favorite news organization like I follow MinnPost, or just the plain bizarre like Bacon Friday. I use mine to test out ideas for future blog posts (is this link appropriate) or if I'm busy at a bird festival then I will type in quick updates. Non Birding Bill used it for me when I had to work the RNC as a park ranger. He was able to follow the rioters twitter feeds and let me know where tear gas was being sprayed.
The other day I was at the Minnesota River Valley Visitor Center just doing some digiscoping. I find it relaxing when I'm stressed and now that I have my favorite digiscoping camera (the Fuji FinePix E900, thank you National Camera Exchange for digging one up for me) I just love playing with it.
I joke when I give digiscoping programs that you suddenly find yourself with a renewed interest in common species like house sparrows and starlings. Isn't that a pretty house sparrow? I know, I know, bluebird people are reading that last sentence and think that my choo choo has really gone round the bend. But there were other cool sparrows too:
We still have some fox sparrows hanging out in MN! There were about four working the grounds underneath the visitor centers feeders. I wrote a text on my phone to Twitter that I was seeing fox sparrows.
There were quite a few house finches around too. This was one of the healthy looking ones. There was one male who looked rather puffy and spent too long at the feeders when everyone else would fly away. It looked sick. It didn't have the eye disease you typically see with house finches, but it didn't look good.
Soon, many of the birds left and I noticed this one lone downy woodpecker doing her best to blend in with the column on this feeder. I figured that there must be a Cooper's hawk or sharp-shinned hawk perched nearby, but could not see it. Suddenly, there was a flash of gray, black and white. I first thought "mockingbird" but remembered I was in Minnesota so it must have been a northern shrike. That id was confirmed when Mr. Gray, Black & White took off in hot pursuit of the sick looking house finch. I wrote a text to Twitter:
"A northern shrike just tried to nail a house finch at MN River Valley Headquarters."
Can you believe I still have blogging to do about Texas?? It really is one of my favorite birding trips I do all year. I love the organizers, the birds, the food, the temperature--it's tops. Check out this altamira oriole that was just cleaning itself off after using a bird bath at Laguna Atascosa NWR.
I think I have finally caught up from all my traveling. I was trying to catch up all last week from being in Ohio, New Jersey, and Texas. I was home between those trips, but only for brief periods. In that time, the apartment had exploded into a chaos world of bunny fur, cockatiel dust, and hay. Books were staging some sort of coup and weren't returning to shelves, my suitcase refused to unpack itself and a glacier of laundry was moving out of the bedroom. Amid trying to work and catch up on the blog, Non Birding Bill said those magic words: "I'm taking Friday afternoon off, let's go see the new Bond movie!"
But late Sunday, well into Monday and Tuesday I went into a cleaning and organizing frenzy. Interrupted briefly by a one way conversation with my stomach Tuesday morning. Still not quite sure what that was about. Was my stomach getting into the spirit of my apartment purge? I didn't feel sick which is completely out of character when I throw up. I suspect it had more to do with a bad combo of coffee and omega 3 fish oil gel caps.
But back to talking about Laguna! I love the trails and I love the wildlife drive. I took almost a full day to creep along and look for birds to digiscope. I was hoping to get some great shots of a caracara.
But had to settle for the Dr. Seuss stylings of a long-billed curlew! I was showing this photo to a non birding friend of mine (even more so than Non Birding Bill) and he looked at the photo and asked, "What the hell does it use that for?!" The beak is a little striking. I checked out the always fabulous Birds of North America Online. It said that the long decurved bill is used when foraging earthworms or shrimp and crabs. BNA also suggested that the long bill is used mainly when feeding on their wintering grounds as opposed to their breeding grounds. Basically, observers see curlews probing more in winter on the migratory habitat and see more pecking on the breeding grounds. Interesting to have a bill like that and only need it for part of the year.
Osprey were all over the place. The above bird was trying to eat its fish in peace, but had an audience:
This young turkey vulture (it's young because the head is still dark) was biding its time on the side lines, trying to work out a way to sneak in and steal a few bites for the osprey. This bird must really like fish because there's an abundance of fresh roadkill in the Rio Grande Valley. Why didn't the vulture just for that instead?
Laguna had signs posted warning of you alligators. The first gator I ever saw in the wild was at Laguna. I did see a few on my drive:
This one was right off the road. I got out of the vehicle to digiscope it. I took a couple of images through the scope with my phone and sent them off.
Here's a digiscoped image. I have to say, there were a couple of points where I felt like I was in the Blink episode of Doctor Who. When I turned away, it almost seemed as if the alligator was closer. It wasn't long after I took this photo that I looked to my left...
...and found another alligator lounging not too far from me. I digiscoped it too:
Well if that just isn't the most contented looking alligator ever. Realizing that I'm rather short, there are warning signs, and having two alligators near me, I hightailed it back in the car. I love a little adventure in my birding. I love going to places where there are animals that could knock me off a rung or two on the food chain.
The next Birds and Beers is this Tuesday, November 18, 2008 at 6pm at Merlin's Rest.
This weekend was kind of a blur, I'm still trying to catch up. This early winter weather is just perfect for a one last hurrah before the hardcore cold temperatures force us inside. Non Birding Bill got Mr. Neil to host a bonfire gathering.
We had a great bonfire going and we burned some unusable beehive frames which made for some spectacular pyrotechnic effects with the old wood. Speaking of frames, we still have some frames full of honey to extract and a big fancy extractor. I thought that maybe we could do some extracting at the bonfire gathering--lots of friends over, "Hey, don't you want to be a junior beekeeper and extract some honey?" We could all take turns, running the crank. Alas, much like all the beekeeping equipment out there, NO INSTRUCTIONS (beekeeping equipment manufacturers--that sucks and makes me not like your products and is off putting to new beekeepers).
This morning we woke up to a dusting of snow and LOTS of finches at the feeders. Non Birding Bill and I headed out to our remaining hives we are going to over winter--Kitty and Kelli. We were going to screw in the metal entrance reducers so the girls would have less area to defend and to also keep mice from moving inside.
When we arrived, we found paw prints which looked remarkably like skunk at the entrance of both hives. This snow fell in the early morning hours. That jerk skunk had just been there a mere few hours before NBB and myself. Skunks knock at the entrance of a hive. This makes the bees angry and they come out to attack, the skunk eats them, apparently unfazed by the stinging. We have carpet tacking around the entrances to prevent this (when the skunks come knocking, they get pricked by the nails), but it's gotten strewn around this past bee season. So NBB and I rearranged it to give that skunk a few good pricks if it comes back. Hanz (the guy who does yard maintenance) built our bees a wicked bad electric fence to keep bears out, Lorraine is going to ask him to add one more line of electricity, closer to the ground and closer to skunk height to encourage the b@stard to look for food elsewhere.
NBB and I put our ears to both hives and heard contented buzzing from within each hive. Love that!
Early plans for next season--six hives! We'll divide Kelli into 2 hives (cause she's gonna swarm and if we divide her, we can control the swarm), 3 new hives, and Kitty...well, that's our angriest hive and we're just gonna let her do whatever she wants to do. If she wants to swarm, then she can swarm. I'm not gonna argue that hive.
There was a constant flow of goldfinches all morning. None of them were banded, so it was just a steady stream of hundreds visiting. The day before, I had noticed a couple of pine siskins and the more I watched the goldfinches...
...the more I would see streaky pine siskins mingle in among the flock. Which is right on target according to the Winter Finch Forecast: "A conifer seed specialist in winter, most siskins should leave the province this fall because the spruce cone crop is poor in the boreal forest. It is uncertain whether the huge white pine seed crop will keep some siskins in central and northern Ontario this winter."
I put some fine ground sunflower hearts and thistle on the tree stump. Goldfinches flew in for it, as did juncos and (of course) pine siskins. In the above photo, you can see some of that yellow edging on the wing feathers of the siskins. If you have goldfinches in your yard and you've never noticed a pine siskin before, take a closer look at your finches. Pine siskins can be easily mistaken for goldfinches in winter plumage. But look at the breast. If it's clear, it's a goldfinch, if it's super streaky, it's a pine siskin.
Once two or three siskins were on the stump, more moved in. It wasn't too long before the siskins outnumbered the goldfinches! I didn't get a photo of it, but we did have one crazy pine siskin going to the no melt peanut butter suet. I'd never seen a siskin on suet before, I thought they were strick seed eaters.
Here is a yellowlegs that WildBird on the Fly and I observed at one of my favorite digiscoping spots, Estero Llano Grande. She and I went there a couple of times and I tried to get some lifers and do some digiscoping. I discovered that I need to focus on one thing at a time. If I'm after a lifer, I should concentrate on that, if I want to take pictures of birds, I should focus on that. If I try to do both, I don't know where to focus my attention and I miss good shots and I totally miss birds.
Estero has several different trails and the boardwalk around the ponds is usually a good place for shore birds, like the above solitary sandpiper (who is actually living up to its name, it's by itself).
We some colorful birds too like this little blue herons,
black-necked stilts--love those guys,
least grebes (check out that crazy yellow eye),
and a young male vermilion flycatcher.
We even did our good deed for the day by rescuing a dragonfly (although, after reading Born Again Bird Watcher's post, maybe we should have left it). Amy notice this dragonfly on its back in the water. I couldn't reach with my arm, but used my scope's tripod to fish it out. We took a few photos and then set it down on the board walk to finish drying out.
I generally do not take field guides with me. It helps you focus on the bird in front of you rather than spending too much time with your nose in a book. It kind of forces you to pay attention to field marks. Like the above shorebird. It was tiny, kinda brownish, and the legs were a different color than the bill--that's a least sandpiper.
The other reason why I don't bring a guide is that someone on field trips always has a book, I know many birds and what I don't know, I can usually digiscope and id later, or I'm almost always out with someone who knows the area better than I do and will confirm id for me. Well that bit me in the butt.
We got to a spot with some kingbirds and I wasn't sure what type we were seeing, but I figured I would digiscope it and then look it up later. I have it narrowed down to either a tropical kingbird or a Couch's kingbird. I thougt I would go over to BNA and see if I could work out the difference. Here's what Cornell had to say:
"Couch’s is most similar to the Tropical Kingbird and these species are often difficult to distinguish in the field by appearance alone. In the field, adult Couch’s is slightly larger, with a proportionally shorter bill,"
Hmmm, that would be difficult, the bird's bill is facing right at the camera, can't really tell proportions. Let's try the next one:
"and more olive-green back than adult Tropical, but the back fades to grayish during the breeding season making this character unreliable."
Well, again, the bird is facing me so I can't really see the back. "The plumages of juveniles are inseparable in the field, and only extreme specimens can be identified in the hand (Traylor 1979)."
Wow, that sounds like I'm totally hosed on the id. Wait, there's a little more to read,
"Vocalizations however, may be used to separate these species reliably in the field. The slowly repeated pit (or kip) and pitweeeer of Couch’s are easily distinguish-able from the rapidly repeated, metallic-sounding pit calls of Tropical Kingbird. The dawn songs are also distinctive. Although T. couchii is probably more vocal than T. melancholicus, silent birds cannot therefore be positively identified as the latter."
Yeah, I totally did not pay attention to the calls and did not take any video. I will have to chalk this bird up to some sort of Tyrannus.
There were some great birds being reported around Estero and they had a great little kiosk in there from ebird called Trail Tracker. You can use it to find out which birds are being reported and where they are being seen. The observations also become part of eBird and includes photos, audio, video and life history information for the birds seen. I tried to use it to find some cool birds being reported like a rose-throated becard (didn't see it) and a paraque (looked at it, but didn't see it, but Round Robin got shots of it).
It's Skywatch Friday again! If you have a blog with a photo of sky, you can link your post up to Skywatch Friday and share the beauty. I thought I'd share one of my "in transit" days.
I never cease to be amazed at the ability to change time and temperature with our ability of global travel. I marvel at my Monday this week. I woke up in south Texas, in Harlingen, near the border. I'm surrounded by warm weather and exotic species.
Not just blue jays here, no, crazy birds like green jays (above), curlews and kiskadees. When I boarded my plane in the morning, it was sunny, windy, and temperatures were in the 80s.
The view of the sky from the plane was an intense palette of blue and white. The sky, so clear and so blue, pushing down on a thin layer of clouds.
Take in that blue for a moment.
The clouds had some fluff but were mostly thin. It's so strange and such a privilege to get to see clouds from above. I try to concentrate on them as opposed to my fear of flying (or rather, crashing) in a plane.
As the clouds gave way, I could see some of Minnesota below, my final destination. The land had been dusted with snow. How strange to start a morning with humidity and 80 degree temps and then end the afternoon in 30 degrees with snow. I never get tired at the wonder of travel and where you can find yourself in a day.
One of the fun parts of visiting the Rio Grande Valley is the chance to see an aplomado falcon. One of the best places to look is Laguna Atascosa NWR. Two years ago I got the chance to chase one down (it practically took half the bird festival to help me get it). The aplomado falcon in this area is a reintroduced species, their populations have been affected by pesticide use and the Peregrine Fund has been releasing captive raised birds in an effort to reestablish the population. They eat mostly small birds and insects.
On Sunday morning, as I was driving into Laguna Atascosa, I noticed a car pulled over ahead of me, I slowed to find out what they were looking at. It was an aplomado falcon perched on a fence post about 30 feet from the road. As I slowed, the bird took off, but then perched again on the fence further down the road. Both the car in front and I approached slowly. It was painful. I had all my digiscoping equipment next to me in my rental vehicle, but I knew if I got out to set it up, the falcon would fly off. I so wanted to get an awesome photo for the blog, but rather than spoil the perfect view, I decided to just enjoy the bird in front of me. When I reached the visitor center at Laguna, I took photos of their stuffed bird for the blog entry. It was a kick ass look.
As I birded some more around Laguna, another aplomado falcon flew over my vehicle and landed in a far away palmetto. Such a pretty bird, but gone in a flash. While I was out, I ran into Sam Crow and Hugh Powell who do Round Robin Blog for Cornell. Hugh showed me his photo of the aplomado, they had come across the bird on the fence earlier (I now wonder if they were in the vehicle in front of me). They got a good shot and it was painful for me to see. You can view the apolomado photo over at Round Robin.
Amy, Clay, and I had great looks at other birds besides the osprey starting a nest. We started the morning at the jetty where many fishermen gather, as do birders. We saw so many dolphins, it could have qualified as a starling flock. But we were not after marine mammals, we wanted to scan the birds.
Now, here's an interesting trio. Three different birds, can you tell what they are? I'll save identifying them until the end of the post in case you would like to try and figure out the id yourself. These were three common birds loafing on the beach. Warning, clues will to the id are ahead, so if you want to try and figure out the id, grab you field guide before going any further.
While we were watching the birds on shore, Amy noticed a hitchhiker on my scope--why it was a honeybee. How fitting that she decided to hang on my scope. She was slow and lethargic. I was not sure if she was just at the end of her foraging life or chilled from the cool winds. If you look at the wear on her wings, I think she's old and at the end of her life.
Clay was very excited to see caspian terns (the tern on the right). They are big and flashy terns, with a noticeable red bill. We see them in Minnesota during migration. They are so large that even Non Birding Bill has commented on them when we saw some flying over nearby Lake of the Isles. This tern was next to a royal tern (the tern on the left), a slightly smaller tern compared to the Caspian. And if you ever are feeling bad about your bird id skills, take heart in knowing that even John J. Audubon himself had trouble telling these two species apart! According to Birds of North America Online:
"In his monumental Birds of America, Audubon depicted neither Caspian nor Royal, but instead what he called a Cayenne Tern, Sterna cayana — mostly Royal, but with some ad-mixture of Caspian features."
As we continued on, we found both brown pelicans and American white pelicans. I've seen both, but never together. I knew American white pelicans were huge, but it never occurred to me that they are twice the size of brown pelicans--crazy.
We headed over to the convention center where we found a fun little water feature. You might hear and read that moving water is the best way to attract birds to your yard, that is put to good use in many of the parks and more birdier areas you can visit in the Rio Grande Valley.
At one point, this little water feature had about a dozen orange-crowned warblers coming in for a bathe. They moved so quickly and were so spread out, I couldn't get more than three or four in my view finder at one time. I got a small video of the bathing warblers, it's best viewed at YouTube and if you click on the "watch in high quality" option.
And in keeping with my goal of showing that not every photo comes out great, I'm posting a rather out of focus shot of a black-throated green warbler. There were a couple who flew in to join the orange-crowned warblers, but they were too quick for me.
Just as I got the scope focused on the black-throated, the little terd hopped behind a rock to bathe. Grrr. Curse you, black-throated green warbler, and everything you stand for! I did manage to get the back of the bird's head in focus. Well, it's a start. No one ever said that digiscoping warblers was ever easy.
And now for the id of the three birds: royal tern, Caspian tern, and laughing gull. How did you do?
On Friday morning, I met up with Clay Taylor and WildBird on the Fly. Clay had a little time in the morning for some digiscoping before working the Swarovski booth at the Rio Grande Valley Bird Fest. I was anxious to really give my new Fuji FinePix E900 a good workout (thank you again National Camera Exchange for finding one for me). Clay suggested a trip out to South Padre Island. We saw many cool species, but one of the coolest observations we made was of the above osprey.
It flew right over the 3 of us, only about 15 feet above our heads! We could tell it had something in its talons and at first assumed a fish since the bird landed and appeared to be picking at it. However, when we got it in our scopes, the osprey just had a stick. We wondered what that was all about. Did the bird mistakenly grab a stick out of the water thinking it was a fish and started to eat it, only to find it kind of nasty to rip apart? The osprey kept staring down at the stick, trying to work something out in its tiny little brain. Was it confused about the lack of fish on the stick? No. It suddenly dawned on us what was going on. Maybe this will help:
It hopped on a nearby by branch and began to bite it. Is this osprey going for some massive fiber in its diet? No. We think it's starting a nest. Notice how the added stick fits among the sawed of branches. I wonder how far it will get with this endeavor? I always wonder what a bird sees that makes it think, "Yes, this rocks, I can totally turn this spot into a safe nest!" I know with osprey, they like to to have a good lookout from all sides of the nest, but what factors do they look for that would make them think that a few hundred pounds of sticks would fit there just nicely.
It was fun to watch the osprey's nictitating membrane (extra eyelid that birds have that they can see through) come over its eye as it chewed on the stick, to protect the eyes from debris flying back in.
The osprey kept hopping back and forth between the crotch holding the start of the nest and the nearby perching branch. Take a look at those massive talons on the bottom of those toes--osprey don't play around, they are all business when it comes to fishing. I just love those crazy, big feet.
Here's a video of it trying to work out what the next step should be (although, the video looks better if you go to the YouTube page itself and click on on "watch in high quality.":
Great-tailed grackles are in huge abundance in Texas. Many wake me up outside my hotel room. The evening roosts are spectacular, but the sounds the birds make is down right freaky. I tried to get a video to record the sound. Below is a great-tailed grackle puffing up and giving several clicks and whistles--it almost sounds like camera clicking or weird gears going off. In the background you can hear other great-tailed grackles calling back:
My goodness, I'm tired and just about birded out (as well as incredibly itchy and somewhat stinky). The Rio Grande Valley Bird Festival should almost be called the Birder Reunion Bird Festival since so many of us show up here and connect.
I started my Texas birding adventure with a field trip to Bensten-Rio Grande Valley State Park. This was the first place I birded the first time I came to this festival years ago. I love it because it gives you a good sample of the valley specialties. What makes this area to bird so fun is that for a Midwest Girl, you can find yourself in a tropical and exotic area on the cheap. Look at the water and the palm trees in the above photo--how could you not love that?
And the birds are crazy looking to add to the exotic appeal of this area, like the green jays. I never get tired of green jays. Seeing something like that makes you feel like you're on another planet, especially when your husband calls and tells you that it's snowing at home.
And it's not just the birds. Instead of squirrels under the feeder, Bentsen as javelinas! These guys were under every feeding station we visited and weren't that scared of humans, they must have a sense that we won't hunt them and I would guess they know humans are the ones who replenish the bird feeders.
Feeding javelinas is ill advised, as they can easily mistake a finger for a peanut butter sandwich and no one wants to go home with few fingers.
One of the coolest birds in the park was a roosting eastern screech owl. The bird is perched on the edge of a cavity in the tree trunk. Check out how well the bird's feathers blend in with the bark--incredible. This was a particularly exciting eastern screech owl, park staff told our group that it was a mccallii, and it's quite possible that the American Ornithologists' Union will make it a separate species from eastern screech owl. So, I kind of banked a life bird for another day.
Another specialty of the area is the buff-bellied hummingbird also known on Cornell's Birds of North America as the "least-studied hummingbird that occurs regularly in the United States." It's a Mexican species that breeds along the gulf coast and makes it across the border into the US.
Another part of birding in south Texas that is unique is watching helicopters for the border patrol pass by. This helicopter was really low and kept going down to one particular patch, leading us to wonder if some people illegally crossing the border had been found.
While doing some digiscoping around Cape May, I found a cooperative flock of yellow-rumped warblers. These are such a challenge to photograph and finding a big flock of butter butts is always a good practice. I remember when I first started digiscoping, I thought warblers would be impossible. But after lots of practice, it is possible to get a warbler shot. Maybe one day this will all pay off and I'll be posting a blackburnian warbler?
It was a fairly busy day when I was taking these photos, it was beautiful fall weather and lots of people were out--even non birders. Some people were really polite, they'd pause to let me get the shot before continuing on the trail past me. People are generally curious when they see you with a large scope and want to know what you're looking at. Some are surprised that it's a bird and not some mammal. Some are surprised that it's a brown bird. Many are happy to tell you about other birds they've seen that they think you would rather photograph--the most common being the bald eagle.
I like to set weird goals for myself. Something like trying to get a shot of the red eye on a coot. But often people passing by, I think feel sorry for me for going after something like a coot and want to tell me about the bald eagle they just saw. When I was taking photos of the butter butts above, a couple passing on the trail kept encouraging me to head towards the beach to get a photo of the bald eagle flying around the beach. I thanked them and went back to the warblers, but they insisted, "That eagle isn't going to be there all day, you should go now!" I thanked them and stayed put, but the man pressed me to go for the eagle. I finally said, "I appreciate that, but I live in Minnesota, we have the largest breeding population of bald eagles in the lower 48. I've seen 'em."
I feel bad, eagles shouldn't be taken for granted and I love seeing them and I don't want to minimize someone's eagle sighting--but darn it, I'm after more difficult fish (er-birds). When I'm digiscoping at Carpenter Nature Center, I periodically run into a guy who regularly walks the trails and is always trying to get me to go take eagle photos. The best part is that he also is ready to interpret bald eagles for me: how long it takes for them to get the white head and tail, their mating habits, prey items, pretty much an abbreviated program of what I would give at The Raptor Center. I often think that he should sign up to be a volunteer there--he's full of info and ready to share it with the world.
I am just of guilty of doing these impromptu bird interpretive sessions. While digiscoping some ducks at The Meadows in Cape May, I heard a group of ladies walking by who were trying to identify all the ducks I was photographing. They didn't have a field guide with them and they were trying to remember what they'd seen so far, so they could identify it later. I was happy to say, "Hey, those are pintails, if you want, you can look at them through my scope."
And I was happy to point out other birds I speculated the had not noticed, "If you're interested, there's a male hooded merganser loafing on a mound, check him out through my scope." They seemed very excited and that just kind of goaded me on, what other waterfowl could I point out to them? Why, how about my favorite duck:
the gadwall! And it's about the time that I start pointing out the all gray duck that I realized I was getting that polite look of "Okay, you've been really nice, but please let us go on our way."
So, why this undeniable need to interpret? Is it to try and recruit more birders? Is because we are all so excited by what we see (no matter what our birding level) that we must share it? Is this some sort of lek behavior, "Gee whiz, look at how much I know!"
Anyone else out there ready to interpret birds at a moment's notice?
Digiscoping The Meadows During Cape May's Autumn Weekend
I think my favorite place at Cape May is The Meadows, an area managed by The Nature Conservancy on the southwest tip of the Cape May peninsula. It has dunes, fresh and saltwater marshes, meadows, ponds, and a mile of beachfront. The lighting can be beautiful and during migration, you can get some great bird shots. There are plenty of ponds and marshes on either side of the trail so that you can get birds in both morning light and evening light if you take the time.
Check out this swamp sparrow that was lurking in some of the bushes with some white-throats, the same area were I got the Carolina wren. In the morning or the evening, this place is just the best. Part of my fill in duties at the Cape May Autumn Weekend was to do Clay's digiscoping workshop. It was supposed to be both indoors and outdoors and the forecast was 100% chance of rain, lots of wind and probably some thunder and lightening. Most spotting scopes can take that...but not most cameras. Fortunately, it barely rained and the worse we had to digiscope in was some strong wind.
I had the pleasure of doing the workshop along with Cape May Bird Observatory volunteer Betty Lemley who does digiscoping workshops locally. She is a hoot and if you are going to be at CMBO and do any of their events, sign up for one of hers. A big part of digiscoping is just getting out there and working with your camera. I met one woman who was understandably frustrated with her digiscoping set up. She said that she could never get her photos to come out clear and sharp. She's seen photos on websites that are digiscoped images and were tack sharp, but hers did not turn out that way. I asked how many photos she took and she said not many and that she stopped because they weren't turning out like what she'd seen from others. I assured her for every photo that looks as good as the sparrow above, there are about 200 that look like this:
...or even worse. It takes a lot of photos to get one that looks in focus, even if you have great light, a great scope, and the best digiscoping camera on the market. Here's another example:
I can't tell you the number of duck shots that I have that are like this. It's tough to get them completely in the frame when they're swimming and feeding, plus figure out light settings and focusing. But with some patience and taking lots of shots, you can get a wigeon shot that looks like this:
I was having so much fun working my digiscoping mojo on the wigeon. I just love this duck: some rust, some green and then that big ole honkin' white stripe down the forehead. If you ever hear someone refer to a duck as a "bald pate" they are talking about the wigeon.
Sometimes you get birds that are back lit, like the above Savannah sparrow (there were a ton of these guys scurrying around all the surrounding vegetation, running along the trails, and hiding just as you were about to get the scope on them. You generally want the sun behind you when you're taking photos, but you can get what I call arty shots. Okay, sure this bird is never going to grace the cover of a birding magazine, but since I'm the person in charge of my own blog and I say it's arty, it's all good. Incidentally, I did work my way around this bird so the sun was behind me. It teed up on a stalk, in perfect light. Just as I was getting it in focus I heard the familiar "per CHUP per CHUP per CHUP" of a peregrine falcon. Just as I was thinking, "Crap, that sparrow is gonna bail," it ducked down in the grass before I could snap the photo. Peregrines, I love you guys, but not when you spook my photo subject!
When we took our group out for the field trip portion of our workshop, the rain had stopped but the wind picked up. We decided to go for it and though a few drops fell here and there, we stayed mostly dry. We went to the beach at the meadows and participants got to practice taking gull shots while being pelted by beach sand. Taking shots when it's cloudy is a challenge too, not always the easiest light to work with. In this shot, you can see some of the sand blowing around the great black-backed gulls.
We did work our way around and got the chance to get some waterfowl in the evening sun. I love the gadwalls. It's a gray duck but has the funniest quack. I've actually got it as a ring tone on cell phone, but it just lovely soft grays and black...even with a bill full of aquatic vegetation.
There was also a male hooded merganser hanging out with the waterfowl, a pleasant surprise.
A fun selection of birds and I hope people had a good time and have time to really work with their cameras. One big digiscoping mistake is that people order all their stuff right before they leave for a trip of a lifetime. You really need several days to get used to using the scope, know how to adjust the head on the tripod, what your camera is capable of. The more you play and become one with your setup the more usable photos you'll have.
I digiscoped so many images this weekend, I'm having trouble organizing them into blog entries. I found a most cooperative northern mockingbird at Higbee Beach. I know for some of you southern readers that a mocking bird is not the most exciting bird on the planet, but for a Minnesota girl, getting a chance to see that yellow eye gleam in the sun.
The hawk migration is still going strong in Cape May and Cooper's hawks like this juvenile above were all over the place. A DC Birding Blog (who is banding hawks at Cape May this year) mentioned that they are seeing more Cooper's hawks passing through than sharp-shinned hawks. We usually see the opposite at Frank's banding station in Duluth. A quick scan over at Birds of North America Online says that the ability of Cooper's hawks to adapt to humans has been great, their population has increased very well, however it's uncertain if their increase in population could have a negative effect on other raptor (or even prey for that matter). There is some evidence that Cooper’s Hawks regularly take American Kestrels, and that they may be playing a role in the current declines in this species in the eastern part of their range.
I was trying to take a photo of a couple of black vultures and I even got a blur of a Coop's passing behind it.
I did get a shot of the full black vulture. This was was another common to Cape May but exciting to a Minnesota girl type species. All we get in MN are turkey vultures, so the smaller guys with the all dark head were a treat.
Here is a pair. The one higher up is an adult, the lower, shaggier looking one with a black bill is a juvenile. They had a beautiful blue sky behind them and were on a blue water tower. Looking at the photos, the two blues look kinda weird.
I wonder what we're missing in Minnesota so that we do not get black vultures? We have turkey vultures for part of the year. I'm sure we'd have places for black vultures to nest. It's interesting to note that turkey vultures find their food using their sense of smell, but not black vultures That ability is not nearly as highly developed in black vultures, so they follow turkey vultures to find carrion.
Doing some reading on BNA found an interesting theory: according to some studies, the large communal roosts that black vultures form at night might serve as a means for communicating food locations. They had several studies to back it up. Birds that were marked returned to same carcasses on successive days, could they be leading birds at the roost to food? When the black vultures leave the roost in the morning, smaller groups fly off at different intervals...are the groups following a specified forager vulture (kind of like a forager honey bee)? In one study, black vultures deprived of information about local distribution of carcasses and were released in evening at communal roosts and joined the ends of groups departing from roosts to feeding sites the next morning and tagged vultures that were not privy to a carcass and released to a roost, still arrived at food sites in early morning as members of groups that have come directly from roosts.
I dedicate the following video to Hasty Brook and hope that she got a Carolina wren before she left Cape May to return to Minnesota.
A posse of bird bloggers gathered again for the Cape May Autumn Weekend and since I ended up working the festival, I was able to see them. They had gathered informally and I didn't think I'd get to meet up with them, but when I ended up coming, they invited me along to a dinner for some hearty laughter. Some, I've met before like Hasty Brook, Somewhere in NJ, Susan Gets Native, and Beginning To Bird, but this time I got to meet KatDoc and DC Bird Blog (he's actually banding birds at Cape May this fall--sweet) face to face. Jay Davis from birdJam came along too.
We must have gotten quite rowdy at the table, I noticed that the bar kept turning up the ambient music to louder and louder levels. However, we were able to keep the talking and laughter to new ear splitting level.
A big bonus to this trip is that I hit my 500th bird--I didn't get to digiscope it but I got. And after I saw it, I saw them everywhere. I needed a black scoter, so after the first day of working the Optics Corner at the festival, Jim Danzenbaker, Jeff Bouton, Jeff Gordon, and Bill Stewart (that really cool guy who organizes the bird a thon to buy up migratory habitat to save the red knot). We watched for lines of scoters and after a few lines of surf scoters flying by--a flock that had both surf and black flew by and I could see the difference. Whew! That hump has been passed. Now to work on getting 600. Although, I suppose I should work on padding the 500 on the off chance the AOU is planning to lump some species together.
Oh, and while we were at the beach gettin' my life, a marriage proposal was finishing up. A man made a sand castle for his sweetie, asking her to marry him. There was a small sand treasure chest next to the sand castle that she apparently had to dig the ring out of the chest. It was very cute. We didn't hear what was actually said between the two, but considering they left hand in hand with smiles on the faces and a bottle of champagne, I thinking her answer was yes. Cute.
Pintails, I love pintail ducks! So, I'm in New Jersey at the moment for Cape May's Autumn Weekend - THE Bird Show. I'm filling in at the Swarovski booth for my buddy Clay (who is forced to go to Austria). I still have to pinch myself sometimes. Teenage Sharon from years ago dreamed of things like getting a call from a cool optics company asking if I would mind coming to Cape May to do some birding and help out at a booth.
When I got into Jersey, Jim from Kowa asked if I wanted to meet for some birding at Brigantine. How could I say no? It was a good idea too, it always takes me a day to kind of get my bearings for birds in a different state. For example, one of the first birds I saw was a small heron looking bird that was all white. Crap, we don't have those in MN, small...white...not a snow egret--it was an immature little blue heron--no fair being white! Anyway, just a good idea to get used to the birds.
While Jim and I were driving around, we saw a herring gull catching something huge--a crab. It was interesting to watch the gull take the large struggling crab out of the water, put in the grass, and hack at it, all while the crab tried to pinch it in self defence.
The herring gull's eye and dark lining just kind of gave this crab killer a maniacal look, much like my beloved accipiters--love those hawks with bright red eyes. Jim pointed out that it was a great day to not be a crab when we found...
...this adult black-backed gull. It was working its way around a mysterious blob in the water...
It was a dead duck. As best we could make out from when the gull would pull the head above water as it tried to rip out a bite, it looked like a female ruddy duck in winter plumage.
We wondered if the duck was already dead or if the gull had killed it. Was she already ill or injured and the gull went after it until she was dead or what. Tough to say, but when nearby mallards realized what the gull was eating, they gave it a wide berth and then flew away when the water's current brought the feasting gull closer.
Peregrines were out in full force at Brigantine. There were oodles of shorebirds and the peregrines would make stealthy attacks from low above the vegetation. This young peregrine was even chased a bit by and adult, you could hear them screaming at each other from quite a distance. The peregrines were a welcome distraction, poor Jim was trying to point out how to tell a western sandpiper from a white-rumped sandpiper. "Notice how the western is lighter in color over all," he asked excitedly.
"Do you want me to answer honesty or tell you what you want to hear? Cause I'm not seeing a lighter color."
We laughed at my shorebird ineptitude. I was able to tell them from the semi-palmated sandpipers, which I felt was a minor breakthrough.
FYI, things my get a little more PG-13 than usual later on in this entry, for parents reading with your kids, you might want to read alone first. Yeah, that's right, Jim, I'm goin' there!
Man, I ate a lot of pie this weekend. I think this was the most pie offerin' bird event I've been too. We had pie with lunch, pie for afternoon break, pie with dinner. Pie, pie, pie! And good pie too, not that pumpkin pie which the best piece you've ever had isn't much different than the worst piece of pumpkin pie you've ever had.
I came to Bellville, Oh for the Audubon State Assembly and gave a presentation on Blogging, The New Nature Journal. I had some geek out moments on this trip: Jim McCormac, Kenn & Kim Kaufman sat in on my workshop (people I very much admire). I also got to meet Greg Miller (if you read The Big Year, he was the guy that put it on credit card). A totally nice guy with a great sense of humor, wish I had more time to go birding with him.
On frosty Sunday morning, I went out birding with Jim to look for sparrows at Funk WMA. The trip was wonderful--a frost blazing in the sun, fall leaf colors, a good variety of birds, and Amish buggies clip-clopping in the background...periodically interrupted by trumpeting sandhill cranes.
Song sparrows (like the bird above) as were swamp sparrows. The target birds of the morning were Nelson's sharp-tailed sparrow or LeConte's sparrow. We did not get the LeConte's but with some good effort of both Jim and fellow trip leader Ethan Kistler our group got a pretty darned good look at a Nelson's. It sat long enough that everyone got a good look in the scope. I didn't get a chance to digiscope it, but another bird for another day.
We had a small flock of white-crowned sparrows around us to. Jim said that this was the handsomest sparrow. I argued that is was the Harris's sparrow and other sparrows like the Nelson's were included and the white-throated and well we all agreed this was in fact a great looking bird, but no consensus was reached as to what is the handsomest sparrow.
Funk was a glorious place for birding and the variety of birds was just right and we even had a little mini hawk migration with some Cooper's hawks and red-tails moving through.
We even found something a little curious while going down the path. I wasn't sure what this was exactly...I know what I think it looks like, but really have no idea what this is. I tried to digiscope it to see if that would give me an answer.
Not a serious answer. I really have no clue. Non Birding Bill thinks it has something to do with being a gas marker.
This was a bumper on one of the vehicles in the parking lot at Funk WMA--which reminds me, some Ohio birders told me this morning that I sound like Sarah Palin when I talk. I was asked to say "donut" and "Ohio" and "Oh no." Hmmmm. I'm sure it's my Minnesota accent and the fact that she sounds Minnesotan (at least in cadence). I always thought that my Minnesota accent was an improvement over my original Hoosier accent, but now I'm not so sure.
More coming soon, I have to read up on some downy woodpecker behavior first.
Oh dear, I may be coming over to the dark side of digiscoping...a Canon digital SLR, the Rebel XSi. There are certainly advantages using an SLR, but I like the small, pocket size and ability of taking video by using a point and shoot camera for digiscoping. I will say, feeling the click of the camera with every shot is oddly satisfying...let's see if I can get the photos there.
I went to the Minnesota Valley NWR to give it a test run and a most accommodating cedar waxwing flew down to the fly thru feeder. That's not supposed to be a seed eater, what's up with that? Sometimes during migration you'll see warblers and vireos at feeders. They're attracted by the general bird activity and flying to check out the food source. In some cases, they'll go for fruit or even suet if it's cold and there aren't enough insects available. Like this pine warbler at Mr. Neil's.
But this cedar waxwing had its eye on other things. It made sure the area was clear and then flew down to the bird bath for a sip. Alas, I did not get a photo of the waxwing on the bath, a herd of retired US Fish & Wildlife Employees (at the refuge for a convention) came out. One told me a rather naughty joke about mullen. He said that if you saw mullen growing in a field, then that meant that the soil was so bad, two Irish men with a bottle of whiskey couldn't even raise hell on it.
I can't believe I forgot to blog about the turkey!
I stopped at Richardson Nature Center the other day to see if the feeders had any activity worth some digiscoping--some wild turkeys were there, about three toms. The above dude made me chuckle. His body was in the sun and his head was in the shade.
Periodically, you would see him pant, meaning he was hot. Birds do not sweat they way we do. To expel excess heat, they pant. I wondered if it occurred to this turkey to put its whole body into the shade, rather than just the head? But then again, that is a small brain controlling a large body.
It's feathers gleaming rust in the sun were quite beautiful.
The neck was another story. Ew.
While watching the turkeys, I noticed quite a few bugs flying around. At first, I thought the bugs were either box elder bugs or some type of wasp creating a hive on the side of the nature center. Then I noticed the dull hum--honeybees!
Richardson has a couple of beehives near their bird feeders. It looked as though someone had extracted some honey from some frames and left them out for the bees to "clean up." The frames were right next to the window, so I had a chance to watch the bee activity without being hindered by a veil.
There were a few other species coming in to take advantage of the unprotected honey. While I was watching the intense activity, I noticed several "balls of bees" start to roll around. At first, I thought they were fighting, but noticed that no one was using a stinger and that the were all licking each other. I think what was happening as that the forager bees would go into get some honey and get covered in honey themselves. Other bees would sense the honey on them and come in to lick it off. The bee would try to fly away, but another bee would have her tongue stuck to her leg from trying to lick off all the honey. I got a video of a bunch of girls, covered in honey,...and...licking each other:
I dedicate this post to my banding buddy Larry who is having a rough grouse season:
Oh dear, I just realized the inadvertent pun in the above sentence. That even hurt me a little.
After the big fat bummer of discovering an empty hive, I went for a walk in Mr. Neil's woods. Non Birding Bill came along with me, I think to try and cheer me up. We heard ruby-crowned kinglets, palm warblers, and yellow-rumps all around us...well, I did, not so sure about NBB. While walking up the trail near the MimiKo and Kelli hives, I spotted a moving lump up ahead in the middle of the trail:
It was a ruffed grouse! We appeared to notice each other at the same time. The sun and clouds kept changing by the minute, so I decided to just concentrate on trying to get a shot in focus. I couldn't believe that the bird stayed on the trail long enough for me to take 6 out of focus shots and one in focus! We've heard grouse drumming near here and Amber and I have found some grouse roosting spots but this is hands down the best look I've ever had at a ruffed grouse in Mr. Neil's woods. Finally, NBB and I were just a little much for the grouse to take, especially with a giant spotting scope lens aimed in its direction during grouse season and it hopped up into a tree:
It was such a cool bird and NBB was even enjoying it--he digs larger birds that are easier to see. He was helpful because I would look into the scope and try to focus and he could keep an eye on the mobile grouse letting me know where to aim. It was interesting, I would look outside the scope and find it, look through the scope and lose it, look out again and just be astonished at how the grouse could disappear in the branches right before my eyes.
Ruffed grouse like mixed-deciduous forest. That is certainly here, there are oaks and old pines for cover and aspens for good. I wonder if we could plant more? I also wonder if we could create an idea grouse drumming area. This way, I could set up one of my motion sensitive cameras to get shots and video of it. Larry has told me what to look for in a grouse drumming spot and I've seen it, but what are the characteristics that a grouse sees that I may need?
Anyway, the grouse was a good cleanse for me. And after some thinking, no matter what the outcome of the hive (still hoping that burning is not an option) I have had a silver lining. I've been laboring through the first draft of the bee book--people say it's a good idea, but I personally was not clear in what my message in writing the book was: a more in depth version of the bee blog posts? As I've been writing it, the tone has been getting weird and a bit schmaltzy. I was worried that my beekeeping book was becoming a Lifetime Movie event: My Beehive Of Hope. I figured I just needed the draft out and would rework it from there.
But last night, I was thinking about all the things that have gone wrong with the beekeeping. And one of the many things NBB said in an effort to cheer my mood, "You know, I admire your tenacity. When you want something and you try it or pitch it and then it doesn't work, you go back to it from a different angle until you can get what you want."
Mistakes. Tenacity. Mistakes. Tenacity. Mistakes.
And then it hit me around a little before midnight. Panic At The Beehive: My Many Beekeeping Mistakes. A new outline fell into place, mistakes, lessons learned and something that is truly in my voice and not a Lifetime Movie event.
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."
First, Birds and Beers will be Tuesday, October 7, 2008 at 6pm at Merlin's Rest. I'm sorry to people who can't make it to Tuesday and only on Thursdays, but my Thursdays are a little nutty for the next few weeks. The next one will be on a Thursday.
Birds and Beers is an informal gathering for people interested in birds to get together, have a beverage, maybe a few eats, and talk some birds. It's open to anyone who might be interested in watching birds to the hardcore lister and anyone in between. It'll be a great way to ignore the nasty political adds on tv, the baffling candidate choices, and the state of the stock market and focus on birds.
Speaking of not wanting to turn on the tv or visit news sites, I'm so grateful to birds and digiscoping. It's nice when the news starts to sound too terrible, that I can find a place and simply watch birds. I love visiting a well traveled feeding station and the Minnesota Valley NWR is just one of those places. I needed photos of woodpeckers and just really took a moment to focus on birds. When someone asks what drew me to birds, I can only answer, "It's the way I'm wired, I love everything about them." Even just watching their natural daily functions. Take a look at that down woodpecker above. This small woodpecker as the ability to hang on the bottom of the feeder, use that stiff tail to prop itself up, and still manage to work out a peanut from just that position. I wonder if I would be willing to do that for a Klondike Bar? Although, that would be a messy way to get one.
I know some "pro photographers" who poo poo amateurs like myself. "You can't get a head on shot of a bird, that's not going to sell." But it's the imperfect shots that I appreciate more--because that's how you actually see birds in the wild. There's a reason that the Mad Bluebird photo is one of the most commercially successful bird photo ever taken--it has character. Again, I take comfort in this nuthatch getting ready to fly of this feeder, the way The Stranger in The Big Lebowski takes comfort in "The dude abides." The position, the shape, the ability of this bird to survive for years in the wild being despite being tiny and sometimes enduring temperatures well below zero degrees Fahrenheit. I'm not looking to sell images, just enjoy birds.
Here's another photo that would never sell, but I take a moment to appreciate how all these functional colors work into a beautiful pallet. Sure black and white blends well with trees and a little flash of red serves a purpose in mating and territoriality, but it's just beautiful. I could stare at that red, white, and black for a good half hour.
Again, it's just nice to find something to take your mind off all the gloom and doom in the news.
On a fun note, yesterday on Big River Journey, our boat was just coming into downtown St. Paul and we watched a very healthy looking coyote drinking from the river. I wish I had my digiscoping set up then. The coyote in perfect sun with the St. Paul high rises looming behind it.
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!
Watch out, Buckeyes! I'm coming to Bellville, Ohio next month! On October 18, I'll be giving a presentation on how to start your own nature blog for the Audubon Ohio State Assembly. It would be fun if we could work out a Birds and Beers there. Suggestions anyone? Non Birding Bill is coming to Ohio with me ( but wants to make it clear that he will not be participating in any birding). His family lives in nearby Mansfield, so I'll get to visit the in laws as well...and enjoy some of the frightening dolls of small town Ohio. Oh hai, and for my Mom, here is an article about the assembly. I'm actually really excited about this, Kim Kaufman and Jim McCormack are leading field trips on the October 19th and I'm hoping to tag along.
Boy howdy, I need to be careful about going out with librarians on a Tuesday night for dinner and drinks. I have a librarian friend who is...your fantasy librarian you would see in 80's music videos. Business by day (glasses and smart clothes) but in the evening, the pencil comes out of the bun, the hair falls, the glasses disappear and well, you find yourself a tad hungover on a Wednesday morning. So, I did some light Wednesday morning digiscoping. The above great blue heron perched on the wood duck box somewhat mirrored my state of mind.
I found it interesting that after a few minutes, the great blue heron went to sleep, above the reeds, out in the open. I wondered if this bird had migrated in the night before from Canada or northern Minnesota and was just that exhausted. Migration is going in full force. Yesterday while workin' on my fitness on the bike trails, I realized that this was the first day I did not see any swallows along the trail. Come to think of it, I didn't see any while out birding, they have moved south.
But other birds were moving in. I heard the chip notes of white-throated sparrows and sure enough, I found a pair hidden in some trees. This is sort of that denial time of late summer early autumn in the Twin Cities. It's still fairly warm, lots of insects are making sounds: katydids, cicadas, crickets, but key birds are gone like the swalllows and migrants are pushing through--warbler waves are hidden in the tops of many trees. Even as I type this, I can hear yellow-rumped warblers making their chip notes in the trees outside my apartment. In another month or two, the trees will be silent. Sigh.
Lots of young birds were learning the ways of the flocks, like this young cedar waxwing. You can tell this is a bird that was hatched this summer by the vertical stripes down the breast--that's one way we tell immature from adult raptors. Immatures tend to have vertical striping, adults tend to have horizontal (or no) striping.
Anyone else noticing fall transitions out there?
Oh, and for international birders who read the blog, did anyone see this photo over at Cute Overload? Some of their readers suggested it was a red-tailed hawk--which I know for sure it is not a red-tail. Is this a snake-eagle? Anyone want to hazard a guess?
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.
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.
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.
Hey, any readers have any idea what this fuzzy stuff is on a leaf. I found it on several leaves of the same plant. It was on the underside of the leaf and the fuzz balls appeared fixed to the spot. Is this some type of gaul? Insect egg sac? Fungus? Alien life for that will take over my body and cause me to point and scream a la Donald Sutherland in the 70's version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Inquiring Birdchicks want to know.
Mr. Neil has a show mountain ash or rowan tree as he likes to call it. The berries are ripe and the birds are ready to pluck. This young robin spent a good chunk of Sunday in the tree. Amber was with me and she pointed out that every time the young robin was around, a young rose-breasted grosbeak was nearby. If the robin flew away, the grosbeak soon followed. We wondered if the robin and grosbeak were forming their own mixed flock and figuring out this whole survival thing together.
Waxwings, like this young cedar waxwing were getting in the berry action as well. I wish I had more time to digiscope them. While watching their antics in the tree, a ruby-throated hummingbird flew in and systematically tested all the berry clusters for nectar potential. It flew away disappointed but would periodically return--how could something that bright not have any nectar? Must be hard for that tiny brain to process.
We did some bird banding at Mr. Neil's this weekend. Lorraine did a great job of keeping the feeders going before hand so birds would be around and my buddy Amber and I arrived early and topped them off before the nets went up. Amber found an oriole and I asked if it looked disappointed that the jelly feeder was empty and began rummaging through the fridge looking for some grape jelly. She said it was spending a lot of time on the suet feeder.
We filled the jelly feeder, but all day long, the male Baltimore oriole ate off the suet feeders. A chill has joined the wind in our neck of the woods with a strong reminder that fall is just down the street. Insects are disappearing, so it makes sense that the oriole would prefer the cashew suet feeder. I'm not sure how much longer this male will be around, but it was nice to get one last look before he left. I just realized it will be a good 8 months until I see one of these guys return to the yard for nesting.
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:
Check it out: a presidential sandwich--George Washing and Abe Lincoln!
I finally have a day off from all the CivicFest and RNC madness. Civic Fest is supposed to be non partisan and some of it is. The history displays, especially about the Continental Congress are fascinating. And the First Lady Dresses--Mary Todd Lincoln had a dress make of purple velvet and black lace that today's got teenager would love for her senior prom. However, all the gift shops are all Republican, all the time, which surprised me because we have a lot of Democrats in this state and Ralph Nader and Ron Paul are here for their own respective conventions.
I'm assigned by the park service to go to these events and tell anyone that I meet about how to enjoy the Mississippi River while in town. Quite a few people (of all political backgrounds) are here and are birders. I'll find myself engaged in a great birding conversation and then at the end, finally notice they might be wearing a button on a certain political issue that I highly disagree with, but for a few minutes, we can have a common bond over our love of birds.
I will say that if you are opposed to the proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act, what an opportunity to talk to people involved! A lot of senators and Department of the Interior staff are milling about the Twin Cities and easy to talk to. I'm not allowed to talk about that with them when in ranger uniform, but once I de-ranger, I can chat away.
I can't wait until the ducks get out of their eclipse plumage. Not that I don't love a good brown bird, but they are so much prettier. For non birding, ducks go into an "eclipse plumage" when they are flightless. They molt their feathers and tend to resemble female ducks. Since they can't fly, they need to hide from predators and being brown helps you hide a lot better in vegetation. Above is a female mallard with her brood of young mallards.
Here's a male mallard--note the bill color difference...and the large snail is his about to swallow?
All of the mallards were hunting snails and swirling around each other and on top of each other to get the food.
The younger mallards were not quite as successful as the adults. They didn't come up as often with a snail and half the time they would drop it back into the water.
The adult female had her technique down--check out her bulge right after she swallowed.
This is like one of those awful shots that someone gets of you when you are mid chew--ducks lose some dignity when mid snail swallow.
How about a little cleansing--both figuratively and literally. I've been so busy with the state fair, the RNC, and CivicFest I've barely had time to do some digiscoping. I was able to sneak out for a few hours but felt like my mojo was a little off.
I went birding to a place I use to go to all the time but haven't been to in ages--The Old Cedar Avenue Bridge. I got a reminder why during my outing. There's a trail that's loaded with rails and soras. The above photo is not the best ever photo of a sora, but it certainly is a true to life one--isn't this how you normally see them--shrouded in vegetation. That is, if you see them at all.
The most interesting part of the morning was some odd fluttering I saw on the boardwalk trail. At first I thought it was injured and flailing a bit on the boardwalk but I changed my position and discovered something really cool.
It was a juvenile marsh wren. Check out the little bits of yellow in the corners of its bill.
It had what looked to be a small ant in its bill and it would alternate between preening and stretching out its wings on the boards. I think it was trying to figure out anting. For non birders, anting is something some bird species have been observed doing. Birds take ants and either place them on their feathers or sometimes will lie near an ant mound, allowing ants to crawl on them. It's believed that they acquire defensive secretions from the ants (formic acid) and that it's possibly used as a supplement to the bird's own preen oil.
In this shot, the young marsh wren is totally spread eagled (or should that be spread wrened?) on the boards and is even exposing its preen gland--that's the little pink spot right above the tail. All birds have this, they squeeze it with their bill and excrete oil that is then rubbed all over their feathers. Imagine having a large gland right above your butt that you would squeeze to get some body oil to run through your hair to keep it shiny and strong?
The young marsh wren continued to preen with the wings out, although I couldn't see any more ants around it at this point. It didn't appear to be bothered by me at all, I thought I would try to get a video.
I did, but you can hear me yelling at some bike riders in the background. One of the reasons why I don't go to the Old Cedar Avenue Bridge anymore is that some of the trails are narrow and only meant for foot traffic, but many bike riders like to bring their mountain bikes onto the trail--creating a dangerous situation for both the rider and the hiker.
As I was taking the video of the wren, I saw some bike riders approach. I tried to hold up my hands indicating for them to stop but they didn't understand. I then started saying "No bikes." and explaining the trail rules. However, by the time they stopped, they were right next to the wren and it disappeared into the reeds--doh! I think they thought I was some nutty woman and turned around more to avoid me than to follow the rules of the trail.
They claimed they didn't see this sign that shows this is a hiking only trail.
But, I'm forgetting the purpose of this post: the cleansing of the cute, young marsh wren in its preening glory must out weigh idiots who ignore signs putting themselves and others at risk. Here's a link to the marsh wren video. I recommend clicking on the "watch in high quality" and also hitting the mute button.
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...
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!
August 23, 2008:Cardinal Corner in West St. Paul Store (651-455-6556) 10 a.m. - 12 p.m.Cardinal Corner in Newport (651-459-3880) 1 p.m. - 3 p.m.
Don't forget, Cinnamon fans, the Queen of Disapproval will also come and hang out at the signing too.
Okay, so I think I'm going to finally finish up my Swarovski Blogging Event posts...oh wait, no, I just realized there's one more thing I can talk about after this, but I have to wait a few days longer before I actually talk about what we got to play with. But back to Cape Cod birding--I gotta a couple more lifers bringing my list to 499. So close to 500, yet so far away.
One was a roseate tern--this very light colored tern with a mostly black bill. That was pretty exciting. Terns are amazing creatures. If I ever transition from point and shoot camera digiscoping to SLR digiscoping, I want to try and capture terns fishing. Terns are such dainty and elegant birds in flight and when they dive into the ocean, it's like watching a delicate piece of origami smacking onto the surface of the water. Loves 'em.
Nice scope posture there, Corey! Corey and I each had a few lifers to catch up on. We both needed roseate tern and we also needed arctic tern. The group watched for them, but at the same time we loved getting photos of all the birds on the beach--dead or alive. I was standing with Corey and Ben from 600 Birds. They had spotted something dead further down the beach. It first glance, we got the impression that it was a dead black-backed gull...but when you looked through the scope, the bill looked all wrong. I wondered if it was a dead gannet. All three of use lit up with excitement and hurried off towards the carcass. As we closed in, Clay called from off in the distance, "Aaaaaaaaartic tern!"
Corey and I stopped, Ben who already had an arctic tern said, "Uh-oh."
Corey and I wavered, we were so close to the gannet, could we get photos of the gannet and make it back in time for the tern, or would the tern take off.
Ben, sensing our indecision said, "Gotta make a choice, dead bird? Life bird? Dead bird? Life Bird? Dead Bird? Life Bird?"
Corey and I finally made a rational decision that between the two birds, the dead gannet was guaranteed to stay in one spot, while the tern was not.
So, here is an arctic tern (masked in some major heat shimmer and non breeding plumage). This is an intense little bird if you think about it. This species breeds around the Arctic Ocean--as far north as Greenland and then winters on pack ice in Antarctica. This bird is about the length of a blue jay and flies pole to pole--that's over 24,000 miles round trip. Then when you look at things like banding records and find that in ten oldest birds found on record--the arctic tern comes in at number seven--a bird documented to have lived for 34 years! Imagine living 34 years and making that trip every single year--that's insane. This may be a small somewhat blurry photo, but the amazing potential in this bird deserves a little attention and was well worth abandoning a dead gannet. It was a good thing too. Not long after Corey and I joined the group, a family coming down the beach frightened the flock of terns and the arctic tern disappeared from view.
And then we hightailed it back to the dead gannet. Based on plumage, it looks like a first year bid. You just can't get close to gannets--they're amazing to watch in flight, but this dead bird was a treat to really look at some of its features up close.
The feet were incredible. They were webbed like a duck but had large white claws on the tips--they nest on ledges of cliffs, in the direction of prevailing winds, perhaps that's why they need the claws for gripping?
Who knows how this bird died: disease, poor hunting, poisoning, eating plastic--tough to say but I appreciated the chance to admire that long, tough bill.
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.
When Swarovski took us birding out South Beach in Cape Cod, I made a beeline for ruddy turnstones. LOVE those guys. They're shorebirds which give them a kind of Dr. Seuss look and they are so flashy looking. Attention must be paid to a turn stone. They are opportunistic and feed on rocky and sandy beaches during winter and on migration, by turning over rocks and pebbles (oh hey, a bird living up to it's name--shocked, I'm shocked I tells ya'). They'll also turn over seaweed, shells, and even garbage. Traditionally, I think they ate invertebrates and tiny fish, but I've seen them around carrion and once watched my father-in-law feed them oyster crackers. I just read on BNA that they will also go for other birds eggs...hm, I wonder if people will dispise them as much as blue jays now?
There were some people digging up clams while we were birding along the beach. When they would leave, turnstones would run over and see if they could find any left overs. Click here (click on the Watch In High Quality link) and you can watch a digivideo of the above ruddy turnstone feeding on clam bits in a shell (keep the volume low, the wind is kind of loud).
And they fight! This is part of the brawl that's in the video I posted earlier (click on the Watch In High Quality link). Now, BNA reads, "Less aggressive during nonbreeding season, though extremely territorial when feeding in flocks." What are they like in breeding mode when they are more aggressive??
I think we can see who had the upper beak in this shot. Check out the dude on the right--completely on its side-belly facing the camera. With that sassy plumage, they could qualify for the WWE.
So, about a month ago, I got an email from my buddy Clay about inviting some bird bloggers to the Swarovski Optik headquarters in Rhode Island. I wasn't sure what exactly it was going to be about, but I figured Swarovski wanted to find out about this whole blogging thing. That was half true, but in the afternoon they pretty much let us loose to just talk amongst ourselves and the meeting ended up being beneficial to bloggers as we talked about everything from why we blog to tips for increasing traffic and dealing with trolls.
Some I knew from the bird festival circuit and others I met face to face for the first time. So for me it was part friend reunion and a chance to connect with some of my favorite blogging colleagues. We talked about how different our blogs were and how we each had aspects that we envied of each other like having a team of bloggers, or being married to your in house tech guy who runs your site, or those who have a knack for editing, the ability to interact well with their commenters (I'm such a non commenter, I don't mean to be, but I am) etc. I have to give Swarovski props for wanting to learn more about bird bloggers and they are certainly ahead of the curve on this compared to most other birding companies.
This is Albert Wannenmacher the CEO of Swarovski Optik in North America proudly displaying the Digiscoping Plaque that Clay and I won at the World Series of Birding this past spring. Swarovski has been great to me, they have given me tremendous support that allows me to blog as much as I do and they invite me to tag along at bird festivals and events. You read about other types of blogs and how companies send them press releases or invite bloggers to visit and meet and create mutually beneficial relationships. The birding industry has been slow to catch on. Publishers (though not all) like Houghton Mifflin have been great as has birdJam by involving bloggers with press releases, but many bird related companies are still quite befuddled by the Internet. I've had some companies accost me at trade shows, "Hey, Birdchick! Why don't you talk about me?" to which I answer, "Because you don't tell me anything."
I'm not saying that blogs need to be all about advertising, but let's face it, bloggers want to provide great content and to that you need time and in some cases money. The dream is to find a way to work with a company you legitimately like and find ways they can help you provide some good content. And there are lots of companies out there that are very involved with conservation projects and have contests. I would love more of them to toot their own horns and let us know about the projects they are funding, both because the projects are often cool and it's nice to know which companies are out there helping birds and not just selling product.
I actually arrived a day early and spent some time in the optics repair department. Above is Kyle and if you have a pair of Swarovski ELs and have sent them in to be repaired or upgraded, this guy has worked on them. Talk about a perfectionist, he walked me through a whole upgrade on an EL, up to and included replacing the casing on the outside--I saw naked binoculars!
It's not every day you get to see a man skin a pair of binoculars or all the components that make them work.
Oh, and ladies, a piece of advice: if you wear cosmetics while birding, take a make up wipe to your eye cups from time to time--especially if you're sending them in for repairs. All that dirt and old make up can't be good for your pores anyway.
Kyle also gave my 8x32 ELs a once over and we took my focus wheel apart. He showed me how it all worked and it was just fascinating to see the gears and grease and all the places my barrels are sealed to keep them waterproof. He showed me one part of my focus wheel that's called a "Flip Flop"--seriously, that's the actual technical term. I looked at him skeptically and he assured me that something just gets lost in the Austrian translation.
The next day, the other bird bloggers arrived and got a similar tour. I love this shot of Corey from 10,000 Birds. I took this photo through one of the prisms that would go into an EL. That's Ben from 600 Birds off to the left. Julie arrived with some ELs to upgrade and I offered to take care of them for her since I learned how to do it the day before. She got all huffy and said I would just get Cinnamon's fur all over her binoculars. I retorted that I don't see how rabbit hair is much worse than Chet Baker slobber. Albert and Clay had to separate us after that.
But of course, being birders, you can only sequester us indoors for meetings and tours for so long before we get antsy and must go outside. They ended the meeting early and took us out for some light birding. We didn't see too terribly much but I did get a fun head shot of a herring gull head. The real birding was to be had the next morning...(more on that later).
One thing I've noticed with Swarovski is that if they invite you to dinner--GO. They always know the best restaurants. Above, I'm sharing a moment with Ben of 600 Birds as he samples his very first lobster.
Part of the fun of eating a lobster is getting to tear it apart. This place was so fancy that the waiter would don rubber gloves and take apart your lobster for you. Not sure I was classy enough for this place and Non Birding Bill suspects I freaked out Helena of Adventures of Bird Girl with my table manners.
It was an interesting group and if you can believe it, some of us were super chatty and had a lot to say, others of us were quiet and listening, soaking the whole scene in. I think we all know which category I fall into. The bird blogging crowd is an interesting mix.
Last week was a little nutty. I'm still not even sure how I did it. Below is a little highlight to give you an idea of what's coming in the blog this week.
It started on Sunday when I did a canoe paddle for the National Park Service. One of the cool things about being a park ranger is that you do fun things like take a canoe on the Mississippi River, a downside can be that when your schedule reads "Sunday Paddle" you may not find out until it's too late that it's a 22 mile canoe paddle on the river, part of the Mississippi River Challenge. I went as an interpretive ranger.
It was a great time and it was incredible to see the sites along the river, but I found out the hard way that 16 miles is my limit--the last six were a killer, not unlike hitting yourself with a hammer in anticipation of how good it will feel when you stop. I was in so much pain at the end of the paddle. I was also incredibly light headed and cranky which was due to severe dehydration. The next morning I woke up to a sore back, sore arms, and sore throat.
I'm so glad that I only had to do part of the paddle. The whole thing was actually two days and 44 miles--I met up halfway. Most of the participants did both days (like the guy above who also went the extra mile and paddled standing up)! It was a great time overall and man oh man, I need to canoe the lakes more often.
The next day I packed for some travel while fighting my sore throat. I was hoping against hope that it was just swollen from dehydration, but it was really some kind of bug. I'm sure my weakened immune system on Sunday let some river bug in. I didn't want to travel and meet up with friends with a cold, but was grateful that it was not much worse, like the flu.
I arrived in Rhode Island on Tuesday and when went to check out my rental car, I had the option of waiting in a long line for a person to check me in or checking myself out at a kiosk with no line. I opted for the kiosk, got through it super quick while everyone else was still in line and when I went out to pick up my car, I stopped and reread my printout three times to make sure it wasn't a mistake.
Somehow, the fates conspired and I got a red Mustang. Not only that, when I got inside I discovered that I was the first one to break this girl in. I was a tad nervous, red cars seem to be magnet for speeding tickets and I tried my best to watch my speed, but I felt that I was confusing people on the highways by going the speed limit.
I went to Rhode Island as part of a bird blogger meeting with Swarovski Optik (more on that later). How many bird bloggers can you id in the above photo?
Of course we got to do a little birding while we were there. We focused on shorebirds and it was good practice for me, since the next day I was heading to the Minnesota/South Dakota border to lead a trip to see some shorebirds with Stan Tekiela. I had some stressful moments. I'd gone out with Swarovski on a boat to Cape Cod. The trip finished later than anticipated leaving me only three hours to catch my flight at the Boston airport. I could have made it had rush hour traffic not kicked in. As I got into Boston I was hitting a quadruple whammy of stress: I was going to miss my flight, I had to pee really bad, I was stuck in traffic, and the rental car was below a quarter of a tank of gas. When I finally made it to the ticket counter after my flight took off, I wondered if I was still going to be able to get back to Minneapolis to meet with the shorebird trip the next day. Remarkably, I did. I got a flight that got me to the Twin Cities at 12:30 am, leaving me time to get five hours sleep and still meet my field trip at 6:45 am.
The best part of the evening came when I was self medicating in an airport bar and got a call from WildBird on the Fly. We were chatting and I told her that my birding gear column (that was due that day) was coming as soon as I found some wireless internet. She asked about the other article...whoopsie, what other article? She was very kind to give me an extension on that one.
It was fun seeing some of the same species I had just seen on the east coast in some mud in South Dakota. I had heard that shorebirds were going to be tough to find since a bad storm just moved through the area a couple of days before and all the great mud flats were now ponds.
We didn't find as many shorebirds, but we found enough and fortunately, the group was into other species as well. We joked that we should have called it the pelican or kingbird tour since we saw so many of those. Round about the time the tour ended, my cold finally disappated. It was an awesome week and I got to see some great friends, but boy am I beat.
Well, I just finished with a really cool and productive meeting with fellow bird bloggers (so fun to meet some of them face to face) and Swarovski. I learned many things (including the fact that Jeff Foxworthy is a big fan of Swarovski Optik...do you suppose he uses his optics for birding?) and much of what I learned will be part of a glut of blogging when I get home--I have to cover a 22 mile Mississippi River canoe paddle, birding with fellow bird bloggers on the east coast and then barely making it back in time to go on a shorebird watching trip this weekend on the South Dakota/Minnesota border...who knew I would find wireless in South Dakota? But this entry needs to be short as I should really be using this free time on the shorebird trip to finish an article that's a tad late for one of the bestest, most wonderful, beautiful, most forgiving, talented, even keeled editor I ever had.
Here's a quick sneak peak of birding Cape Cod with bird bloggers:
We found a family group of the threatened/endangered piping plover! This cute little plover is the adult and is about the size of a sparrow. They're so adorable, I think it you got some Cute Overload worthy photos and put those posters up, make some cuddly plush dolls, and a t-shirt line, people would get on board with saving them like they did with bald eagles and peregrine falcons.
Ben of 600 Birds noticed a chick--then three chicks! Julie Zickefoose was also part of the birding group and she noted that the chicks were about four days old. Ben said it best: that the chicks were so tiny and fluffy, it was hard to tell if we actually had them in focus in our cameras. They really appeared to be cotton balls scurrying around on match sticks. Julie noted that this seemed late for piping plover chicks and wondered if these little guys would learn to fly in time for their long migration?
If you looked closely at one of the adults, you could see the plumage was very worn. Was this a second or third time of renesting and the birds were tired and physically worn out or was this typical molt for this time of year? Did they lose an earlier batch of chicks or were they going for the gold and having successfully raised one brood, going for a second? Tough to say, but you could see this adult was tired.
It plopped down on the sand and you could see its eyes start to close (not unlike what I'm feeling right now after such an adventurous week). I sat on the sand with my scope low, taking what photos I could of the soon to be dosing piping plover and marveled at my luck of getting a chance to digiscope such a cute bird, when all of a sudden...
IT YAWNED! Piping plovers are as cute as a button as it is, now make it yawn and it's too prosh for words! And if you thought that was the cutest thing ever, let me leave you with a video of piping plover chicks running on the beach. They are precocial, meaning they can pretty much feed themselves not long after they hatch, relying on their parents to keep them warm and help protect them from predators. Now brace yourself for cotton ball goodness:
We had an orange variant house finch show up at feeders. Usually when you think male house finch, you think pink--and there can be various shades of pink. Periodically, you might even notice and orange one like the bird above or perhaps even a yellow male.
Here's a comparison of an orange variant male house finch and a typical pink colored male house finch. According to Birds of North America Online, the color of male feathers results from 3 carotenoid pigments: ß-carotene, which produces yellow to orange color in feathers; isocryptoxanthin, which produces orange color in feathers; and echinenone, which produces red color in feathers. By doing controlled feeding experiments with captive house finches researchers found that all individual male finches in all populations all over the US have same potential to be pink, orange, or yellow; the color variation based on the finch's access to carotenoid pigments when they are molting (shedding old feathers and growing in new ones).
In experiments, males that were fed a plain seed diet, which was fully nutritious but provided few carotenoid pigments, all males grew feathers with similar pale yellow coloration. On a seed diet with ß-carotene added, all males grew pale orange feathers. And, on a seed diet with the red carotenoid canthaxanthin added, all males grew bright red feathers. So, this male above is getting his ß-carotene, but not the right carotenoids for red feathers.
There is also a study that suggests the brightness in color in male house finches can be a signal of nutritional health to female house finches. Females may look at a brightly colored male as a better mate since he appears to have access to a good food supply in his territory.
I'm working on a bee book, but in the summer I find I get so easily distracted. Today, I arrived at the Science Museum to do some park rangering at the Mississippi River Visitor's Center and discovered that I was mistaken, I'm not working 8am - 4:30pm, I'm working 5:30pm - 9:30pm. I was going to take the bus back home to get some writing accomplished, but then realized that there's a back office I could work distraction free: no laundry, no "let's make an unneccessarily complicated dinner for Non Birding Bill, and sketchy internet access to prevent an hour or so loss of time while researching lost reunion scripts of the tv show Wings.
Meanwhile, I leave you with the cutest gulp in the world.
Downy woodpecker recently fledged from the nest and learning to eat off of the suet log. Note that unlike an adult male downy woodpecker, the young have red on top of their head instead of the back.
Mr. Neil has had an increase in oriole activity recently. It's typical to get a lull in oriole activity at a jelly feeder once migration is finished. Orioles appear to focus more on insects while raising their young. Once the chicks fledge, you get a second bump in oriole activity in mid summer as the adults teach the young how to feed at jelly and nectar feeders. I was out taking photos and saw a few young orioles like the one above. This bird was feeding without the family group and appeared to be doing well at the jelly feeder...
That is, until an adult male showed up and chased the recently fledged oriole off the jelly. That's the way it goes in the bird world, older more experienced birds push around the younger ones. This young oriole must not have been from this male's family group.
The male Baltimore oriole gathered globs of grape jelly. I heard a young bird begging in the nearby trees. The male flew up, the begging calls stopped. I couldn't see them, but I could tell that the male must have been feeding a young bird. He flew back down to gather more jelly. I was puzzled because the begging calls did not sound like a young oriole. I spent two years volunteering in the avian nursery of the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center and one thing that stuck was the sound of baby birds. I never paid attention to those calls before, but now I'm pretty good at picking out eastern species begging calls. Begging orioles have a breathy, descending "eeep, eeep, eeep, eeep" sound. This wasn't it. As the male oriole grabbed more jelly, the young begging bird flew to the feeder pole and the male flew up to feed it.
Doh! No wonder it didn't sound like a young oriole...it's a young cowbird begging for food. Oh, oriole, I expected more from you. And great, just what we need, cowbirds learning to feed at jelly feeders. Even though the young cowbird at what it was fed by the oriole, I watched it watch the birds at the seed feeders. When the male oriole flew away, the young cowbird flew over to the seed feeders and tried eating some of that instead of going to the jelly feeder. Perhaps jelly does not taste good to cowbirds? This is not the first oriole to raise a cowbird, so if jelly were a good food item to them, we would see more cowbirds on jelly feeders and I just don't see that very much.
Eventually, the young oriole flew back to the jelly feeder and resumed it's feeding:
A DC Birding Blog has some interesting observations on the reports of birders not seeing as many hummingbirds this summer. Meanwhile, Mr. Neil's yard seems to be experiencing more hummingbirds than usual. There are two feeders out this year and both get regular traffic. There are at least four separate hummers, two males and two females. One male in particular goes right into display mode when a female shows up.
They're totally digging the sundae feeder. Above, a female ruby-throated hummingbird is sipping from the feeder.
Even as she approached she could barely keep her tongue contained, here's a closer view:
Okay, how can someone look at this photo and still say that birding is geeky? Seriously, going up a mountain with your digiscoping equipment is geeky? That's my buddy Clay Taylor from Swarovski. He and Bruce Webb took me out in Utah to help me get to my goal of 500 birds.
Here's a lifer Clark's nutcracker. I needed so many basic western birds, it was easy for me to get twenty lifers on a trip--not too many places I can do that anymore. Alas, I only made it to 497, but I'm sure I will hit 500 before the end of the year. I'm going to Rhode Island at the end of July and the Rio Grande Valley Bird Festival in November and there are a few species I can still get in both places. Once I reach 500, I may have to give Ben over at 600 Birds a run for his money...he wants to reach 600 by the January 2010. I'm booked for the Space Coast Festival and San Diego Festival next year already...there are several pelagic species that I need...hm...
There are some challenges to me being a lister. For one thing, I can be kind of picky about how I like to experience bird species. One of the target birds was a black-rosy finch. And the way to find it was to scan the mountainside in the above photo for the flocks. If you're lucky, you might get to see a flock of blackish birds against the snow. But I'd rather have this kind of look at a black rosy-finch. And I don't know how much of an effort I wanted to put up for glimpse of tiny blackish birds.
Bruce, Clay, and I scanned the mountainside for well over an hour. I didn't see rosy-finches but I did get a look at a lifer mammal--mountain goat! Whoot. The longer we were there, and the less we saw the rosy-finches, I decided it wasn't worth it and we moved on. I think I lack the singular tenacity that many listers have and that will prevent me from really getting my list up to where it could be.
Another thing that can slow me down is digiscoping. Take this beautiful black-billed magpie. We have a small pocket of black-billed magpies that live in Minnesota. I've seen them several times and enjoy them. However, this one was perched so perfectly and in such good light that Clay, Bruce and I decided that we couldn't pass it by without trying to photograph it.
When I do see a new bird, like this red crossbill, I want to digiscope the crap out of it too, perhaps spending too much time with the species and "wasting" valuable minutes getting photos missing the chance to see other new species.
Here's a female crossbill--they were so much fun to watch fly in and take apart all the pine cones on the trees. There were so many and they were so close, it almost sounded like a strange bowl of Rice Krispies as they would snap apart the cones to get at the nuts on the inside.
This photo is blurry, but check out that scary looking bill!
You can really see that strange bill that so perfectly designed to get between the teeth on the cones and access the nut meat. And I couldn't just get photos, I had to digivideo the crossbills too:
We found my lifer crossbills when we arrived at the mountainside for the rosy-finches. Clay pointed out the crossbill and we spent quite a bit of time digiscoping and digivideoing them. Perhaps, the rosy-finches were all over that mountain side while we were focused on the much closer trees loaded with crossbills and moved on by the time we went to look for them. No matter, another bird for another day, I always say.
I've always thought that any day with time spent on a boat automatically felt like an adventure, but I think I'm going to have to amend that to include mountains too. Utah is an awesome state and I hope I get to back. The lowlands are beautiful and the mountains spectacular.
Plus, it's fun to be out and about in snow but not bundled up. I had on some pants and a short sleeved shirt and my Keens with no socks and was perfectly comfortable. I think this might finally be my last Utah entry...Have I blogged it out of my system?
Although, I forgot to mention the zip line that was outside of the Cliff Lodge where Amy and I were staying. I really wanted to do it, but I do have a fear of heights. But being the pack animal I am, I knew if I stuck with Amy, she would get my scaredy cat butt up there and on the ride. It was so much fun and I totally felt like a goshawk zipping in for prey--I even held out my feet as if trying to capture unsuspecting prey...
I think my favorite organized field trip that I took at the 2008 American Birding Association Convention was the Upper Deseret Ranch Field Trip, in part because there was a double Bill for field trip leaders: Bill Fenimore and Bill Schmoker. They are two of my favorite Birding Bills and was excited to watch them as field trip leaders. Fenimore leads trips regularly to Deseret Ranch, so if you are in or near Layton, UT, I highly recommend contacting him for his daily guiding rates. He's pleasant company and he knows the area and birds like the back of his hand--also, it's privately owned by the Mormons and you're really not getting in without him. However, it is SO WORTH IT--absolutely gorgeous.
Here is a life bird that I got on the trip--a MacGillivray's warbler. I decided to see how the other half lives on this trip--I became a lister for this convention. I've always just made little checks in my field guides for new birds and about a week before the con, I decided to count them. I learned that I was 25 species away from 500 birds on my North American bird list--who knew? I also did some research and found that there were close to 40 potential species I could get in Utah. I decided to go for it.
Check out this pack of birders, focused and ready on a cool bird. One of the cool things about going to an ABA event when you are close to a birding goal is that EVERYONE comes out of the woodwork to help you. Even though I was there helping at the Swarovski Booth, some of the Leica guys came over to go my bird potential list and give tips on where to go--heck they even invited me on the flammulated owl posse. The man who organized every field trip for the convention came by to offer pointers on my list, field trip leaders made it there personal goal to get me to my 500--it was wonderful camaraderie and really reminded me of why I love the birding community. Listing is not bad and I wish more listers and casual birders would get along. They are two different types of birding but each fun in their own way.
There were some familiar birds around, like cedar waxwings. I wasn't paying much attention as everyone was watching them and Fenimore came over to me and said, "Sharon, these birds are so close and a great shot, can you get a photo?" I think that because I was so focused on getting as many species as possible this trip that my digiscoping suffered a bit for it. Thanks for the reminder, Bill.
It cracked me up that super colorful birds like this western tanager always managed to be just out of reach for a great photo...
...but the brown birds like this nesting cordilleran flycatcher were up close and almost seemingly eager to pose.
But where many of the birds lacked color, the Deseret Ranch landscape more than made up the palette. I sat in the back of the bus with Father Tom (well known Texas birder and one of the organizers of the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival that I'll be going to this fall). FT and I had both been on the owl posse the night before and were both operating on three hours of sleep but each kept pointing out the magnificent views and colors of the landscape.
For lunch, we stopped by a mountain stream to relax. The stream was made up of freshly melted snow and ice in the surrounding mountains. It was 90 some odd degrees out, so after lunch, I stepped in the water.
It was toe numbing cold, but felt so, so good.
Here's a golden eagle chick. Golden eagles in Utah were about as common as bald eagles in Minnesota. It was fun to scan the cliffs for patches of white--indicating lots of poop and raptor nests. We also found a prairie falcon aerie too. You really felt like you were on some sort of adventure riding around in these mountains.
I helped out at the Swarovski Optik booth at the American Birding Association Convention. I was out with a couple of the guys from the booth--Clay and Bruce. As we were going down a mountain road, Clay put on the brakes and said, "That looked like an interesting woodpecker!"
We found a place to pull over and walked in. I was hoping for a Williamson's sapsucker, but we weren't seeing anything but robins. Bruce picked up a stick and started pounding a nearby tree, doing his best sapsucker territorial drumming. We heard some soft drumming and eventually found:
...a three-toed woodpecker. Not a lifer, but always a cool woodpecker and fun to see it outside of Minnesota. Clay then said, "Hey, Bruce, check it out." and pointed to Bruce's feet.
From Clay's excitement, we thought there was a snake. We looked down and couldn't really see anything, Clay kept pointing and then Bruce finally saw it. It's in the above photo with Bruce. Can you see it? Don't worry if you can't, I was there and can barely see what Clay was point to. Here is a hint:
There in the center of that circle is a tiny young robin! We had been there for several minutes, watching the trees, talking, banging sticks against trees and yet this young robin stayed stock still, using it's fledgling coloration to camouflage with the surrounding vegetation. I wanted to digiscope it, but the young robin was too close to focus in my scope, so I had to back up a few feet:
"You can't see me!" Fresh from the nest and already this bird knows what to do, instinct told it to just sit and hide, and the big lumbering creatures would move past, hopefully without stepping on it. It was strange that we did not hear the adult robins give their warning and freak out call. We could hear that they were busy feeding another fledgling nearby. Since we'd seen the woodpecker, we decided to move along and let the young robin be and commence to learning how to care for itself under the tutelage of its parents.
On our way out of the woods, I found a second fledgling. Like its wise sibling, this young robin also stayed stone still as I walked past. Moments like these always make me wonder how many birds (especially owls) have I walked past when focused on something else. How many birds have been just a foot away and I just didn't see it?
Here is a post from the American Birding Convention for my dear husband, Non Birding Bill:
I stayed at the Cliff Lodge in Snowbird, Utah for the American Birding Association Convention. As you can see in the above photo, they keep a tidy lawn. What's the secret to this well kept lawn? Why the lawn services of Nosey Q. McFurryPants aka a family group of yellow-bellied marmots.
The marmots were a popular attraction outside the lodge. They pretty much looked like what we in the east call a woodchuck, but I think this is a higher elevation species. At any point during the day, you could see six to ten marmots feeding on the grass.
Even the babies were a part of the family business of keeping the lawn nice and trim.
After all that lawn service work, rest is good! Several mammals could be found around the lodge including various types of ground squirrels, moose, mule deer, and I heard that if you took the lodge tram up another two thousand feet, pikas!
WildBird on the Fly and I took the tram up to see what we could find. Note the snow? I must say that this Minnesota girl felt right at home in the still snow covered Utah mountains.
It was interesting to note the hardcore locals, like the above young woman. Note that she is about to ski down the side of the mountain in a mini skirt. Get down, girl, go 'head get down!
The view from the top was ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS! As of yet, Utah remains the most beautiful state I have visited. Alas, the bird life and the mammal life was a tad on the sparse side.
I searched and searched and did not see any pikas--bummer, but we did find a few golden-mantled ground squirrels who looked quite similar to the chipmunks we have in our yards in the east.
The view was so good, I told WBOTF that it would be perfect for one of those bird author poses. You know the ones I mean, where the bird author is toting a spotting scope and looking over their shoulder, ready for adventure. So, Amy took the photo and called me a Cheese Ball. Here is the Pete Dunne as an example. Above, I tried to do my best Pete.
Alas, no pikas, but he marmots were cute. Here's some video of the yellow-bellied marmots. Here is the adult marmot (FYI, the sound behind the wind is the raging river from the snow melt):
One of the target birds for me on this trip was an America dipper. I've always wanted to see one of these guys and no, not because in the photos it looks like the dullest bird ever. It's super cool.
First, you look for dippers in this type of stream. They actually move around the water's edge and even walk under water to get at all sorts of aquatic invertebrates. I'm actually standing on a bridge, taking this photo and a dipper nest is under my feet. The water is incredibly cold, full of freshly melted snow.
One of the striking things is that you will notice a white eyelid. They use this when they are in the frigid water looking for food to keep insulated. One of the cool things about the American dipper is that they kind of fit their name: they dip...they constantly dip. I went to Cornell's BNA to see if I could find out what the dipping is all about and under the "Priorities For Further Research" it reads, "Why do American Dippers dip? This remains one of the biggest mysteries about the species, with many theories but no answers. Why do South American species not dip or dive? How does the American Dipper compare with other stream birds in North America (Spotted Sandpiper, Louisiana Waterthrush [Seiurus motacilla], wagtails [Motacilla spp.]), in Europe, and in Asia?"
Some things that even Cornell doesn't know. I can't wait until some hard working graduate student unwraps the code of all the bobbing birds out there--what is that all about? And here are some videos I took with my digital point and shoot camera and spotting scope of a dipper dipping and preening and scratching. You can hear our field trip group in the background. If you click on the YouTube link, there's a link under the video that gives you the option of watching it in high quality and see the dipper in more detail:
As if that isn't cool enough, it even dips on one foot:
Got some exciting life birds today (and just in case there is still a question, a life bird or lifer is a bird that you observe for the first time in your life and add to your life list):
A cordilleran flycatcher--I can hear how overwhelmed he is in my head. Check out that buffy/olive goodness.
And an American dipper. This bird was nesting under a bridge and would come out and swim around in the water and periodically dip its tail while grabbing who knows what for food.
And though the birds were brown, the views were spectacular. This was from our stop at Sundance--it's not just for movie festivals and skiing. I've enjoyed Robert Redford movies, but I've never been so grateful to him as I was today looking at the beautiful land that be bought and preserved.
When I first arrived, I tried to do a quick blog post and kept getting error messages. I called Non Birding Bill and he looked into it. Apparently, I had used up all the space on the server. Ooopsie. He cleared some space and I should be good to go over the weekend, but we're going to have to change next week.
I have the potential to get many lifers on this trip. So far, I've been too overwhelmed saying hello to old friends and hanging out at the Swarovski booth to really dig in. Clay, the Swarovski Rep when to a local bird store (which also does not have mealworms at the moment) and picked up a droll yankee feeder, some sunflower hearts and hummingbird feeder for people to test scopes on. Two key birds that I needed were showing up to them (Cassin's finch and black-headed grosbeak). However, they had the knack of showing up when I wasn't looking. Every time I went out, it was just pine siskins. I eventually did get one (above). Here's an even better shot:
It's hard to tell from the light in this photo, but you can tell them from purple finches by this little brown mark on their cheek that resembles a mutton chop style beard. Tomorrow, I get to go out on the reasonably timed 5:45am field trip and will surely rack the lifers up. Saturday, I have a brutal start time of 4am...ah well, it could be worse, there is a field trip leaving at 3:45am too.
Hey, if you are interested in some up to the minute updates, Born Again Bird Watcher is blogging from the floor to his blackberry.
Some Numb Nut at the Pizza Luce across from our apartment building thought it would be a fine idea to hire a crew to redo their parking lot at 3:30am last night. Non Birding Bill and I were part of a coalition of neighbors coming out to get the crew to stop. Boy, was I the old lady of the group--all the younger neighbors were shouting "This is unacceptable! Call the cops!" or "Dude, I can't believe this, you gotta stop!" (although add a few more colorful metaphors) and I was quoting the city's noise ordinance and shaking my fist.
I must say, the woman who came out to meet the tired/sleepy/irritated/slightly irrational gathering didn't give the best initial answer. When a business has suddenly awakened the neighborhood and angry neighbors come out, the response should be, "Oh wow, dude, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that using noisy paint scraping motorized equipment would be a bad idea in the middle of the night! We'll stop immediately! Oh, and here, why don't I give each of you gift certificates for a free slice for your inconvenience!"
Instead we got, "Uh, well, I didn't hear anything."
We did get them to stop, but I had a fitful night of very little sleep afterwards, couple that with working all day today and packing for Utah and an early flight in tomorrow morning, I'm feeling like a bit of an anti pizza cranky pants. Or, rather, a bit like this:
Okay, I'm having way too much fun with the jumping spider, I'll stop soon, I swear.
I do need some cleansing, so how about a cleansing American redstart (or as NBB calls them, sample sized orioles) who must be nesting near the feeding station in Mr. Neil's yard. Speaking of Mr. Neil, have you seen the baby raccoons he found in his yard (cute!). I know they nest down by the creek, but this one was singing all over the fallen oak and declaring his domain near the feeders.
Breathe in the redstart, breathe out, in, out, in out. Ahhhh. And now for some video:
On Saturday morning, I woke up at 4am, got my stuff together and headed out to Rapids Lake Education and Visitor Center for the Minnesota BioBlitz (you try to see document as much wildlife as you can in a 24 hour period). It's southwest of the Twin Cities on a bluff along the Minnesota River. It's relatively new and I was excited to find an adult lark sparrow feeding young as soon as I stepped out of my car.
This was a catbird that we banded that morning. There was a band of park rangers on hand to help out with the BioBlitz. I was there to lead a bird walk at 6 am and then we helped out with the center's banding demonstration. There are nesting blue-winged warblers and prothonotary warblers along some of the trails--I was excited to see them...but was defeated by mosquitoes. The staff at the center warned us about them.
I've been around the block in this state, mosquitoes are ravenous here. But usually some appropriately placed DEET products keep them at bay. Not these. The staff advised us to use mosquito netting, but I foolishly declined since I really can't see well through my optics with netting. The bug spray I applied did not create the bug barrier I hoped, but instead seem to serve as a nice hollandaise sauce for the insects. We heard and glimpsed some great birds: blue-wings, prothonotary warblers, black-billed cuckoos, but alas, did not stop to watch them well--the mosquitoes were so bad, I ceased worrying about West Nile and focused on anemia. They flew into my ears, my nostrils, I had so many on my hand, it felt like a soft paint brush dabbing my skin. It was brutal. I still trying to decide if all the bites are some strange poem written in pink Braille or a connect the dot puzzle in the shape of Alaska.
We only banded three birds that day, but the biggest highlight was a male indigo bunting! Talk about a crowd pleasing bird! I didn't plan it, but my nail polish ended up matching his plumage. After I finished with the BioBlitz, Non Birding Bill and I headed out to Mr. Neil's to enjoy some beer butt chicken and check the bees (more on that later). I noticed he had an indigo bunting singing in his yard.
He's had indigo buntings around his property (last year a male would sing right over the Olga and Kitty hives when we would do inspections). This is the first time that I had ever noticed one nesting right in the backyard. He sang as we ate dinner outside and when I headed towards where he was singing, he valiantly defended his territory. Awesome! Here is a a video of him singing his song. Some birders think that they are saying "Fire! Fire! Where? Where? Here! Here! See it? See it?"
This past Sunday was just about as perfect as a day can get for me. It started at 4:15am when Kate and I woke up to load up our van for the ride home at the end of the festival. At 5am, we met up with good friends Kim Risen and Bill of the Birds to have some time to just sit and enjoy some Sprague's pipits and Baird's sparrows. It was rounded out with some fun driving time with my buddy Kate and then finished with a spicy Thai meal and some quality time with Non Birding Bill.
One of the first birds we saw in the wee hours of the dawn--a short-eared owl! And check it out, it's tiny, barely there tufties were erect. Not only did we see the owl...we got to see what it's named for. Take that, historic ornithologists who gave birds names for obscure parts barely seen in the field!
We stopped on some private ranch property (that allows birders to enjoy the sparrows) and headed out. You could hear the cows in the distance and one of our first birds was--
A chestnut-collared longspur just chillin' on the fence. There are brown birds, and then there are Brown Birds. Chestnut-collards take brown to a whole new beautiful level and they still have that bobolink thing going with their black chest. BNA describes them as prairie specialists: "Typical breeding habitat is arid, short to mixed grass prairie that has been recently grazed or mowed...this species avoids nesting in areas protected from grazing, instead preferring pastures and mowed areas such as airstrips, as well as grazed native prairie habitats."
The next bird we heard was a grasshopper sparrow (that's the hunch backed looking bird in the above photo). It's buzzy call was mixed with western meadowlark and about that time we heard Sprague's pipits overhead. I've linked to the songs, but if you have birdJam or any bird cds and are not familiar with these songs--look them up.
It wasn't long after that before we heard the sweet sound of the Baird's sparrow. And I had a video earlier, but here the lovely song of the Baird's sparrow yet again:
You can hear Canada geese and western meadowlarks singing in the background of that video.
There was also a pair of savannah sparrows nearby--above is one of them. The two would chase each other and periodically, the Baird's would get caught up in the chase as well. I don't think Baird's feel that threatened by savannah sparrows, but I have a feeling that their fighting was taking place a little too close to its nest.
The Baird's sparrow kept getting closer and close. Kim suggested that we all get as low to the ground as we could and see how close the Baird's would get to us. It came within ten feet. Here are the photos, it was almost too close to fit into the field of view of my scope.
There we were listening to one of the sweetest bird songs in North America, and even more sweet songs overhead and surrounding us--it seemed amost unreal to hear the Sprague's pipit's descending song right after the Baird's. The prairie was chilly, but gradually warming in the glow of sunrise, giving the wet ground a sweet and musky smell. You could barely hear traffic. Sharing the moment with people who truly appreciate the moment and prairie in the same way is what really made the morning, this is what birding is truly all about for me. As we were enjoying moment on the prairie with the Baird's we heard two vans pull up way back by the roadside where we parked. A quick scan in the scopes revealed the vans were full of people with floppy hats and khaki hats: birders. They unloaded.
Kim Risen and I recognized one of the people as fellow Minnesota birder and Victor Emanuel tour leader Kim Eckert. I always get a kick out of the random meetings that can happen in another state. He was leading two vans for VENT and like us was there for the Baird's and the Sprague's pipits. We went over to say hello.
And as much as I would have liked to have sunk into the ground and just enjoy the sounds and smells for the rest of the day (despite the ticks) we had to head home. So, once again, after a cold, crappy, rainy, windy reception to the state, all is once again forgiven with a North Dakota dawn.
The Rainy Part of the Potholes and Prairie Bird Festival
First off: I have spent the morning updating my appearances on my Google Calendar page (all the way into March 2009) and have even included the next Birds and Beers on June 19 at Merlin's Rest. Birds and Beers is an informal gathering of birders of all abilities to connect and share birding stories and info. If you are remotely interested in birds, you're invited.
I love, love, love birding in North Dakota and love the Potholes and Prairie Bird Festival. But, every year there is always a day of cold rain and harsh winds that make even the most fervent bird enthusiast wonder, "What the heck am I doing with my life?"
But then you get the clear, crisp mornings at dawn on the prairie and all is forgiven and you realize that as a birder, this is what you live for. I'll blog that later, now it's time for the crap weather birding. One morning, I woke up at 4:15 am to the sound of heavy rain. I had to get ready for my 5am bus to Chase Lake NWR, so piled on the layers and rain coat and headed to the hotel lobby. It was silent, but when I turned the corner, I found this:
Field trip participants gathered round a muted tv desperately watching the weather channel and hoping against hope that the 90% chance of all day rain and strong winds predicted the night before was really going to stop at 5:05am. I laughed at the silence and intensity of the scene. Mental Note: Don't laugh at birders before 5am and before they have had a serious cup of coffee.
Alas, it rained for most of the day. At some points it was an "honest rain" as someone referred to it, others it was accompanied by unforgiving winds. And yet, at other times, it would stop while we were on the bus, and suddenly begin a light drizzle as soon as people started getting off the bus. Doh! I traveled to Potholes and Prairies with my friend Kate from Eagle Optics and we chose to sit in the back of the bus to not only help point out birds for people in back, but to try and provide some comic relief. I was so glad to not be an official field trip leader for this trip since that would mean getting off the bus at every stop to find the target. Bless poor, wet guides Kim Risen and Stacey Adolf-Whipp for doing that hard task. The big upside for Kate and I was that we got to hang with Rondeau Ric (although sans stache, but apparently it was not the source of his comic power, so he was still funny).
One morning, Kate and I had a couple of hours and we checked out Arrowwood National Wildlife Refuge on our own. We were excited to see the bison on the refuge. I love the above sign warning about what you should do around the bison that can roam on the road. Helpful things like "Do No Disturb or Chase" or "Tails Up! A Raised Tail is a Warning Sign to Stay Away!" You may think the sign is overkill, but after the dork wad I encountered at Antelope Island a couple of years ago in Utah, I'm not so sure.
We found the small herd on a hillside far enough away that we could safely digiscope them.
The baby bison were a trip. Some were frolicking, some were nursing. We saw no "tails up" unless you count the bison that were...evacuating their backside. However, our buddy, the Zeiss Rep, Steve Ingraham had a much closer encounter with the bison than we did--they completely blocked the road once he drove into their paddock. He made it out okay without any headbutting dents to his his rental, but I'm glad it was him and not us.
Speaking of Zeiss, I have to give them some props for their freebie at their booth--gummy binoculars--genius! Not quite as genius as the bag 'o gin from Bird Uganda Tours given away in Texas, but a mighty close second. They did taste really good. Especially the red ones.
One of the coolest things Kate and I found at Arrowwood was a large flock of cliff swallows swarming around a bridge. I'm sure they were nesting beneath it. This flock was already swirling over our heads. Then, for some reason, I bent down on the side of the bridge to see if I could see any of the nests and they skies doubled with more birds fleeing the nests on the bridge. It was pretty cool! We left soon after that in case any of the birds needed to get back to incubating or brooding chicks on this cool day. I did get a video to try and capture the experience:
Wednesday morning as I was packing for North Dakota, I could hear a young robin in the neighborhood, begging for food. Throughout the morning it was figuring out this whole flight thing and getting fed large grubby looking things by its parents.
About a half an hour before I left, the young robing had found the puddle on the apartment building across the ally--the same one that hosted a Cooper's hawk last spring. I managed to get a couple of videos. Here is the young robin taking his first dips (you might hear a red-eyed vireo singing outside my window):
Here a second video with a rock pigeon joining and scaring the young robin...and that is the BarryTones doing HipShop in the background (a barbershop quartet singing a medley of popular hip hop songs):
Last fall, I went on a tear to get rid of some buckthorn and start replenishing the woods with bee and bird friendly plants (with mostly native plants) in Mr. Neil's woods. I've tried to make a sincere effort to learn my wildflowers and if I've learned anything, it's that if I find a flower very attractive, it's non-native.
I got some large-flowering trillium last fall and planted that on the slope where the big fallen oak has been hosting sparrows all winter. Alas, it does not appear to be popping up. As I was feeling sorry for myself and wondering what I could do differently, I noticed this, mere feet from where I planted the trillium:
Nodding trillium! Growing all on its own, without me planting it! Has it always been growing on this hill and since I'm always bird watching that I have just never noticed it? That's quite possible--really, the only wildflower I knew before this was Dutchman's breeches and Jack-In-The-Pulpit (which we have a ginormous amount of Jack's this year). Refreshed and excited, I decided to head into the woods to see what other flowers might be popping up and to try and get some warbler shots. I head to the spot where a major buckthorn removal had taken place and found:
A butt load of garlic mustard. One of the reasons I have never bothered to learn my plants is that I didn't want to know too much. Once you know what the invasive species are and how quickly they spread and how hard they are to get rid of--you begin to see it everywhere and feel a sort of powerlessness about it. This area floods every spring. So if we begin a garlic mustard removal plan, more will just be flooded in. As I was thinking in my head about what I'd read on the Internet regarding garlic mustard removal, I noticed higher up on a hill, a patch of flowers surrounded by garlic mustard...
It was a large patch of native wildflowers including large-flowered trillium and some rue anemone (and if I misidentify any flowers, please someone correct me, I'm still learning and need all the help I can get). I also found spring beauties, wild geranium, phlox, and something I cannot identify in my books and online:
Does anyone know what this is? I have a feeling it's non-native since I find them so pretty. Here's a shot so you can see the leaves:
So, even though there is still buckthorn and now oodles of garlic mustard, there is still some hope in the woods with some native flowers and our bees out there using them for nectar.
After I finished inspecting the wildflower situation, I headed towards the spot where we find giant puffballs because blue-winged warblers have nested there since I have been coming to Mr. Neil's. I heard one singing right away, found a spot with some open areas so I could aim my digiscoping equipment and waited. It wasn't long before a pair of blue-winged warblers were out and foraging. The birds seemed to have a circuit that they would follow from tree to tree, searching for tiny insects. By watching the circuit a few times, I got a sense of their route and could kind of follow along with the scope and digiscope some photos.
The blue-winged warblers were not bothered by my presence whatsoever and a few times foraged for insects about two feet above my head. Blue-wings are an interesting species. They hybridize with golden-winged warblers and may be contributing to the decline of the golden-wing. When blue-winged warblers move into the same range as the golden-wing--the pure golden-wings disappear to hybrids and eventually all become golden-wings. You can read more about it (and maybe even participate in a study) at Cornell's Golden-winged Warbler Atlas Project.
What a pleasant way to enjoy the evening sun with a blue-winged warbler. I even managed to get a video of the warbler singing his buzzy "bluuuuuuuuuuuuuue wing" song and foraging--enjoy!
I'm trying hard to focus on the good. I'm incredibly swamped--I still have a post left from the World Series of Birding but there are articles to finish, emails to deal with, trips to lead, blogs to write, etc. I had every intent to just do my time banding at Carpenter this morning and then come home and write, write, write.
Alas, it was not meant to be. Someone reported a long-eared owl in a park a few blocks from our apartment. Even though the bird was seen this morning and I was reading the report in the afternoon, the owl was roosting in a heavily trafficked park. It had made an informed decision to roost in a city park--it would not flush easily and still be there. As soon as I got to the park with my digiscoping equipment, you could hear the angry robins...oh yes, the long-eared was still there.
Tucked and well hidden in the trees, the long-eared owl tried very hard to roost and the robins were making darn sure that sleep would not be an easy one this day. A few other birders were there and we all stayed back on the trail to watch the long-eared. Some people passing through the trail asked if we were looking at another great horned owl and we showed them the long-eared. They were excited and said that just down the trail was a very visible great horned. I went to take a look a few hundred feet down the trail.
Another birder named Scott was with me and he spotted the sleeping great horned owl right away. Do you see it in the above photo?
Scott also found a second great horned roosting nearby!
Again, these are urban great horneds and they must be very used to people to roost right out in the open. I love having an unexpected two species of owl day just a few blocks from home! It was interesting to note that it was relatively silent compared to over by the long-eared owl. There were several warblers and a few buntings and orioles singing a storm, but they were just territory songs, not alarm songs. Small birds are not high in the list of preferred prey items to a great horned owl. Long-eared owls do eat some small birds and I'm sure the robins are aware of it. It was interesting to note the long-eared roosting so close to the great horned owls...great horneds are known to eat smaller owls, including long-eareds. Hmmm.
And if you are curious about about what angry robins sound like, I did manage to take a small video of the roosting long-eared through my spotting scope. You can hear the angry "cheep cheeps" from the robins. Another interesting note is that this is general robin alarm. When they see a Cooper's hawk in the neighborhood, the robins give a very high pitched down slurred whistle. They did not give that while I was there observing the long-eared:
This year's Detroit Lakes Festival of Birds was more challenging than in the past. Due to the long winter, migration was about two weeks behind, so instead of warblers dripping from trees and the shorebirds crowding the mudflats we really had to work to get participants their target birds. This year, the organizer added a new trip to Red Lake's Big Bog State Recreation Area--which should have been primo for Connecticut warblers, black-backed woodpeckers, three-toed woodpeckers, and boreal chickadees. However, when we got off the bus and I was not swarmed by insects and the bog was silent, I knew we were in trouble.
Although birds were scarce, we did find that there are still a few moose here in the bog and that someone has too much time on their hands when they take the time to arrange moose poop in the shape of a heart! The bog was a hard trip for me--as a participant on a field trip, it's frustrating when you come to a festival for a specific species and can get it. It's just as frustrating for field trip leaders who are anxious to help you find those target species. I hadn't been to the bog area for a few years. I was invited on a familiarization tour about four years ago, right before the boardwalk was complete. Depending on gas prices, I will have to get up there again sometime this summer.
The next day I was on the trip for Glendalough State Park and that was exciting for me because Scott Weidensaul was on that trip (can I saw what a sweet guy he is--when I was packing up my Swarovski booth at the end of the festival he helped carry some of the boxes to the car even after he'd been leading trips and autographing books--what a guy). Glendalough rocked--warblers were just arriving to the northern part of Minnesota. Many were singing on territory and I was able to get photos like the above common yellowthroat (and some video as well). This was also the park with the funky oriole (the consensus seems to be that it is not a hybrid but a young male Baltimore growing into his adult plumage).
A big highlight came as we were watching a warbler, one of the trip's participants said, "Oh, there's a common nighthawk sleeping in the tree." Sure enough, there was a common nighthawk roosting! That was a good spot on his part and makes me wonder how often we pass nighthawks on a daily basis.
Something very telling about our times: a bald eagle flew in and landed fairly close and I set my scope up on the raptor right away. I stepped aside so people could line up for the perfect view of an eagle in great light...and there was not a rush for the scope. I commented that are we that jaded in Minnesota that we can't take a look at an eagle and a few people stepped in to take a look. I thought back to growing up in Indiana and how rare and eagle sighting was and now they are commonplace and that kids are growing up with the idea that eagles are easy to see. I think that's great, but hope they don't get taken for granted.
Many American redstarts were chasing each other and a few came close to beaning a few participants. What fun! Our groups broke apart into some smaller groups to make it easier to see birds and a few heard the coveted Connecticut warbler. It wasn't supposed to be at Glendalough, but it's migration and anything is possible.
Sunday we went to Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge. Again, migration was a tad off so we didn't quite get the shorebird bonanza that we did last year, but Agassiz is still a special place to visit.
I got a kick out of a unique use of deer antlers as an oriole feeder. I could hear orioles overhead, but none of them came down for the fun photo opportunity.
Sparrows were all over the visitor's center and one of my favorites was around--the Harris's sparrow--love those guys.
There were several robin nests around the center. Here is one right one a window. On the window ledge to the right was another nest, but I'm not sure if it was also being used this season.
The big stars of Agassiz that day were all the Cape May warblers hanging out in the pines. They were surprisingly accommodating for warblers and everyone got great looks.
While we were scanning the pines for the warblers we came across another robin nest. She remained hunkered despite the 50 some odd birders and half dozen Cape May warblers surrounding her.
So that is a brief Detroit Lakes update. Even though the birds weren't what they normally are, it was still a great time and it was fun to connect with new people and reconnect with old friends. Alas, if we have learned anything in the last few years it's that we really cannot control the weather and certainly not bird migration.
Just back from the Detroit Lakes Festival of Birds--more to report on that when I am a bit more rested. I've been trying to upload some video I took on YouTube, but for some reason it keeps failing--is it perhaps because I'm using "sapsucker" in the title? I'm not sure, but Non Birding Bill is going to try and see what he can do later today. In the meantime, I leave you with some gratuitous yellow-headed blackbirds:
While I've been away, Fabulous Lorraine and Mr. Neil have been tending the hive and monitoring the divide of the new colony. Here is Fabulous Lorraine's report...the bees haven't quite released the new queen and built a queen cell. Not sure what that's all about and what egg they would use in said cell, but if I learned anything from last year, it's to leave the queen cells alone! When the new queen is finally released from her cage, I'll let her deal with it.
The red-winged blackbirds are arriving in larger and larger flocks in Minnesota--spring. I got this photo on Monday while filming a segment with weatherman Rob Koch from KSTP. We were doing a segment on migration and I figured our best bet would be at the Minnesota Valley NWR--sure enough, there was a flock of red-wings. This female downy woodpecker hopped over to a male red-winged blackbird and the two birds stared at each other for a moment. It was almost as if they were having a conversation:
The next bird we heard was a grasshopper sparrow (that's the hunch backed looking bird in the above photo). It's buzzy call was mixed with 
