Then my brain kicked me, “DISTRESSED WOODPECKER SOUND! RAPTOR! ALL HANDS ON DECK!”

Then it sunk in–”Holy cow, look out the window, stupid!”  I turned to look out the window and saw a small raptor gliding away with a red-bellied woodpecker.  I figured the raptor was most likely a male Cooper’s hawk or a female sharp-shinned hawk–both a fairly regular bird in Mr. Neil’s yard, especially during migration.  I dashed to the front room and was shocked to see…

…a small dark falcon killing a large woodpecker.  “Holy crap! It’s a merlin,” I shouted…well, I’m sure there was more profanity than that but you get the idea.  Falcons have a notch in their bill that they use to sever the spine from the head and kill prey fairly quickly.  The merlin went in for a bite, but she had to go in for a second to really put the woodpecker out.  While she did that, I scrambled off for my digiscoping equipment.

Look at that face!  She’s so adorable–Nature’s Perfect Killing Machine! You can even make out those little malar stripes under each eye that all falcons have! I digiscoped this photo of her after she killed the woodpecker. It’s not as in focus as I would like, but I was shooting through an old farmhouse window and my scope picks up imperfections in window glass.  I didn’t want to open the window because this small falcon had worked hard for her kill and I didn’t want to risk flushing her off her food.  This is the first time I’ve seen a merlin in Mr. Neil’s yard.  This bird is possible for the area, but mostly as a migrant.  If she was on a long journey to migrate south, she needed a good hearty meal and my need to get a perfectly in focus shot was not as important as her need to get nourishment.

She was fairly close to the driveway with her kill and I noticed a car coming down.  She mantled a bit over her kill but didn’t fly away from it.  I heard voices and noted that Non Birding Bill, Mr. Neil and the newly arrived Steve Manfred hadn’t followed me into the front room to watch the merlin.  I shouted, “Hey, you guys really need to come see this, this is a really cool bird!”  Again, the “really” in the previous sentence was most likely profanity.  They soon followed and had to concede a merlin with a red-belly was pretty badass.  Cameras started clicking and both Neil and I got photos.  I immediately called this bird a “she” and Neil asked why.  First, in raptors females are larger than males. Based on this bird taking out a red-bellied woodpecker I knew she was female.  Now, merlins are one of the few raptor species where you can tell male from female apart based on plumage.  Females are brown on back and males are blue:

These are a couple of males that we trapped up at Frank Taylor’s banding station in Duluth.  See the blue on the wing feathers?  That’s male.  This gets tricky in young birds.  Merlins hatched this year will be brown on back–both male and female.  That’s where size comes in handy.

Here’s a shot that Mr. Neil took of the merlin.  Note how all the feathers on the back are uniform?  They all look like they grew in at the same time–that’s something you would only see in a bird hatched this year.  Adults would still have some molting going on and you’d see worn, older feathers mixed in that would be a slightly different color.  The tail has some light colored bands through it.  The look tawny or buff.  If this were a male, those bands would look gray.  Again, females are larger than males and this small falcon took out a red-bellied woodpecker–it’s large, she’s female.

This is another shot Mr. Neil got with his camera. I had to chuckle because the woodpecker looks almost “cartoon dead.”  See the tongue hanging out of the beak?  The only thing missing is the little “X” over the eye.  Note the size of the red-bellied woodpecker next to the merlin–I’ve had both in hand and always thought of them to be similar in size.  I decided to do a little digging on the Internet on merlin size vs red-bellied woodpecker size.

According to Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds red-bellied woodpeckers are about 9.4 inches long, have a wingspan of 13 – 16.5 inches and weigh about 3 oz.

Merlins are 9.4 – 11.8 inches in length, have a wingspan of 20.9–26.8 inches and weigh 5.6 – 8.5 oz.  Figure that the smaller numbers are males and the larger numbers are females.

So according to Cornell, a male merlin could be about as long as a red-bellied woodpecker.  This is another photo taken by Mr. Neil from the second level of his house.  Here you can see that the merlin is larger than the woodpecker, again identifying her as female.  What was interesting was that most of the birds left her alone.  There was some mobbing noise from a hairy woodpecker and goldfinches, but no blue jays came in to scold. A few crows did and the merlin did not like that at all.

She stopped eating and watched them.  The crows didn’t caw like crazy at her like they would an owl or larger hawk. They cawed but not as frantic, as if not wanting to provoke her but let each other know, hey Nature’s Perfect Killing Machine Down here.  I’ve seen merlins chase the heck out crows and even heard of accounts of merlins killing crows to take over a nest site.  They will go for something larger than they are and if any small raptor is capable of getting the job done, it’s a merlin.  She watched them for several minutes and then to my surprise, took off with the woodpecker in her talons and dove at the crows.  I watched her bank to some trees and tried to go out to follow where she landed to eat but lost her completely. 

I had hoped if I found her that I could see the woodpecker carcass she finished eating to see if the woodpecker was banded.  Sometimes friends of mine come out to band birds here and have ringed a few red-bellies.  It would have been to fun to have that as a banding record.  If the woodpecker was banded we would had an idea of her age and a notation of the really interesting way to die.  I mean, getting killed by a merlin is one of the coolest ways to go.  As I was editing photos for this blog entry, something caught my eye:

In one very crappy photo that I took, I noticed that the merlin was banded.  Noooooooooooo!  Why didn’t I get more photos of her foot to id the band number? BLARG!  Based on where Mr. Neil lives this is most likely a bird banded at Hawk Ridge this fall.  She was hatched this year so there are only so many raptor banding stations north of here.  There is a chance that my buddy Frank Taylor banded her, but I’m not sure if he’s had a merlin in the nets yet this year.  Most likely a first year female banded on her migration south.  Without the number we will never know for sure but I’m curious of my buddy Frank Taylor or Hawk Ridge has banded any hatch year merlins because chances are good, she is one of their birds.

Man I love unexpected merlins but to have one make such an interesting kill and be banded just really made my Thursday.

But many people wonder about those early spring migrants and how it will affect them? Over the weekend, my buddy Clay Taylor and I were at the National Eagle Center and we tallied all sorts of early spring migrants–even tree swallows.  What do insect eating birds do when they get back early and have to contend with several inches of snow? Yesterday, Michael Bates sent me a photo of a woodcock he found in his yard during our Minnesota snow storm.

So, what do early insect eating migrants do when they come back early? They adapt. Woodcocks eat mainly earthworms, but according to Birds of North America Online the will eat some vegetation. Same with tree swallows, they will eat berries if there are no flying insects to feed on. That’s all part of the gamble of coming back early to get the prime territory, if you can find something to keep you going for a few days, you’ll get the best territory. Not all bird make this, it’s part of what makes migration so fascinating.

Here are some Canada geese who found a puddle of open water amid the snow at Lilydale Park in St. Paul, Mn.  These were part of a flock that included about five neck banded geese. All of the numbers were sequential, so I wonder if this is a family group banded last summer that’s migrating together. I turned in the band numbers to the Bird Banding Lab and I’m curious to find out where these birds were banded.

Remember this goose? This is a banded Canada goose that I saw at the confluence of the St. Croix River and the Mississippi River in December of 2009.  I submitted the record with a note expressing concern about the tightness of the collar on the goose.  It’s been over a year and I haven’t heard a thing. I found a page about goose color bands with some interesting info just based on the color of the neck bands and the characters on it:

“Orange and Blue collars are widely used in the Mississippi Flyway. These collars were part of an extensive effort to track the populations and movements of Canada Geese. Orange collars were used in the Canadian portion of the Mississippi Flyway, and Blue collars were used in the US portion of the Mississippi Flyway.”

So, sounds as if this goose is also a Mississippi Flyway bird.  Then, I got an interesting email last week from Erik Collins:

“I was birding at Pt. Douglas Park today and saw a Canada Goose with a blue neck collar that had “617A” on it.  I got home and searched online for information about blue collars on geese.  This link from your site came up.

The goose you photographed with the super-tight collar in December of 2009 was the same one I saw today!  Thankfully, it looked a lot more comfortable.

Thought you would find this interesting.”

I found it very interesting that someone else saw the goose over a year later alive and well and the collar looking comfortable.  Must have been extremely cold that day and the goose’s neck feathers were super fluffed.

I resubmitted the sighting a second time with a note saying that as someone who has volunteered with bird banding projects, I understand that it can take awhile to turn in banding entries, but over a year is a bit much.  When I received my acknowledgment of the color band submissions from the BBL, I noticed this in the email:

“We cannot predict or control the nature of the response you will get from the bander, although we do make them aware that color marking authorizations carry with them an obligation to respond to the public. Many color marking projects are designed to study only local movements, and the bander may not be interested in reports from afar.”

That’s such BS.  If you put a collar on a bird (so bright that even non birders notice) you should have a system in place so if the goose goes where you don’t expect you can at least send out some basic info in an email.  I’m not expecting a long response, but I would like to know what state this bird was banded in and what year.  It would be nice to know that bare bones info of how old this bird is and where it has been.

By not responding to neck band reports, a researcher could discourage people from ever turning in any band that they find–what’s the point if no one responds? That certainly is not helpful to fellow bird banders.  Also, a lot of people who don’t understand banding do not like it and think it’s cruel.  Not responding to banding reports only reinforces that idea.

I don’t see what’s so hard about turning in the date and place of where you banded a bird so the BBL can at least let the person submitting the band number know the basic info.  Heck, just create a document with your study’s theory and copy and paste when you get a neck report.

At any rate, I’m glad the blue neck band hasn’t interfered with the bird’s survival and we at least know it’s still a year older.

That’s right.  According to bird banding records, a Laysan albatross on the Midway Atoll is now officially the oldest living (and breeding birds) in the wild!  She’s at least 60, but most likely older than that, since she was already breeding when she was initially banded.  According to the press release from USGS:

“A Laysan albatross named Wisdom, is at least 60 years old and was spotted in February 2011 raising a chick at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the Pacific Islands. The bird has sported and worn out 5 bird bands since she was first banded by U.S. Geological Survey scientist Chandler Robbins in 1956 as she incubated an egg. Robbins estimated Wisdom to be at least 5 years old then since this is the earliest age at which these birds breed, though they more typically breed at 8 or 9 after an involved courtship lasting several years. This means, of course, that Wisdom is more likely to be in her early sixties.”

When you think about all the hazards that face albatross from ingesting plastic and lead to the sheer amount of energy and distance they travel when not breeding, this is amazing.  Here’s the current list of the top ten longevity records according to bird banding studies.  Interesting to note the the oldest birds tend to be fish eaters.

According to a story in The New York Times blog in the last week a red-tailed hawk was picked up in New York and eventually made its way to The Raptor Trust.  Turns out that the hawk is over 27 years old!  I was curious if this was the oldest wild red-tailed hawk recovered in the wild…it’s not.  According to the Bird Banding Lab the oldest known wild red-tailed hawk was 29 years and 9 months old.  Interesting was that this bird was also recovered in New York.

Since it’s now officially winter, it’s getting to be golden eagle season along the Upper Mississippi River.  The National Eagle Center in Wabasha, MN will hold its annual Winter Golden Eagle Survey on January 15, 2011.  The above photo is one that I took during the survey last winter. I took a route near our beehives and ended up finding 3 golden eagles.  If you do not feel comfortable with your golden eagle vs immature bald eagle id skills, the National Eagle Center offers seminars to teach you how.  These are helpful because they show the habitat you are more likely to find a golden eagle than you would an immature bald eagle.  The next seminar is on January 8.  If you are in the area, you should sing up.  It’s beautiful country in the winter and at the very least, you’ll see lots of bald eagles, if not a few golden eagles.

Some of my family from Indiana came up for a visit last week and got a whirlwind tour of the hives and a trip to Duluth.  On Friday, we stopped at Hawk Ridge to walk the trails (LOVE the Summit Trail) and when we arrived, I saw someone walking down from the banding station with a bird in a holder, ready for release.  I glanced at the feet and tail and said, “Is that what I think it is?”

Debbie Waters, the naturalist for the Ridge said, “Yep.”

My mom and sisters asked what it was and I said, “What do you think it is?”  They’ve been to Frank Taylor’s banding station a few times and they do a bit of birding themselves.  They all speculated goshawk and they were correct.  We watched the program and someone had adopted this goshawk for the chance to release it.  I got a photo and love how her arms mimics the bird’s wings.

I just showed this photo to NBB and said, “Isn’t this cool.”

He looked over from his computer, pointed to the lady and said, “FAME!”

Which I guess means the immature goshawk in this photo is now lighting the sky like a flame.

Fame.

I love tufted titmice–the general lack of them in the Twin Cities metro area is what keeps it from being the perfect place to live.  It could be argued that before beekeeping, I was using my friendship with Mr. Neil for a titmouse fix.  But as much as I love titmice, I kind of dread them in the bird banding nets–those tiny feet so well adapted for clinging upside down on a branch, cling tightly to a wad of mist net.  As you try to pry open those clamped toes to untangle them from the nets, they wail on your fingers with that hard beak–aiming for cuticles and knuckles.  I don’t blame them, how are they to know that we are simply checking their weight, feather condition and attaching a small band. For all they know, we are no better than a sharp-shinned hawk about to eat them and they aren’t going down without a fight.

Their call is very interesting too.  Up close, their angry whistles have an almost mechanical buzz beneath it.  It’s hard to describe.  I tried to get a video of Roger getting nailed by the titmouse as he was getting photos of its molt pattern.  The titmouse’s calls even made Lola the dog bark–she was locked in her pen and desperately wanted to investigate the sound:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Titmice are the personification of attitude.

Twice a year I have some bird banding friends come out to Mr. Neil’s place to band the birds around the yard–once in spring and once in fall.  On Saturday my buddies Roger (aka MNBirdNerd) and Amber (aka AvianImages) set up mists nets to collect data and got a GREAT cross section of spring bird activity from migration to breeding.  I hoped we would get a ton of cool information since I’ve noticed birds like the above red-bellied woodpecker coming and flying away with large beakfuls of suet–do they have young in the nest?

They did get in quite a few woodpeckers.  Here’s a hairy woodpecker male (note the little bit of red on the head).  Roger gave him a blow and revealed a brood patch.  Both males and females incubate so both would need a bare patch of skin swollen with blood vessels to keep the eggs nice and warm during incubation.  I went to see what Cornell Lab of Ornithology had to say specifically about hairy woodpecker and in the breeding section that mentions, “onset of broodiness” and that “incubation begins in earnest with laying of last egg, but male roosts in nest cavity and de facto incubation may begin with pen-ultimate egg, thus accounting for hatching often occurring over a 2 day period and for some of the size differences noted in nestlings.”

I love that someone other than my husband uses the word “pen-ultimate”to say that because the male sleeps in the nest cavity at night, incubation could start when the second to last egg is laid by the female.

For the past few springs we’ve had a couple of pine warblers come in to the feeders when the weather is cold and insects are not out in full force.  Warblers generally are not feeder birds, this brightly colored group of birds primarily eats insects–except for the pine warbler.  During a cold, wet spell like we are having right now in the Twin Cities you can find orioles, catbirds, yellow-rumped warblers, scarlet tanagers coming to suet feeders as an alternate source of protein.  Above is a pine warbler eating some no-melt peanut suet.  What makes the pine warbler a little different from other warblers is that they are known to eat seeds and sometimes, I see pine warblers eating sunflower seeds out of the shell as well as suet.

I think the rather disgruntled look on the face of this male pine warbler about says it all.  While we banded this bird, a second pine warbler came to the feeder.  It looked more like the bird in the photo above this–either a female or second year male.  I suspect that pine warblers are nesting nearby  since they sing well into June but it’s hard to say since they quit coming to feeders so I don’t see them feeding young (and I’ve yet to find the nest).

There was a huge brush pile that was chock full of sparrows and they set the nets near that and got a few white-throated sparrows.  When Roger blew on their breasts, he was watching for fat rather than brood patches.  These sparrows are still heading north and birds that showed yellow globs of fat just under their skin were loading up to travel further north.

The number of rose-breasted grosbeaks at the feeders have been increasing exponentially this week.  About seven days earlier, I heard one, then three days later, three males were at the feeder and by our banding day, I would say that we had five males jockeying for position on the feeder–and then one lone female.  Males typically arrive first to set up territory, so it was fun to see that in action.  We determined this bird was hatched last year, he had a few brown patches of juvenile plumage that had not molted out yet–not unlike some of the young males I saw in Panama this past February.  I wondered if the grosbeaks who arrived early on territory in sleet and cold temps and think, “I left Central America for this?”

Keep your eyes open at the feeders and in the woods.  Migration is in full swing, we have quite a few birds just flying and a few more who have yet to arrive.  With this wet weather, some birds will look for fast food like  bird feeders and you might be surprised by what you find.

We had the usual Minnesota back hand weather-wise.  A snow free March and April meant that the first weekend in May was going to be cold, cloudy and involve snow and sleet.  Because of the wet and an mud on the trails, I put on a pair of spare Wellingtons at the house–the boots were a couple sizes too big but I compensated with really thick socks.  However, at one point during a net check, my foot went one way, my right knee the other which was followed by my collapse and intense pain.  It felt very similar to when I dislocated my knee as a teenager.  But I was able to stand up and limp–which I was not able to do when I dislocated my knee.

NBB drove me to Urgent Care where ironically I was banded, weighed and measured (and had a few unpleasant things done to my knee).  NBB said, “Ha!  Now you know what it’s like for the birds when you band them.”  They made a note of higher blood pressure and assured me that was normal for a painful knee injury.  The spike in pressure wasn’t about the pain but more like, “Holy Crap, I fly to Utah on Thursday for the Great Salt Lake Bird Festival on top of how much I love gallavanting in the woods for warblers in spring on top of my national park service duties.  I can’t be injured now!”

Fortunately, it appears to only be a sprain and not too severe of an injury and I’m supposed to stay off it and ice it for as long as possible.  NBB is doing a great job of forcing me to take it easy.  I was actually back to the banding in about an hour and didn’t miss too much.  Lorraine got the above photo of me taking photos of Amber and Roger removing a rose-breasted grosbeak and downy woodpecker from the nets.

Here is a none too pleased rose-breasted grosbeak.

The great thing about the modern age is that I put in a call to my hotel in Utah securing a ground floor room, made arrangements to get some mobility assistance in the airport and gave the festival a heads up to my limited mobility.  But on the upside, I’m doing a digiscoping workshop, Birds and Beers and I’m Friday night’s guest speaker–all of those aren’t too strenuous.

I’m excited about speaking.  The festival keynote had to step down at the last minute for health reasons, so Bill Fennimore who was Friday’s speaker is filling in for her on Saturday and I’m filling in for him on Friday night.  I’m going to do my Kazakhstan Program: An Adventure in Birds and Bathrooms.  Utah is one of my favorite birding states, I’m so grateful that my injury may slow me down but not stop me from enjoying this beautiful area.

In the meantime, this business of being forced to sit in one spot for several hours will be a good opportunity to type up some birding app reviews and a book review.  I’m reading an AMAZING feather book–best bird book to come out this year.

After doing a bit of birding this spring, I was heading home when what looked like a distant sandhill crane caught my attention.  I pulled over to the side of the road and grabbed my Swarovskis…only to find a wood tick waiting for me right on the eye cup…ewwww! Ticks, the down side of the outdoors.

As I tried to get my  binos in a better position for a photo, the tick obligingly posed.  It put its little feelers out as if it were on a blade of grass, waiting for an unsuspecting mammal like myself to brush past so it could latch on and crawl around and find purchase on a tender fleshy area.  After I took the above pic, I gave the little tick a flick and away it went.  My skin will not be impaled by your hypostome this day, you crazy little arachnid.

Last week I joined Mark Martell to aid in his quest to put more satellite transmitters on golden eagles in conjunction with the National Eagle Center in Wabasha.  It was a lovely drive down along the Mississippi, the hoar frost was thick on the trees and glittered in the sun.  He already has one on Golden Eagle 42, but one goldens movements do not tell us the whole story behind that wintering population of goldens along the Mississippi River near Wabasha, MN.

But trapping goldens is tricky business, the birds are cagey and lots of predators like the same bait as the target eagles. But still, watching a goat prairie for a day without actually trapping a golden eagle, beats any day behind a desk in my book.  I’d go into more detail, but I wrote up an article for Outdoor News which should be coming out in the next week or two.  Rob Drieslein who edits Outdoor News is also one of the hosts of KTLK Outdoors.  He asked me to call in to the show this Sunday around 5:15pm and talk some golden eagles.

Mark did help a fellow researcher named Brett Mandernack attach a transmitter to a bald eagle.  This was one bruiser of an eagle!  When she was trapped, she weighed just under 14 pounds!  We assume she is female because females are larger than males, so at that weight, it’s a good guess this is a girl. She was part of a different research program to see where eagles that winter along the Mississippi go for their breeding territory.  I would guess a girl this size nests in Alaska but who knows what the transmitter will tell?

The forceps in the above photo are holding together the straps before Mark sews them together. They have to make sure the straps are snug enough to not fall loose and inhibit the eagle’s movements but also loose enough to accommodate a bird’s fluctuating weight.  A hood is placed over the eagle’s head to help keep her calm and to also allow Mark to work in peace without the eagle waving her hooked beak around near chest. It helps the process go along faster and safer for the eagle.

Check out those talons! Speaking of eagles, March is a great time to visit the National Eagle Center.  March is their Soar with the Eagles month and every weekend they have special events planned and plenty of wild and display birds to be seen.  I’ll be there this Saturday giving a digiscoping program at noon.  It’s free and much our time will be spent on the lovely photo subjects around the center.  Even if you can’t make this weekend, be sure to visit this month if you can.