I love this little male kestrel snacking on a small rodent it plucked from a field in Utah. I got its photo at the same place I had my unexpected weasel encounter called Farmington Bay WMA. One of the coolest features about this wildlife management area is the homemade great blue heron rookery that is [ Read More ]
Arthur posted a link to a cool video from NOVA about cowbirds and nest parasitism in my comments section–check it out! It’s a cool video for several reasons–capturing cowbird “mafia behavior,” making nest boxes for prothonotary warblers out of juice cartons and a birder named “Bubba.” Also, here’s a link to a blog entry with [ Read More ]
A question came in to my blog in the last few days and someone asked if she should pull a cowbird egg from a nest. This is an interesting question. For people not familiar with brown-headed cowbirds, they are nest parasites. A female cowbird will lay her egg in another bird’s nest. Often the adult [ Read More ]
Some of my work this spring has taken me to southwestern Minnesota and I was so excited to see that one of the places I have always wanted to visit in this beautiful state was close by. It’s called Jeffers Petroglyphs Historic Site and it’s in Comfrey, Minnesota. The visitor center itself does not open [ Read More ]
I love living in the Twin Cities. As I’m typing this, I just heard a radio commercial for the MN DNR about taking kids to enjoy the outdoors in our lovely state and one of the lines was: “Today, my daughter learned that the call of the warbler is more powerful than the call of [ Read More ]
Hello all, NBB here. Shaz is back from two weeks of travel, her brain so full of birding that I’ve had to pull her off the ledge at least twice, her mouth stuffed with string, twigs, and animal fur. A typical Saturday night ’round here, then. Sharon’s asked me to blog for her—worried that you [ Read More ]
I caught this interesting interaction between a Cooper’s hawk and crow. I had noticed the crow going back and forth throughout the day and figured it had a nest nearby and was bringing back food. Later, I heard red-winged blackbirds giving their aerial predator call and looked up. The crow was chasing a Cooper’s hawk. [ Read More ]
Looking for some cool birding opportunities for a vacation? How about volunteering for two weeks in Maui (that’s right, go to Hawaii) for 2 weeks and help researchers with endangered birds: MAUI RARE BIRD SEARCH VOLUNTEERS (4) wanted for two weeks, 13-24 Sep 2010, to conduct transect searches for Maui Parrotbill, and other endangered forest [ Read More ]
If you live in the eastern portion of the US and have never seen a magpie–Salt Lake City is the place for you. Those birds are all over the place–they’re like crows (not just in family but in commonality). We have a remnant population up in northern Minnesota but not the sort of numbers you [ Read More ]
Lili sent me this link from the BBC about using Diagnostic Radioentomology to get a 3-D view of your beehives without opening it up. The article states that you can even track individual bees and the queen herself…this takes some of the fun out of beekeeping but if you want to avoid crushing your queen [ Read More ]
