I’m still doing some of my bird surveys. And up until this week I was having a cheery time in the field, but now it’s so incredibly silent. I can’t believe this is the same spot that was chock full of bobolinks not so long ago. It’s so strange to suddenly have a spot that was so vibrant with sound from breeding birds then switch to crickets then to chips of secretive migrating sparrows and then to nothing.  It makes those hour long point counts feel like a long time. And though the landscape is beautiful, it’s bleak and lonely…and not nearly as much fun to scramble under electric fences as the snow piles up.

We’ve even been able to squeeze in another aerial waterfowl survey this week. Half the Mississippi River is frozen and reminds me a bit of a lunar landscape.

It snowed lightly while we were flying and the ending result made it seem as though we were flying right through a holiday card.  I suggested the pilot attach a bright red nose to his plane and I’m not sure he found that nearly as funny as I did.

Swans fly like shimmering ghosts through the snow.  The numbers of swans has dropped on the Mississippi and I’m not entirely sure that a majority of them are tundras.  In early and mid November, I watched huge strings of swans fly over while I did my eagle surveys.  I could hear their calls well before I saw them and knew they were tundra swans heading to the staging area on the Mississippi.  Last week, I had smaller groups of swans using the exact same route, but listening to them, they were distinctly trumpeter swans.  It’s hard to tell the 2 apart in a plane at 100 miles an hour.

They are easy enough to count and id on the open water…

But much harder on ice and snow.  This was as we were doing a high pass to see if there was enough open water to warrant a fly by.  At fist, I though there are a few swans but not many…then I noticed how many of the whiter spots were moving on the ice, there were still hundreds of swans to be counted.

Canada geese are in large numbers, the biggest numbers I’ve seen all season.  Considering all the waste corn in farm fields and all the places that have open water along the river, it’s no surprise.

Here’s part of a flock of bald eagles, there are at least 29 in this photo.  I saw some very interesting behavior that I’ve not seen bald eagles do this week.  Common mergansers are in huge numbers on Lake Pepin, but I was able to get a shot of them.  Where ever we had huge flocks of mergansers, we had sizable flocks of bald eagles hunting them.  It was crazy, we would have 10 bald eagles actively trying to nail a mergansers over open water.  One spot was so active and dicey with mergansers and eagles, our pilot skillfully dodged around the flock.  Our pilot doesn’t like eagles to be directly over head because they can suddenly drop, through in a few thousand panicked ducks and barely freezing water and you have a dangerous situation.  It was cool to get a fleeting glimpse of the behavior.  Lake Pepin is so huge, it’s not something easily viewed from shore.  I’d be curious how successful this technique is and if any bald eagles ever end up drowning after catching a merganser on water.  I know eagles are capable of swimming some distance to shore by paddling wings, but I don’t think an eagle could make it from the center of Pepin.

Not as many ducks, but what a treat to get to view the bluffs in Minnesota and Wisconsin on either side of the Mississippi River.  This was our last flight for ducks.  I might do one ground survey next week, but that depends on if Pepin stays open.  To view our waterfowl numbers check here.  If this week’s numbers aren’t up yet, they will be up by Friday.

When I arrived at the park and walked to the river trail, I was sad to see that the nests built on the island right across from the park were all abandoned. However, I could clearly hear heron chick begging calls. Just north of the park is the Riverside Power Plant and there is another island in front of it that some herons were also using.  It’s harder to see that island but if you take the stairs all the way down to the river and have binoculars or a scope, you can see some nests.

I scanned the trees with my scope and found quite a few young heron chicks and a few adults flying in to feed them! Yay!  Now if the adults can get them squared away on foraging and migration before all the water freezes up, they’ll have as good a shot as any other young heron hatched this summer.  There’s still time.  This makes me happier than the herons from wildlife rehab being released–the adults attempted a second nesting on their own and it worked!

I also noticed something very interesting about the island with the active heron nests.  It’s hard to see in this photo, but there were campers on this island. So, of course, I digiscoped them.

Looks like they kayaked in and pitched a tent. Interesting because there’s not really any place you can legally camp on the Mississippi River through the Twin Cities.  Can’t say that I blame them for camping there, lovely spot in the urban Twin Cities landscape, but ew right below a heron rookery?  The stink from the droppings and the non stop heron begging would be enough to keep me away–regardless of the legality.  I’m fairly certain this island is owned by Xcel Energy.  It’s interesting to note how relaxed some rules have become post 9/11.  The Head of Navigation is on one side of this island and a power plant for a major metro area is on the other. Usually, security is forces people away from those areas fairly quickly.  The campers were not the only visitors to the island.

A half dozen people on paddle boards landed on the island.  A couple of them noticed the little stinky fish smelling poop factory above them. They weren’t there to camp, but to rest and grab a drink from their coolers.

And use the rope swing on the island.  The herons don’t seem to mind and I’m sure people landed on their old island.  If you are going to nest in an urban landscape, you have to learn to deal with the humans, that’s the way it is.  The nests are high enough that the humans wouldn’t be a threat and if someone were foolish enough to climb up to a nest, they’d learn the hard way what a messy business it is getting face to face with a heron chick–they can vomit up fish when scared just like a pelican.  Nasty, nasty stuff.

All in all, it’s just really great for me to see that herons are re-nesting and testing out new areas on the river.  I’ll be curious to see what they do next year.

Photo by Brian Peterson.

Hello all, NBB here.

The StarTribune has a story about the final two heron chicks that were rescued after a tornado destroyed their rookery on the Mississippi River. Sharon’s been involved with this story as one of the first people to investigate the damage, to being part of the rescue team, to helping release the birds.

The Strib talks about the rehabilitation process for the birds:

The nine chicks had spent much of their three-month respite in a 20-yard-by-5-yard kennel, on property in Inver Grove Heights that belongs to Vance Grannis. Their kennel, originally built for rehabilitating swans, also held a pool stocked with fish, giving the birds a vital chance to practice hunting. They also could spread their wings and fly, though not far. The nine young were lucky. They came in healthy, if a bit stressed. The center’s staff and volunteers worked hard to keep them that way until they were old enough to care for themselves.

Check out the Strib site for more on the release, and some great pictures of the birds.

I got a call from the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center that last week and they planned to release 7 of the 9 great blue heron chicks recovered after the tornado last Monday.  They invited a couple of us from my park (the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area to be there) and I got to release one of the herons and my fellow Park Ranger Gordon took photos.

This was the great blue heron in my box.  The herons have come a long way from when they were first admitted to the WRC.  Videos on YouTube showed their progress–here’s one of the chicks honing its fishing skills.

The birds were released at Cenaiko Lake at Coon Rapids Dam Regional Park–a perfect spot since the lake is managed and stocked for trout fishing.  It’s also not too far from the Coon Rapids Dam heron rookery, so they will be able to watch the local adults to see where they go to forage and learn from them.  Perhaps one of the adults renesting in the park is a parent of one of the released chicks?  There won’t be any magical family reunion, if these are any of their chicks, too much time has passed for the adults to regard these chicks as anything other than a competitor for food and territory.

I took this shot with my phone.  My heron was one of two that hung out in the water for several minutes after release.  I’m sure some if it had to do with the confusion of a new situation for them but the day we released the herons was the first day of that nasty heatwave that ravaged the midwest last week–yuck.  I think they just wanted to cool off.

The heron from my box eventually flew to the edge of the lake where it was promptly bapped by some red-winged blackbirds who didn’t take kindly to it being in their territory.  It then found an edge where it could gather its thoughts in peace and heat.  It started panting and I could understand why.  I was in my full on Park Ranger uniform and I have to tell you that the poly-wool blend the government makes us wear retains heat like nobody’s business.  I was only out in the heat in under 30 minutes and I’m certain I lost 5 pounds in sweat.  My clothes were soaked through when I got to the car.  Eventually the heron flew to a shadier spot close to the water, ready to fish.

And so this is a happier ending to the Minneapolis tornado for the herons. Though many nests were lost, the herons rebuilt and a handful of chicks have been returned to the wild. These chicks have aa good of a chance as any raised completely in the wild and I hope that they will figure out the best fishing spots and have a chance to migrate south and return next year.

Here’s some of the media coverage of the release from KARE 11 , MPR and KSTP. (Mom, you’ll be interested in the first 2 links).

And I leave you with a funny video of the herons from the WRC not long before their release.  One of the chicks decides to take on a monster sunfish.  With that sort of can do spirit, I’m sure the will do fine:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I was out at Mr. Neil’s the other day doing some final inspecting of bee equipment (they should be here in a week and a half).  We’re getting seven new hives this spring and poor Hans (the groundskeeper) was trying to finish removing our dead hives in time for the new bees.  I had a hard time focusing because migration has hit hard.  A big flock of purple finches were chowing down around the feeders.  Above is a purple finch perched on a red-osier dogwood (I love the way the feathers of the male compliment the branches).  This is a purple finch and not a house finch because there is no streaking on the flanks and he’s an overall beefier bird.

It’s interesting to note the change in juncos (the bird behind the purple finch).  Their breeding hormones are kicking in and they are chasing each other singing like crazy.  Here’s what a singing junco sounds like–have you heard that in your neighborhood?

You may have heard some talk in the news this week about a possible government shutdown.  It’s been brewing for awhile and I must admit, up until yesterday I thought it was nothing more than bluffing you would find on a prairie chicken lek.  As of yesterday, I think it may happen.  I find it amusing that one of the reasons I have my part time Park Ranger job is so I can have a safety net with my unpredictable freelance work and in a strange turn of events, it has suddenly become the unpredictable job.

I have a program on Saturday and at the time that I’m typing this, I have no idea if it will happen (and no official idea until midnight eastern time Friday night).  A friend invited me to go birding on Saturday if I don’t have to work and I’m not sure where we will be going.  Some of the places I love to visit will be closed off during the shutdown like Minnesota Valley NWR.  Here’s a list of all National Wildlife Refuges in Minnesota.  You might want to click on your state’s link and see what refuges could be closed near you.  Keep in mind that National Parks, National Historic Sites, National Forests and Bureau of Land Management areas.  Think of where you plan to watch birds this weekend.  If “National” is in the title of the park…you will not get in if there is a shut down.

Let’s hope it doesn’t happen and if it does that it is brief.

And let’s keep politics of the shutdown out of the comment section.  I’m not happy with anyone involved that this is happening and this post is more a head’s up to birders about where they plan to watch birds this weekend.

But the second time came last week when I did some mandatory training for our fall waterfowl surveys on the upper Mississippi River.

When we do our aerial waterfowl surveys, we fly low.  It seems to me that we are right above the trees, but it’s about 150 feet off the ground.  It’s low.  Our biggest danger is power lines that run across the river.  Most of them are well marked and we have GPS map system on the plane that alerts us to when we are approaching a set.  But accidents happen.  If I’m going to keep doing these surveys, then the federal government said that I need to have training on plane safety and how to survive a crash, specifically in water.  How did we do that?

Why in a pool at a YMCA!  That’s one of my teammates and me in a makeshift small plane, belted into our seats and about to be dumped  face down in the pool to see if we could calmly unbuckle and leave the plane should it submerge in the water.  In order to complete the course, we had to do this four times…twice upside down.

I’m not going to lie…it was nerve racking.  I survived three out of four times.  The fourth time, I got trapped inside the box and had to be pulled out (I was never in any danger, note all the people in the pool).  Two people are watching you under water and they knew right away if you were stuck and they pulled you out.  I think because on my third attempt, I got a big shot of chlorinated water up my nose and just general fatigue are the reasons I missed on the fourth attempt. And really, the chances of me crashing into water four times in a row in an afternoon are incredibly slim.  I have high hopes I’ll survive a water crash and even higher hopes that I won’t even need to use this training in my lifetime.

Here we are on one of our simulated crashes when they turned us upside down–you can see our toes. I think it was this dunking when I asked myself…how much do I love birds?  If this is what I need to do in order to complete my job to watch and count them from a plane, then maybe there is something psychologically wrong with me.  But still, even when we did the classroom portion, I asked myself, “Is counting ducks important enough for me to risk not coming home to Non Birding Bill at the end of the day?”

I think what we learn about native duck usage of the upper Mississippi River is important for the long run and it is worthwhile.  Honestly, flying in the plane has been fun and seems like an adventure. However, when you’re preparing for a worst case scenario (that will most likely never happen) you do play those scenarios in your head and you wonder if you will be ready if that moment comes.

The first day was general classroom work on plane safety and guidelines.  We were given examples of plane crashes and outlined all the little things that could have prevented them and the reasons why some people survived and some people didn’t.  When I first started doing these surveys, I took an online course on crash survival.  I chuckled as the training showed little cartoon planes fall to a fiery explosion and then learned that the number one thing that is going to save me in a crash is a positive mental attitude (surprisingly, not a parachute).

Our classroom training reinforced that and we learned the Seven Steps of Survival in a Plane Crash on Water.  Any guesses as to what the first step is when the pilot shouts, “May Day, we’re going down!” (or some form of profanity)  Any idea?

Step one, say, “I’m a survivor!”

Side note: Do not sing it like a Gloria Gaynor song…that’s frowned upon.  But first things first, you want to mentally psyche yourself up that you will stay calm and get through this.  You will survive and end up at home with your family at the end of the day.

You might be surprised to learn that of the Seven Steps, unbuckling your seat belt is Step Six.  Before that, you need to (shout, “I’m a survivor!”) unplug your helmet, open the plane door (if you’re sitting next to it) brace for impact, when you hit the water you want to count to four to give yourself time to for the plane to stop moving and then sit up, find a reference point to the open door (make sure the doorway is still clear) and then you can unbuckle your belt and exit.  The last thing you want to do it swim towards the top with a hand up first to check for debris and/or flames on the water (yikes).

The helmets remind me of the movie Spaceballs. The training was fun in a Mythbusters sort of way and a bit morbid, but I’m so grateful that I had it.  I’m fortunate in that we have a professional and attentive pilot but I feel more prepared than ever should we have to go down into the river.

All part of the fun and exciting life of being a park ranger.

Monday was our first flight out for our annual fall waterfowl surveys on the upper Mississippi.  This is our initial flight to get back into the swing of things, make sure our maps are correct and to get a refresher course on identifying and counting waterfowl while flying over them.  Last year my route went from around Hastings to Lake City.  This year, there were some staffing changes and now my part of the surveys go all the way down to Brownsville, MN.

We had some heavy rains last week and parts of the Mississippi River and the Minnesota River are flooding.  In downtown St. Paul, the Mississippi is expected to crest at 18.5 feet by Friday.  That will be in the top ten highest crests of recorded history.

We saw several areas affected by the flooding Mississippi south of St. Paul.  The above photos are cows working to stay high and dry.

American white pelicans and double-crested cormorants were some of the most common species that we observed.  They are mercifully some of the easiest birds to identify–especially those pelicans.

There were also quite a few great egrets staging for migration.  Unlike other types of waterfowl, they tend to gather in loose flocks.  They do not bunch together like pelicans, each egret appears to need its own fishing space.  But these loose flocks are a sign that they will be gone soon.  We saw far more egrets than great blue herons.

We did see some ducks.  Can you make out any different species?  The big white ones are easier–those are pelicans.  The rest are mostly American wigeon with a few gadwall mixed in with a few coots too.  It’s all about wing pattern.  The wigeon are the bird with the white wing patches with a dark patch below the white.  The gadwall just have a white patch.

We even found a few small groups of ruddy ducks too.  They don’t have the bright blue bills right now but they have those big white cheek patches which makes them obvious when we fly over–which I love.

And so we’re off with our counting.  I’ll be curious to see how the flooding affects our surveys in the first few weeks.  I’ll admit, I’m a bit nervous about the sheer number of birds we’ll be counting, but I’m learning some techniques that seem small but help a great deal.  One technique is when you see a huge flock of 3000 ducks and it’s mixed–say 3000 and give percentages of species.  We fly to fast to do it any other way.

Now, as long as my stomach stays settled and I don’t get motion sickness, I’ll be good to go.

As part of my duties as a park ranger, we go out and rove in the park.  Basically, we tote around a back pack with park info and you’re on hand to answer questions–it’s fun, it’s a bit like improv.  I like to take my scope for birding of course, but it gives me a chance to explore more areas of the park that I otherwise wouldn’t visit.  One is Lock and Dam 1.  On Friday, we did a canoe paddle through the lock (you really haven’t experienced the Mississippi until you’ve taken a canoe or kayak through a lock and dam–to be tiny in something so big is amazing). It was fun Saturday morning to look down on it knowing the day before I had been right in it.

I was curious to be back on Saturday to see the peregrine chicks.  Last week, they were a lot fluffier!  On Friday as we canoed past, one was already out of the box, flapping around on a nearby ledge under the watchful eye of the adults.  We had that big storm on Friday night and I wondered how the first fledger from the box fared.  When I arrived, two were still visible on the nest box perches, practicing their flapping skills.  I scanned and couldn’t find the third one.  I wasn’t too worried, I figured it was perched nearby and when the adults arrived with the food, I would hear it begging.

This is the view from the deck of the Lock and Dam 1 visitor center.  You can see the peregrine nest box on the far left on the wall (note the box below the brick building).  As I watched this, I noticed some flapping behind the big pipe on the right…

The bird out of the box did survive the storm!  Heck of  a first night out of the nest box–2 storms with heavy rain and the only refuge is a pipe.

The other two continued to practice.  The one on top of the box almost seemed like it was really going to get completely off the box, but stayed and screamed impatiently for one of the adults to feed it.  The adults flew in once or twice with food, but no drop offs were made in the box.  They want the young out of the nest so they can learn to fly.  The chicks want to be fed and eventually, they will put two and two together. When the chicks are hungry enough, they will fly out towards the adults with the food.

I checked on the peregrine fledgling behind the pipe and noticed that it was laying down and they eyes were part way closed.  I thought it was odd, but chicks lay down when they sleep, adults  remain upright, sleeping on one foot while the head is turned around and tucked under a wing.  I wondered if this bird was exhausted and not used to sleeping while standing yet.

If you think about how quickly a bird grow they have to work out how their bodies move and function relatively quickly.  You will often see young birds like the immature above, just letting its wings hang to the side after flapping–those things are heavy and they aren’t quite used to using those muscles just yet.

You’ll see young birds in all kinds of weird positions as they work out their bodies (what’s that bird doing, checking for the time on her Swatch?)–imagine going from super soft fluff to hard pin feathers growing in over every inch of your body in about two weeks.  We think teething makes babies cranky.  Feather shafts poking all over the skin has to be about as fun as sandpaper underwear on a bad sunburn.

When the peregrine nodded its head down, I though I would call my buddy Avian Images just to be on the safe side.  She works at The Raptor Center and goes to the bandings, I thought she’d have an idea.  As soon as I heard her cell ring…

In flew one of the adult peregrines and this bird sprang upright to beg for food–it was fine, just sleeping like a young bird instead of an adult.  Whew.

And peregrines weren’t the only cool thing–I found a huge turtle out of the water.  I know that it is a softshell turtle, but I’m not sure which type.  Someone on Twitter thought it might be a spiny softshell turtle which is possible in Minnesota (as is the smooth softshell).  But many of the photos for spiny softshell show a light colored turtle and this is a very dark one.  Whatever kind of turtle, it was huge with a pointy nose.

Just a heads up that right now is an excellent time for peregrine falcon viewing at Lock and Dam 1 in Minneapolis near Minnehaha Creek.  I took the above photo of one of the chicks Saturday. Look at that baby peregrine–doesn’t it look like quite the thug?

Here’s a screen capture of the dam from Google Maps.  I circled the area you want to stand in to view the falcons.  Of course it helps to have binoculars or a scope, but the falcons are quite visible without optics.

The cool thing about the timing for the next two weeks is that the chicks are losing their natal down and growing feathers–they should be easy to see and huddled in the back of the nest box.  They are quite active as they beg for food and practice flapping their wings when they take flight very soon.

Here is one of the adult birds that was perched near the nest–look at that, her foot is tucked and her feathers are fluffed.  That’s a sign of a relaxed and contented bird.  The Lock and Dam peregrines are a treat in the Twin Cities–easily accessible and awesome birds.  You can also watch for other species around the dam including great blue herons and double-crested cormorants.  Take advantage of this cool view before the chicks leave the nest box.

On Sunday it was my turn to rove and I chose Crosby Park which is great during warbler migration as it’s right on the Mississippi River and anything is possible.  There were some great birds there and while I was taking a photo of this song sparrow, I heard a sora.  Tons of birds were recent arrivals like great-crested flycatchers and yellow warblers.  I also noted a pair of broad-winged hawks setting up territory, which is fun because when we do Big River Journey, I always see broad-wings soaring over the park from the boat on the river.

The best part of my morning was when I hung out at this shelter–a great interpretive prop presented itself.  It’s at a busy intersection of the trails in Crosby–it’s actually not a bad spot to sit and listen for warblers.  But as soon as I approached, movement caught my attention…and it wasn’t a bird.  Can you make out an animal in the above photo?  If you can’t, don’t worry, it’s hard to see.  But check out that big hole in the trunk of the tree, just above the shelter roof.  It’s a raccoon.  When I arrived, all you could see was the body rising up moving around, I think the raccoon was grooming itself.  When people would stop and ask what I was looking at, I’d set my scope on the hole and pish very loudly like I was targeting a huge bird.

The large raccoon leaned its head back as if to say, “Yeah, lady, what do you want, I’ve got things going on in here.” It was the perfect place to camp out and interpret.  And a perfect place for a raccoon.  Nice secluded tree with a big comfy hole.  Enough natural food and litter to keep a raccoon fat and sassy.

As with birds, the raccoon soon grew tired of my pishing sounds and eventually ignored them, but it was fun while it lasted.  I showed Non Birding Bill the photos and he agreed they were cute but liked this raccoon hole photo series better.  In particular, this photo.

As I continued on, I heard a pair of robins raising a HUGE fuss.  Something was in their territory and they weren’t happy.  It was a serious alarm sound but not the aerial predator sound.  There was a clump of leaves and I did my best to scan, as best as I could make out, a red squirrel (see the eye and the whiskers in the center of the photo) had found their nest and was eating their eggs.  They did not make it easy for the squirrel, and smacked into it several times with their body.  Fortunately, it’s very early in the nesting season, they will find a better nest location and rebuild.  What was interesting was that I heard a new sound made by robins in alarm–bill snapping!  I always though only owls did that, but robins do it too. As the robins were calling in agitation, it spurred the local house wren pair to sing on their territory below their nest.  Here’s a sample:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I was missing a piece of one of my digiscoping adaptors so I had to hand hold my video camera up to my scope, but you can hear the wren and the robins in the background.

I love watching wrens sing, they do it with such gusto!

For such an urban St. Paul park, Crosby is great, we did the Bioblitz there last year and not only does it have nesting indigo buntings, but also prothonotary warblers.  I’m a bit concerned about the warbler season.  The leaves are out in full force now and warblers love to hide in the tops of trees, they are going to be hard to find this spring!  Ah well, it will be a good chance to practice birding by ear.