Cough Cough

Digivideoed from Mr. Neil's kitchen yesterday:

Wood Frogs and Chorus Frogs

We were serenaded by frogs all weekend! There are wet spots all over Mr. Neil that's just perfect for frogs. The loudest were the chorus frogs and wood frogs. Above is a wood frog in mid...croak. Wood frogs have a special place in my heart. When I first moved to Minnesota, I went to TS Roberts Sanctuary for birding. There was a wet area with this weird barking sound. A woman standing there with binoculars was intently watching the wet area. "What is that?" I asked. She said it was grouse. Not being familiar with grouse and new to Minnesota, I found it completely plausible that grouse would be found in a city park in an urban area. I spent an hour scanning with my binoculars before I finally found the wood frogs--much to the consternation of Non Birding Bill--ah good times.

I continued to scan Mr. Neil's pond for chorus frogs and I found one out of the water puffing away. Such a tiny frog, makes such a loud sound! I took some video through the spotting scope. The first is focusing on a wood frog (the are the kind of barking sound). The second video is on the chorus frog, but again you will hear both wood and chorus frogs. Chorus frogs sound like you are running a finger over the tines on a comb. Now, if only I could find some spring peepers to listen to!

Male Merganser Gets His Mojo On

Here's a video I took though my spotting scope of some hooded mergansers. It starts off on a preening female and then goes to a male preening...and working his cresty mojo. I wish videos looked as good on You Tube as they do before compressed, but you get the idea.

Sapsuckers And Grouse

I woke up this morning hoping to dash out to look for a grouse drumming log. I put on a cup of coffee and was chit chatting with Non Birding Bill when I looked behind him and saw a male yellow-bellied sapsucker--I was so excited on a nearby pine! It was low and in great light. I grabbed my scope and NBB grabbed my camera and I went to work trying to get a photo. I was getting some okay photos, but it was through a window and it wasn't as crisp as I would like them. Sapsuckers have never been a very cooperative bird for me and I didn't want to scare it off.

But it continued to peck when I went outside so I got some great shots. It's weird, I was trying to find information about sapsuckers and tree health and I couldn't find a conclusive study about whether or not sapsuckers damage healthy trees or go after trees already in ill health. There did seem to be information from tree people calling them pests and information from bird people saying that we don't know for sure and most trees survive. Looks like more study needs to be done.

I did go out to look for grouse and NBB came with me. Mr. Neil told me that a week ago he heard strong drumming. We went to the area he described and sure enough we heard the drumming. We slowly followed a trail up the hill and I spotted this tangle. I saw a log...I saw a grouse shape--we found the grouse! It was frozen, it knew we there and we were not going to get to see it drum. After about thirty seconds it took off.

In spring, male ruffed grouse find a log and beat their wings against their chest to attract a female. If you've never heard it before, let me tell you, it's a crazy sound. It's such a low resonance, I tend to feel it as opposed to hear it. My friend Larry from banding has been giving information on what to look for in grouse drumming sites. This one fit the bill--it was a clearing, but the log itself was surrounded by some branches.

We found some grouse poop, but not a lot. I wonder if this isn't the usual log? I wanted to set up the motion sensitive camera, but the log is on someone else's property and in full view of a cabin. No one was home for me to ask and I momentarily thought of setting it up anyway, but NBB wisely pointed out that leaving a motion sensitive camera for someone to find might freak them out. I'll try again next weekend. Nonetheless, it is a goal realized--I've always wanted to find a grouse drumming log. Now I just need to get some footage of it in action.

And now I leave you with a video of the sapsucker drilling. There's a bee entry coming up, we did our first big spring hive inspection. I also have an idea for another entry, but I'm not sure. NBB says it's gold. I'm worried, that it might be too much information. I'll sleep on it.

Song Sparrow Video For Fun

I like how the song starts kind of half-assed and then gets more gumption when a neighboring song sparrow joins in.

Early Spring Sparrows

Winter storm warning starts today, April 10 at 4pm! We might be getting 4 - 6 inches of snow sometime within the next 48 hours. I shouldn't complain...Duluth is supposed to get blizzard conditions (not blizzard like, just blizzard).

While I was checking the traps yesterday, I heard my first field sparrows of the year (above). When we finished banding, I took a few minutes to go out and look for them--there were several. That is such a sweet sound of spring and summer.

There were a few song sparrows (above) around too. They've been around for a couple of weeks now. Although, some song sparrows don't leave the Twin Cities in winter. When I worked at a bird store on the west side, we had them at the feeder all winter long.

The field sparrow is such a cute brown bird! I was really enjoying the time with the field sparrows yesterday. Tax time has been rough this year. We put it off (our own darn fault) and we're gonna have to pay and it's going to hurt and we've irritated our accountant--just all those crazy things that many of us go through this one week in April every year. I loved just standing out in the prairie at Carpenter Nature Center surrounded by the sweet songs of the field sparrows, soaking it in. And no matter how late we are with our taxes or how much we end up owing, birds are always a comfort. I tried to take a video through my scope of the field sparrow singing for people who may not know what they sound like (it reminds many of a ping pong ball bouncing on a table). There's a little heat shimmer, but you get the idea:

Junco Video Test

Testing to see if I can upload to blogger yet.

Somebody Wanted A Long Weekend Off

Gorgeous, isn't it? I went to the Minnesota River Valley Visitor's Center to do some digiscoping today. We got some snow on Friday and there were a few flurries on Saturday and I figured I could get some fun shots in the snow.

But the center was closed. Now, come on--the sign reads about bad roads and winter weather and it's true that we got about 3-5 inches on Friday--but, this is Minnesota, that's nothing. I could understand if this was a remote park miles from a town with a gravel road, but this center is right off a major highway in the south metro area of the Twin Cities across from the airport. And to prove my point, here is the road the visitor's center is on:

Pretty darned cleared off if you ask me. I think it was Easter Weekend and the employees wanted an extended weekend off--and who can blame them? But it was a balmy thirty degrees and I went to get some photos anyway. All the feeders were empty and many had been taken down (I assume put away for the weekend to prevent theft), but as always, I have an emergency bag of bird seed in the car and scattered some around the feeding area.

The two platform feeders were way too high for me to fill with seed, so I just scattered it on the ground--and the birds came in for it right away. The cardinal and junco were eating peacefully side by side, but when the female house sparrow flew down, the cardinal wanted none of her. I just love that little tableau above.

Ah, look at this! It's the rarely seen woodpecker worm tunneling out from the snow to get some mixed nuts. It's so weird to see a downy woodpecker hopping around on the ground like a robin. I'm sure there's a Dune reference to be made here, but I can't think what it is. Oh! And that reminds me, someone asked in a previous entry what a snow flea is. They are a bug you can see even in summer weather, but since they come out early while there is still snow on the ground, they are easier to see in winter. You look at the base of a tree on top of the snow and if you see what looks like dust moving--that's snow fleas. You can read more about them here. Believe it or not, there is also a snow mosquito and I've already seen one of those this week too.

I could hear red-winged blackbirds all over and I saw this flock in the distance, but when I looked at them through the scope, I realized they were brown-headed cowbirds.

And the males were wasting no time in displaying to the females. In the above photo, there is a female cowbird on the left and the male is in mid chirp on the right--cowbirds, hold off, there really aren't any nests for you to deposit eggs yet...except for bald eagles and red-tailed hawks and they aren't gonna buy your tiny eggs in their nests. I tried to get a video of the cowbird display through my scope. You can watch it below, but the cowbirds get almost completely muted by the red-winged blackbirds and robins singing around them. Towards the end you will hear a western meadowlark--that's my cell phone, not the actual bird. As migration progresses, I may have to switch my ring tone to a sound I won't actually hear in Minnesota.

Sounds Of Spring

Spent the day working my mojo with my new digital camera for digiscoping. I took this video through the scope of a female red-bellied woodpecker eating off of a suet log. It's not the most exciting footage ever, but I really wanted to capture the background sounds--some birds were singing territory songs even with snow still on the ground. You can hear a tufted titmouse, northern cardinal, blue jays, and crows (you might also here a few goldfinch chips and nuthatch yanks too).

Not Another Nebraska Entry

Hey! If you need a sandhill crane and or waterfowl fix, the National Geographic Crane Cam live at Rowe Sanctuary is up and running.

You're probably asking yourself, "How much longer is this chick going to go on about Nebraska???" This will be the last post and then later this week I'll be opening up the Olga hive and feeding her some pollen and try and figure out my mojo with the new digiscoping camera at Mr. Neil's bird feeders--I know the new camera is capable of sharply focused photos, that Harlan's hawk doesn't look bad. Perhaps it will get better when I get new glasses?

In an offbeat bit of news, an artist did a rendering of a photo that was on Cute Overload and included a reference to Disapproving Rabbits. I love being combined with one of my favorite websites and sometimes it's weird to think that we coined a phrase that's part of the Internet Lexicon.

One of the fun parts of visiting Nebraska this time of year is watching the cranes fly off of the Platte River from one of the crane blinds at Rowe Sanctuary. The first time I was in one of these was about ten years ago. I had no idea what to expect, we went out in the morning to the giant blind, crammed in with about 30 other people. We were given the lecture to be quiet and not use any flashes so as to not scare off the cranes. We walked out in the cold, you could tell there were quite a few cranes on the river. You stood shivering in the dark, mesmerized by the sheer number of birds. As the skies became lighter you could make out bird shapes and see birds standing on islands and suddenly got an idea of how many thousands of birds were in front of you. Eventually, an eagle would fly over or a coyote run through, frighten the cranes and they would lift off all at once, each individual call merging into a gigantic roar--an overwhelming and powerful experience and something I have tried to come back to every year since.

Over the years, I've found other places to watch the cranes. Rowe Sanctuary can sometimes provide a closer view but really, if you know where to go, you can watch the cranes outside of their blinds. The above photo was taken from the shores of the Platte River on Tom Mangelson's cabin. It's interesting that at Rowe you are given all these rules--don't stomp too hard in the blind, don't stick your camera lenses outside the blind, no talking inside the blind, no lights period on the front of your camera, etc. When we were on the shores of Mangelson's property, we weren't in a blind, we talked (not loud), we walked around (we didn't dance or do jumping jacks) and cranes flew in and landed without any problem. There was even a big bonfire going on not too far from us and if that doesn't disturb the cranes, I don't know what would.

Check out the five young thugs (immature bald eagles) hanging out in a tree at Mangelson's--are they thinking what this eagle was thinking? Don't get me wrong, Rowe's rules are important. You have several people sharing one blind and a person could conceivably stick their arm out of a viewing window and cause an early fly off. I don't know, I think that since I've been coming here so long and know places to stay and watch free, I'm getting spoiled about how I view the cranes and the geese.

It's interesting to see how things are changing at Rowe. Something to keep in mind now when booking time in a blind is that tripods are an issue. In the past when I took field trips to Rowe, I always tried to get a blind just for our group--it's never been a problem before, Rowe has many blinds. This was the first year that I wasn't given a blind just for our group (even with the offer of paying extra). The morning our group arrived for our first blind visit, a volunteer mentioned the blind they had us in had limited space for tripods for a spotting scope or camera--and we were sharing the blind with another group. When they saw how many tripods our group had, they ended up giving us our own blind. However, when we returned for evening crane viewing, we didn't get our own blind and since all the windows were sold, we were told that our tripod legs could not fall into the space of the window of the person next to us or you wold have to put your scope and tripod away. Our group lucked out a little because we had a couple of people cancel last minute and Rowe didn't refund the money so we had some extra windows for space.

I think everybody should visit Rowe Sanctuary at least once in their life and it's a great place to start off if you've never been to Nebraska to see cranes (and you can get some fun crane souvenirs) but I'm starting to see the fun in hanging out on the Fort Kearney Hike and Bike Trail Bridge for crane viewing.

And I end with one final digivideo of sandhill cranes (and some geese) flying over Mangelson's.

Butt Load Of Snow Geese

I'm doing another interview on Talk Shoe, this time with a show called Conscious Living on Wednesday. It will be interesting to see if there are the same naughty forum questions as the other show I was on. Then I'll know if it was me bringing them out or just a weird one time thing. If you're interested in listening, go to the Talk Shoe site on Wednesday at 4pm Eastern Time.

This was a massive flock of snow geese that we found on Friday just driving around Nebraska. It's interesting that the focus of the Platte River birding in Nebraska is the sandhill crane, but the sheer numbers of snow geese are more intriguing to me. When Stan asked about doing a field trip to Nebraska through his nature center, I suggested early March. There may be fewer cranes, but enormous amounts of snow geese. And really, the numbers for both are still pretty amazing--60,000 sandhill cranes, 2 million snow geese.

I think this is one of my favorite photos from the trip. This is just a long, long line of snow geese. As cool as this is, it may be cause for environmental concern. According to Birds of North America Online the current estimates of the snow goose population is between 5 and 6 million, a number that may be environmentally unsustainable. When snow geese return to their breeding grounds, they pretty much eat the crap out of the habitat which in the long term could mean that they eat away the habitat so quickly that it won't recover for future breeding seasons causing a crash not only in their population but other species like sandpipers and phalaropes. Despite all of that, it's still pretty overwhelming to witness.

Below is a video of the above flock flying over our heads. You can hear Stan, my buddy Amber and myself giggling like fools. Non Birding Bill says it sounds like we are high.

Viera Wetlands

Here's a great egret head.

Well, I'm in Atlanta right now and the drought is still on--the grass is very brown and there are water conservation notices in the hotel rooms. However, as I type this, there is one heck of storm raging outside, so maybe this is a sign for the better? So, time to finish up the Florida entries:

So, Viera Wetlands (again, just a fancy name for a wastewater treatment area--yeah, I mean sewage) wasn't just about the cool bittern loaf. No, there were other birds there, they were just all over shadowed by the cool brown heron like bird. What else could be so cool?

Brown ducks! This is an exciting duck since it can be found in most places around the US. It's a relative of black ducks and mallards and that plumage in the above photos is about as flamboyant as it gets for the mottled duck. I can hear Non Birding Bill smirking all the way in Minnesota.

The wetlands were chock full of herons and egrets. Above is a flock of cattle egrets threatening to block the road as we were driving through.

Here is a pair of sandhill cranes near the road. Again, I would like to point out how birds in Florida are mellower than birds up north. There's no way sandhills would stick near the road if a vehicle slowed down near them. How close were they? For one thing, I didn't digiscope this photo. Here's another comparison:

That's my buddy Clay Taylor in the driver's seat watching the cranes--these birds just don't care about humans. Maybe it's the vacation atmosphere in Florida? Everybody, even the wildife is chillin' out.

Here's another anhinga, drying out its wings in the sun while surrounded by blue-winged teal. It kind of threw me to see it with blue-winged teal, a species we have nesting in Minnesota.
Here is an adult anhinga (note the white on the wings). The anhinga is another kind of celebrity bird for me. I remember staring at their illustrations in my field guides when I was a kid, in all the books, there was at least one showing it with its wings out. It's fun to see them when I am in Texas or Florida.

Speaking of birds throwing me, here's a savannah sparrow. I wondered if I was driving Clay crazy by second guessing so many birds. I kept asking things like, "Is that really a savannah sparrow I'm seeing?" I'm so used to seeing and hearing them in open areas around the Minnesota, I wasn't expecting to find them lurking in the grasses of some wetlands in Florida.

The birds weren't all brown at the wetlands. Check out this striking fellow--kind of like a coot in drag. It's a common moorhen. These birds are very grunty, belchy and farty sounding. They make a variety of noises, but it's the grunty sounds that stick in your mind.

The moorhens were mixed in with the coots. Many of the coots formed a tight raft and fed in the water. With the black bodies and heads, accented with the white bills, it was kind of hypnotic. Here's a video:



Here's another Dr. Seuss looking bird. This is the glossy ibis. Viera was just fun, everywhere you scanned you find something cool, if not on the water, then in the grasses and shoreline. There's something for everyone. And you might be surprised what you find as you're scanning:

Oh hey, what's that on the shore? Why, it's an alligator. And this wasn't the only one, they were ALL over.

Now, these birds must like life on the edge. Here are two sizable alligators and near them on the shore is a glossy ibis and a few moorhens feeding away. Are these birds just not the brightest bulbs on the tree or does their diet make them taste so nasty that an alligator just doesn't want to bother.

You could get fairly close to the alligators. Above is a member of our group named Andy getting a photo with his point and shoot. I noted the alligator was longer than I am and decided to digiscope it from where I stood behind Andy (if the gator decided to come our way, it would get Andy first).

Not a bad photo and much like the bittern photo, I could only get a head shot of the gator to fit in my field of view. Perhaps, that means I'm too close to it.

We did see some non lethal animals like this red-bellied turtle and a river otter that came running out of the water and was entirely too fast for me to digiscope.

Here's a rabbit--this poor thing was frozen and hunkered to the ground, there was a young red-shouldered hawk hunting nearby and the rabbit was using its camo ability to evade becoming a mean for the hawk. One of the guys on our trip was a Florida naturalist and he said that this was a marsh rabbit. They can swim, although, I wouldn't advise it with all the gators in the water.

Hot Gratuitous American Bittern Action

Well, I thought getting some great head shots of the wood stork was going to be the high point of my trip, but hands down, it was the American bittern action, I captured at Viera Wetlands yesterday. Now, the American bittern is a bird I can see in my home state of Minnesota, but not easily and certainly not in good photography light. One thing I am fascinated with birds is how birds respond to human activity in different states. In Florida, the birds are totally mellow: osprey right on the street lamps like red-tailed hawks. Herons and egrets will let you get within 10 feet of them. We have some of these same species in Minnesota, but they are way more cagey--it's just an interesting regional difference.

Bitterns are birds that skulk around in reeds, using their stripey plumage to hide in the reeds--it's hard to find them, you generally hear them more than you see them and when you do see them, it's usually when they are slinking back into the reeds and out of your sight. When I got the above photo of a bittern disappearing into some vegetation with the sun behind it, I considered myself very lucky.

Then we got to this spot and a fellow birder mentioned to our group that there was an American bittern in here that is a real ham. I'm a ham, I would even say chickadees and nuthatches are hams. But bitterns as hams? They are more of the Howard Hughes type. But, the light was perfect, I had a flash card to fill and couldn't resist a chance to digiscope a bittern. We couldn't see it and buddy Clay Taylor said that we were probably going to have to walk around and just work it. Clay and I assumed our positions with our scopes and our cameras and waited. Less than sixty seconds later, we saw the bittern.

It skulked out of the grasses and I got this photo. I thought this was pretty darned exciting and very bloggable--and a good representation of how you usually see a bittern through a scope or binoculars. Part of the bird and obscured by vegetation. I congratulated myself in my head for a digiscope well done. But, it didn't end there.

The bird continued to search the water at the base of the vegetation for fish and seemed completely oblivious to the pack of humans on the nearby road freaking out at how close we were to an American bittern.

Look at that! An almost completely unobscured bittern face? I felt like the luckiest girl in the world!

The bittern eventually came out fairy close to the road. If you look at the above photo, you see the end of the barrel of my spotting scope and at the top center of the photo is the bittern. I was dying at this point. It was sunny, the temperature was in the upper seventies, a slight breeze was blowing and I was watching a really cool and generally hard to see bird.

The birder we met on the road was right, this bird was a ham. Here it is point its head up to camouflage as a helicopter few over (or maybe it was simply watching the helicopter).

And then it poked its head out and continued its "relentless warfare on fish." Some of the members of our group were not birders and did find the bittern cool, but I'm sure they were wondering why Clay and I just planted ourselves for the better part of an hour photographing the bittern.

The bird was so close, I had a tough time getting anything but head shots, so I moved myself further back and was able to start getting the whole body in the frame. What amazed me was look at the size of the head in relation to the body--tiny and skinny head governing a large body in back.

At a couple of point, it puffed up slightly. I wondered what that was about. I once was fortunately enough to watch a bittern give it's call and it's really interesting. They inhale air first and their bodies blow up like a big brown beach ball and the bird deflates as it gives that pumper call. Here, it puffed up once? Is it giving some kind of call that is inaudible to me? What was it about? Still, so much to learn.

Here's a final photo, check out the wet feathers on the chin--I saw this bird get at least five fish, who knows how much it was getting as it would periodically disappear into the grasses. Though the above is the last photo, below is a video of the bittern. There is a spot on the lens and yes, I am aware of the spot. I've been uploading some photos to You Tube in the last twenty-four hours to blog about this week. Some people subscribe to the videos on there and see them right away. And a few have felt the need to let me know that I have a spot on my lens. It's a big spot and fairly obvious and it amuses me to know end that the commentors feel the need to let me know, on the off chance I didn't see it. So, as you're watching this, yes, I know that there is a spot on the lens.

Oh! And I forgot to mention, you will hear fish crows calling in the back ground--sounds like a crow that swallowed a kazoo going "ha ha". Also, watch how the bittern wiggles back and forth--that's how it's focusing on what it's about to stab it at. Alas, the flash card I was using when I took the video filled up and the camera stopped filming. Immediately after the video stops, the bittern nailed a fish.

Owls Calling In Each Other and Some Digiscoping

As mentioned in the previous post, it's a little chilly right now. But I decided to try some digiscoping at Mr. Neil's bird feeders. Number one, being right outside the house, I could dash in and have some pumpkin spice tea when the layers would begin to fail me (my layering system works great when I'm walking, but it's hard to stay warm when standing in one spot taking photos). Plus, the cold just wreaks havoc on my batteries for my camera. I have discovered that using those Hot Hand hand warmers does help keep them going a little bit longer than just keeping them in a pants pocket.

The berries that were in the blue jay photo are from a bittersweet vine that we planted in the yard. I just love bittersweet, I think it's one of the pretties fall vines out there, so I snipped some off and set it on top of the stump with the snow and tossed some black oil sunflower seed and mixed nuts in front of it so see what type of bird photos I could get.

It's interesting that you hear some people complain about all the manipulation of images with Photoshop, but images can be manipulated just as easily with some well placed foliage and food bribery. I know some who go to great lengths to hide the bird seed used to bring in birds for photos, but I'm not that picky.

It was interesting that this female red-bellied woodpecker had no problem coming down to the stump for the nuts. This species is usually pretty cagey in Mr. Neil's yard. If they do come in, they usually stick to the suet feeder or peanut feeder. But this female decided to risk the spotting scope and come down for some nuts.

Round about 4pm, it started getting darker and the bird activity began to slow down. It was mostly juncos and a couple of cardinals coming in towards the end. I normally would have cropped out the half red-breasted nuthatch on the right, but check out the leg--there's a band, no doubt this is one of the nuthatches we banded this fall. Whoot.

As it was getting darker, something caught the attention of both me and the junco (notice that it looks a bit more alert)--we heard a great horned owl hooting. There has been some hooting on and off in the last few weeks, but they sounded very close. First it stared with one, and then a second, higher pitched hoot came in--male and female. They were hooting back and forth, well it is December, that is prime owl flirting time, but as they were hooting, I noticed a very faint hooting--another great horned was hooting back!

It was almost 4:30pm at this point and that's when the sun sets this time of year. I took a photo and see those tall pines in the back ground? That's where the owls were hooting. After I took this photo, I noticed some flapping and then saw a bird land on top of the pines. I thought I would test my Swarovski's light gathering abilities and see if I could see anything:

There was an owl, perched right at the top of a branch! In the scope, you could make out the colors, but my little digital camera could only just about make out the great horned owl's silhouette.

Here is the male owl in mid-hoot. I love how they pop their tails up like they are some kind of giant wren. Check out its puffed out throat too! The distant owl kept hooting back to the pair closest to me. This is great, I didn't even have to use the iPod, the birds were calling themselves out! Not long after I took this photo, the female flew up to join him:

Here is the male on the left and the female on the right. You can see the size difference and when they were hooting, you could totally tell that the owl on the right was much higher in pitch than the one on the left. I tried to get a video which will be below. You really can't hear the hooting, they were too far for my sad little mic to pick up. But, some fun things that I did catch on the video: At 34 seconds, the female on the right will hoot (you'll see her cock up her tail) and then right after that, watch the male on the left--he's going to cough up a pellet and you should see it fall at about 51 seconds, then watch the female again because she will poop at 1:01. The who thing lasts about a minute and twenty seconds. I ran in and grabbed Mr. Neil's video camera to see if it would be strong enough to pick out the hooting sounds and if you click here and crank your volume as loud as possible, you can hear the male and female hoot (head phones might work best. Anyway, here is the video of the hootin' nanny:



Ah, one of my favorite moments in life. Listening to owls calling in the dark while standing in snow.

Bonus While Removing Buckthorn

And maybe just a tad of personal vindication.

This afternoon I was doing some half hearted buckthorn removal in Mr. Neil's woods. It needs to be done, but at the same time I was making mental apologies to the woods and wildlife that areas of thick brush would go through a drastic change but would be made up to them in future years with better plants. I fell in love with this woods the first time I walked through it. I remember the spot in the above photo being a particularly perfect place to find a saw-whet owl. Every single time I pass it, I comb the branches with my eyes for small owls but have never seen one there. I've even been taunted by a saw-whet owl feather a wren used in lining a nearby nest box.

Today, I found tiny owl poop beneath one of the trees. I started scanning the trunk but didn't have my hopes too high. After all, I have found owl poop before and no owl. I stood right on top of the poop and looked straight up. The branches revealed nothing. I took a step back and to the right. An oval shape and then vertical lines came into view--saw-whet owl! Finally, a saw-wet! I dashed back up the trail to gather my digiscoping equipment to get a photo of this tiny owl:

It was not the best light and the wee owly was not in the least bit threatened by me and continued its snooze. I left the scope on him and called Lorraine to see if she was working at the house. She was and I insisted that she join me on the trail to see an owl. How could she refuse? We both marveled at the owl and then it did the craziest thing! It woke up, faced away from us and started bobbing its head. We changed our position to get a better look. Without the scope, it looked as though it was about to cough up a pellet. But when I looked in the scope it was opening its mouth and moving as though it were making sounds? What was it doing?? Lorraine and I strained to hear and finally we made out very high pitched, almost inaudible squeaks and clicks--almost bat like. I tried to get a video, but there was no way to get the sound on that microphone. Here you can watch it move:



You know, I've worked with an education saw-whet owl at TRC and have never heard that sound or have seen or heard it in the wild. I couldn't find anything like it on BNA. I did find something sort of like it on Cornell's Owl CD (a must have for any person remotely into owls) and there are a couple of tracks on there listed as "unknown winter vocalization". If there are any owl experts out there who would care to share their knowledge of saw-whet owl vocalizations, I would love to hear it.

We waited for Mr. Neil to finish some writing and insisted that he and Cabal come join us to watch the owl before it got to dark. The owl didn't vocalize but took a direct interest in the large white dog. It's now night, and I hope the saw-whet is finding plenty of tasty mice and voles around the feeding area. I put out some extra bird seed on the ground to encourage small mammals for it.

I guess you never know what you'll find when removing buckthorn.

The Benefits Of A Dead Tree

"Did someone say there's a dead tree? Yum! Count me in!"

We've had some powerful storms in our neck of the woods for the last month. Non Birding Bill and I have been fortunate in not having any storm damage (heck of a light show, though), but Mr. Neil has lost some trees, one being a very large oak near the bird feeding stations--NOT the oak that supplied us with a tasty harvest of Sulphur Shelf--it's still standing tall (although the fungus has dried out).

This oak has been kind of the staging area for all the feeder birds. Up until a large bolt of lightening struck the giant tree a couple of weeks ago, all the birds would hang in there and make sure the coast was clear before coming down to the feeders. Woodpeckers would check for bugs, nuthatches would cache suet and nuts, mourning doves would flirt, and immature birds would beg from parents high in the branches as the adults fed, trying to show the young how to use the feeders. I always thought to myself that if something happened to that tree, it might affect the bird activity. Initially, it was thought that the tree had just lost a large branch, but an arborist came and pointed to where and how hard the tree was struck and needed to be cut down since it was so close to the house. When the yard crew cut the tree, you could see the charred core for the powerful bolt of lightening.

After the tree was cut down, I asked Mr. Neil what he was going to do with it. The tree fell into the woods (away from the house) and he was considering the idea of leaving it there to rot. I strongly favored the idea, though we lost a tree for the birds to hang out in before they go to the feeders, it would become a great brushy area and an awesome food source. Even though the tree has only been down a few weeks, the birds are already digging it.

Here is a black-capped chickadee going for tiny insects working around the dead leaves. This birds kept bouncing from clump to clump of dead leaves. As I was watching this chickadee, I could hear soft pecking from several different sources around me. As the oak had come down, a few other trees came down with it, so there are several dead trees surrounding the oak--an Old Country Buffet of all natural food for the birds (hm...can you have "all natural" and "Old Country Buffet" in the same sentence?).

One of the birds pecking was this tufted titmouse. The bird was really hammering away at this jagged edge of a broken branch. First it started at the top, and then the side. Anytime another titmouse flew it, this bird would chase it off. Something must have been good in there...

Eventually, the bird really started pecking away at the bottom and really excavating. The behavior was so fascinating, I thought I would digivideo what it was doing. Be alert, this clip is only six seconds long:



As soon as I had pressed record on my little digital camera, the titmouse got its reward--did you see the size of that grub?? I couldn't believe my luck of getting a quick video of the bird getting the food. This is just the tip of the iceberg. I can't wait to see what happens over the winter.

Another benefit to the missing large oak is that now the late afternoon sun casts a gorgeous glow on the feeding station--perfect for digiscoping. I found this female ruby-throated hummingbird preening in one of the small trees next to the nectar feeder. Earlier, when I had been filling all the empty seed feeders, she buzzed by head twice (I wasn't wearing red, so it wasn't like she thought I was food). The third time she buzzed, I turned around and followed her with my eyes. She flew twenty feet away to the hummingbird feeder, hovered for a moment and flew up into the tree. Hm, what is it Lassie? Is Timmy in the well again? Or is the nectar nasty in the hummingbird feeder. I took the feeder in, cleaned it out, put in fresh nectar and not five seconds after I hung it back up, she flew down and started feeding on the nectar. This bird has me trained--three buzzes and I fill the feeder. After she fed, she went to the tree to preen. Here's a video of her ablutions. Note how she periodically flicks out that tiny tongue:



And for those interested, a bee update will be coming up later today.

Chickadee Eating A Sunflower Seed

And now I present you with a video I digiscoped (or digivideoed) of a black-capped chickadee eating a black oil sunflower seed. Note how it works the nut meat apart bit by bit. Also, note how this bird is not eating at a feeder, chickadees fly away to another perch with their food--presumably to eat it out of a potential predator's view.

When you see the chickadee puff up in the video, another chickadee has landed nearby, and it's trying to look intimidating to protect its food--it's a mini mantle.