Birdchick

While doing some online research for something, I came across an archived article from the New York Times dated September 20, 1896:

A young South American bittern fell exhausted in the rear yard of 411 West Thirty-third Street yesterday. August and Willie Schramm, two boys who live at that number, caught the bird. It fought desperately with its sharp claws and bill and uttered a sound which resembled closely that made by an alarm clock going off inside a box.

The boys put the bird into a box, which they tied securely with twine. They then took the bittern to the Central Park Menagerie and turned it over to Director Smith. It was placed in the pigeon house, where it immediately assume its habitual attitude of quiet watchfulness.

The South American bittern when at home makes relentless warfare on fish and birds of its own size and smaller, which it devours greedily. It is very difficult to raise in captivity.

Boy, they don’t write up natural history reports like that anymore! Just looking around at my own personal bird library and online resources, I admire the ability to id an off course South American bittern in the 1890s.

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First, Birds and Beers will continue, I just haven’t scheduled January yet. I will get it squared away after the first of the year. I just needed to get the holidays out of the way.

Second, a BIG THANK YOU to Metro Magazine for including my blog in their list of “The Best Homegrown Blogs We Read Just About Every Day.” It’s nice to know a non bird related magazine is interested in birds…and bees…and disapproving bunnies.

Third, someone reminded me to mention The Great Backyard Bird Count is coming up in February. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do it. I’m tentatively booked at a bird festival that weekend. But if you’re not doing anything that weekend, count the birds in your backyard.

I did have some time to do some birding today and headed over to the Minnesota Valley NWR Visitor’s Center about ten minutes from my apartment.

I was hoping I could do some digiscoping from inside, but the visitor’s center was closed. I wasn’t wearing as many layers I should have for the outdoors, but I had some emergency hand warmers stashed in my coat and tucked those in my gloves and gave it a shot.

Light snow was falling and many birds were tucked in the bushes awaiting their turn at the bird feeders, like this female cardinal. When I arrived, I met a fellow digiscoper out in the parking lot, he was leaving as I was arriving. He showed me photos of a sharp-shinned hawk he had just photographed perched near the feeding station. I was bummed that I had missed that, but a cardinal is still a very cool sight in the snow.

The birds were still very wary about coming to the feeder. That hawk must have been fresh in their minds. The cardinals would come to the feeder, but the slightest chip note would send them flying back to the shrubs.

I found one downy woodpecker with a band on his foot (its male, they way the head is turned, you cannot see the red spot on the back of his head).

I’ve been trying to get better photos of tree sparrows. This little one cracked me up with its snow mustache over his bill. As I was following this bird around with my scope, I noticed a rusty brown bird about twice his size. I looked it up and it flew to the brush.

Holy crap! Is that what I think it is? Is this a fox sparrow? The upside about finding this bird at this point (besides that I wasn’t expecting it) was that I got so focused on the bird, I no longer paid attention to how cold I was. Whoot. Even better, I am super-duper sore right now, I signed up for yoga again and am in severe pain after the first class. The last time I took yoga, I remember having such intense pain for three days after the first class. I thought it was just exaggerated in my memory. No, it wasn’t an exaggeration…I’m in pain in places I didn’t know could feel pain. At least this time I won’t make the mistake of having Non Birding Bill rub Icy Hot all over my entire body to ease the sore muscles. That wasn’t pretty. Icy and hot all over, I couldn’t get comfortable for hours–take my advice: only use Icy Hot on one body part at a time.

Anyhoo, back to the fox sparrow. At first the fox sparrow started feeding kind of like a chickadee: it would fly out under the feeders, grab at a seed and then fly back into the brush. I usually only see this species during migration when there are all kinds of dry leaves and they do that characteristic kicking with their feet, but this bird wasn’t doing that in the snow.

I love looking at sparrows head on (it doesn’t have to be fox sparrows, it can be any sparrow). They have such great masks. It was interesting to see how the rusty browns on this bird just popped out of the brush, especially since it was surrounded by the more muted colors of juncos and tree sparrows. At times, this bird was about as bright as a cardinal. Right after I got this photo, my batteries died in my camera and I put in my spares. As I put the camera back up to my spotting scope, the sparrow was gone and I suddenly heard a loud flutter of wings, all the downy and hairy woodpeckers gave sharp “cheeps” and their wings flapped with such intensity, you could hear each distinctive flap. I looked over to the feeders, they were bare. I thought that the sharp-shinned hawk must have returned and I glanced around:

There it is in the top of the tree. Note where my scope is in relation to the hawk. I didn’t move the scope from here for the photos–just keep that in mind for the next two photos. Let’s look at it through the scope:

It was a haggard bird and I wondered if it was the same sharp-shinned hawk that hunted the feeders here last winter?

When I took the first photo and my camera focused, the hawk turned and looked right at it. There is not beeping sound on my camera, this was just the sound of the lens adjusting. I know harriers have a great sense of hearing…I wonder what the stats are on the sharp-shinned hawk sense of hearing? It was at about this point that the batteries on my camera totally died and I had to go back to the car, which was good because my fingers were numb. I don’t know if the sharpie ended up getting any of the birds, it was still perched in the tree when I left.

UPDATE: Check out fellow MN Blogger EcoBirder, he has photos on Dec 13 and Dec 29 at the same spot of an adult sharpie–perhaps the same bird?

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Someone asked in the comments what the red-breasted nuthatch is eating in the feeder. This is a mesh feeder full of mixed nuts: peanuts, Brazil nuts, almonds, cashews, pistashios, and the odd filbert. Birds love this stuff. If you can mount your feeders in such a way that squirrels can’t get to them and you don’t have too many starlings, birds love this stuff. It’s fun to watch red-bellied woodpeckers fly off with the Brazil nuts and to watch titmice fly away with an almond and chip it apart.

The latest installment of I and the Bird is up at WildBird on the Fly. She has managed to work in her love of cars as a theme–quite creative!

I’m just looking over my schedule for early 2008 and it is action packed! One of my favorite emails that I’ve gotten all year was from Swarovski asking if I would mind if they sent me to Florida in January for a digiscoping workshop…hmmm, let me think about that–OKAY!!! Two days after I get back from that, I’m off to Atlanta for Bird Watch America to see the latest in bird items that could be showing up at a wild birds specialty store near you.

On January 20, 2008 I’m doing an All About Owls program for The Raptor Center using live owls and PowerPoint to talk about Minnesota’s diversity of owls. If you want to attend that, I would recommend signing up. Some years it does sell out and we’ve had to turn people away who just show up at the door.

On February 2, I’m co-leading a trip with Stan Tekiela to go to northern Minnesota to see hawk owls, pine grosbeaks, common redpolls, black-backed woodpeckers, or anything else being reported. Call 952-949-8479 to sign up.

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The chickadee flies up to the suet log and demands a share of the peanut butter suet.

The downy woodpecker accepts and doesn’t fend off a rival for the fat. Must be having an off day.

In the December 18, 2007 Home and Garden Section of the Star Tribune, Minnesota birder Jim Williams wrote an article on chickadees and how they survive the winter. Today, December 26, 2007 TV hunting personality Ron Schara had a front page article in the Star Tribune on chickadees and how they survive the winter. Either the Star Tribune editor was ready for a Christmas break or really loves chickadees. I bet it’s the latter!

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One of the great things about living in a state that gets a lot of snow is that your plans change. It’s not a big deal, it happens, you just have to make adjustments. Non Birding Bill got off work last Friday and we thought we would stop out at Mr. Neil’s on Saturday, head home Sunday, do our Christmas Eve rituals on Monday, and celebrate Christmas Tuesday. Well, dusty snow and strong winds arrived which made visibility poor and driving unsafe so we ended up staying at Mr. Neil’s until Christmas eve. We brought Cinnamon with us just in case we did get stuck at the house and it was a good thing. We can leave our cockatiel alone with a larder of food, he seems to know how to ear sensibly. Cinnamon will just vacuum up whatever is set in front of her and cannot be left alone. She was having a great time in the carpeted guest room at Mr. Neil’s. Each morning she woke us up with all her popcorn impressions (most rabbit owners call this binkies, but I just can’t).

I tried digiscoping outside, but the weather was just too cold and the wind too strong that my rechargeable batteries barely lasted five minutes in my camera. So, I tried rearranging feeders to get photos from the kitchen window and the photos didn’t turn out half bad like this one of a red-breasted nuthatch on the mixed nut feeder. The birds activity was as intense during the storm, but the next morning when the wind had subsided, the birds were out in full force.

I’m still seeing some of the birds we banded last fall. Check out the chickadee perched on the bittersweet on the right–it has a little silver band on its foot. W00t! Christmas Eve morning was just about as perfect as it could get. Standing at the window in my pajamas taking photos of birds in perfect light, sipping a warm cup of coffee, trading barbs with Non Birding Bill, while periodically, Mr. Neil would come in and say something inaccurate about birds.

It seemed that every bird that showed up to the stump just looked perfect and cute. How could they not with the snow, the pine branches and bittersweet berries.

Then the crows crashed the party. It looks like the crow on the left had a rough night or at least is the low perching guy at the nightly crow roost–note the poop on its left wing. That’s going to be fun to preen out later on!

Chirstmas Eve, we headed back to the Twin Cities. We picked up a few last minute items for our dinner the next day and then we headed out to our tradition of watching the last minute shoppers at the Mall of America. I always get a kick out of the restaurant Tucci Benucch, it has “patio seating” which means you can have a cafe table out in the hallways of the mall to watch traffic. We stationed ourselves, had a light lunch and commenced to people watching. We did run into some friends at the MOA and I was going to post the photos, but then realized I may get them in trouble for shopping last minute and decided against it.

We stopped at Urban Outfitters to see if they had Disapproving Rabbits and we found it there. It was very exciting to see our book at your one stop pop culture shop. We also stopped at Barnes and Noble, and they were sold out. W00t! The airport is on our way home and we took a quick drive on Cargo Road to see if we could see the snowy owl. We did, and we almost missed it. It was perched WAY up high on some type of metal tower–I have no idea what it’s used for, but I never think of looking for those birds so high up since they come from the tundra and the snowies are used to low terrain, but it was cool way to wind our day.

On Christmas day we got the beautiful snow that you would see in Hollywood movies. It’s still snowing this morning. It was a great day. One of the highlights was getting the goshawk hat that I blogged about (it’s even pretties in real life than in the photo) and my mother-in-law made me a squirrel calendar–all with photos she took herself squirrels in her yard. She was very proud and said with a maniacal giggle, “I know how much you love those squirrels!”

We had our friend Ari over who is a local comedian and is Jewish. NBB and Ari have such a similar sense of humor and interests, they could be brothers. They were in the middle of conversation when one of them mentioned the Snoopy Snow Cone machine and without missing a beat, both started singing the song from the commercial as if well rehearsed though neither had probably sang it aloud since 1983. At one point Ari and NBB started writing a Hanukkah special that they could perform and as Christmas music played in the background and I looked out the window watching the fluffy snow while sipping cocoa, I realized that this was one of our weirder Christmases…I was loving every minute of it. Later, when the sun set, NBB and I took a stroll around our neighborhood in the dark. Traffic was gone, the snow was still falling and collecting around everyone’s outdoor lights. The muted glow of the lights and the soft sound of snow kind of made me feel like we were the last people on the planet and it was magical. I felt grateful for everything that we have and have experienced in this life and look forward to whatever is coming on the horizon.

And now Minneapolis has declared yet another Snow Emergency and we need to go move our car. More later.

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Well, our plans got a little derailed today as this puffed up blue jay in the snow hints at.

We got some unexpected snow. Some of the snow was expected, but where exactly it fell and how much was not. We knew some snow was coming but there wasn’t supposed be too much falling where we live. We went out to Mr. Neil’s to take some photos (I was hoping to see some common redpolls, a few have been reported around the Twin Cities, so I figured it was a matter of time before some would show up at Mr. Neil’s.) and spread some Christmas cheer…then the wind picked up and dusty snow fell and then I received an email note from the City of Minneapolis that a Snow Emergency has been declared so we have decided to stay at Mr. Neil’s and avoid the treacherous roads. It’s not so bad being here, apart from Mr. Neil trying to get Non Birding Bill and me to drink some kind of liquid fungus he’s been growing. But on the upside, when my toes get frozen, I can use the sauna.

The wind has been particularly nasty. It’s already about 10 degrees, but the wind makes it feel well below zero. Above, this red-bellied woodpecker was trying to position himself in the least windy area around the suet log. I went out to artfully arrange some bittersweet berries and pine boughs. In part to create an artistic back drop for photos, but to also help create a wind break for the birds while they feed.

The feeding stations were not as active as usual. No squirrels showed up, I’m sure they were hunkered for the day, sleeping in their nests. The birds, like the tufted titmouse in the above photo stayed hunkered only moved if hunger absolutely drove them down.

Alas, the wind was so bitter, that not even an extra layer of clothing or my hand warmers could keep me comfortable. The hand warmers have been helpful in the past with keeping my rechargeable batteries going in my camera. But today, they camera kept freezing up. I decided to give up the ghost since all my batteries were failing, my fingers were going numb, and no matter what direction I was standing in–snow insisted on pelting my cheeks.

When I got into the house, I looked out the kitchen window and lo and behold, one common redpoll was among the goldfinches. The feeder is so close to the window that I had tough time getting it in focus. I got as far back as I could and at this point the scope started fogging up after having been in the cold for so long. I managed one photo and then finally my batteries went kaput for good and I hit the sauna.

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

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

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

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My schedule has been nuts this December and I haven’t had a chance to go to Friday banding at Carpenter Nature Center. This morning I had to miss it because I had a tv segment. I just came home and am going through email when I found the report of what they got this morning:

This photo was taken by Dennis Donath–a shrike, they got a northern shrike and I missed it! Stupid tv segment! It even has fresh blood around its bill from having killed something (that’s one of the reasons shrikes aren’t raptors–they don’t kill with their feet, they kill with the bill).

Pain, withdrawl, gnashing of teeth, lots and lots of whining…

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I had some errands to run yesterday. I needed to pick up some seed for Mr. Neil’s house and I needed some seed to take onto Showcase Minnesota with me. I went to Cardinal Corner in Newport and decided to take a quick trip over to Point Douglas Park to see if I could find a Barrow’s goldeneye. Two had been reported in that area mixed in with some large flocks of common goldeneye, bouncing between the Minnesota and the Wisconsin side of the river. Barrow’s is an unusual bird for Minnesota and you can see some great comparisons of the two species over at Bill Schmoker’s site.

There were oodles of common goldeneye and some trumpeter swans. Note the swan above on the left that is leaning forward? It was trying to break up some of the ice to get through to the other side. It was interest to watch the swan rock back and forth and push its way through.

There were some other species mixed in with the common goldeneye, including redheads and a canvasback (and the ever present Canada geese). I wasn’t really seeing anything that looked like a Barrow’s goldeneye. Local birder Tom Bell said that you watch for a black thumb mark on the side of the bird. I wasn’t really trying that hard either. I don’t know, we seem to have Barrow’s goldeneye reported every year in Minnesota, but it’s not a bird that I try for very hard. So, I just decided to focus on some digiscoping and see what kinds of shots I could get. It was warm(ish) day in the 30s, there was sun and I was just happy to be out on a day when we have only eight hours of daylight.

When I was going through my images on iPhoto I noticed this photo. There is a merganser, but check out the duck in the top center of the photo. Here’s a zoom in:

There’s a thumb! It’s a Barrow’s goldeneye! I haven’t seen one before and I don’t know if I’ll count this one. I didn’t realize I was seeing it while I was there but found I had it when I came home. However, if this was a bird I didn’t know but was trying to id and needed to take the image home to consult some field guides, I would. If you see a bird out in the wild but didn’t know it was there, can you count it? I shall ponder this…

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This past June, I blogged about a pigeon fancier club that was trapping and killing native raptors to protect introduced pet birds aka roller pigeons. I thought it was interesting that the club’s official statement admitted the was illegal and didn’t condone it, but did feel that they were entitled to get rid of hawks for killing their valuable pigeons–much the same way farmers protect their livestock.

Well, Birder’s World blog recently blogged about it and had some of the actual photos from the investigation–including a photo of the live trap with a bait pigeon and freshly trapped (live) Cooper’s hawk–that hawk survived, although many did not.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again–this is unreasonable. If you have a prey species as a pet and then let it loose in the wild where there are naturally occurring predators and then get upset when the pet gets eaten is unreasonable. If I let my pet rabbit Cinnamon loose along the Mississippi River near Red Wing, Minnesota where there are a bunch of bald eagles, and then she got eaten–that would be my fault. She’s been raised as a pet and not to survive in the wild. Just because I have her and love to watch her run does not mean that I have the right to let her run where ever I want and expect nothing bad to happen.

Roller pigeons are not part of our natural ecosystem. And even if decades ago you could fly these birds without hawks taking them–think about the history. We didn’t have that many hawks because of pesticides and wanton shooting decades ago. Times change and environments change. Native wildlife puts up with enough trying to learn to live with us. We don’t need to take native predators out of the skies because someone insists on flying their non native pet and not want to deal with the consequences.

These pigeon fanciers really should consider switching to falconry, you could fly those birds and not have to worry as much about them being eaten and you still get to watch some cool flying action. Although, last time I put that in the blog, some pigeon fanciers sent me nasty emails telling me (with some creative profanity woven in), “How dare you call yourself a bird lover with an attitude like that! Blah blah blah.” I love birds–I even enjoy pigeons, I just want people to take responsibility for their pets.

And if you need something cleansing after reading this, here’s the reason why Cinnamon disapproves so much–I make her dress like an elf and dance with birds (it may take a minute for the video to load).

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