Public Peregrine Banding in Twin Cities

It's time to band young peregrine falcons in Minnesota. Some of them are open to the public if you would like to attend. The first one is June 6 at 10 am at the City Center for the Multifoods Tower. The next one is 12:30 pm the same day at the Colonnade in Golden Valley (I was at that one last year).

More banding is public on June 7 starting with the Wells Fargo Tower on 494 and France Avenue (although I think France is called Normandale Blvd at that point). That banding starts at 11:30 am. And then in the evening on that same day, they will band any chicks that might be on top of the Space Needle on the State Fair Grounds in St. Paul. The Space Needle birds always seem to be teases. Either they start nesting there and lay infertile eggs or they defend the territory like the dickens but there are not eggs there.

I'm going to try and make it to the Colonnade, Wells Fargo and the Space Needle. Hope some of you out there can make it. It's great way to guarantee a view at adult peregrines (who doesn't enjoy watching banders get bombed by fast flying falcons). My favorite part is what prey leftovers the banders find in the nest.

A Not So Glamorous Day On The Job

Every now and then someone will say that they would love to do what I do. As much fun as it is, there are some downsides. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love what I do and am grateful every day for the opportunities I've been blessed to have, but every now and then I think, "Wow, this was not as glamorous as I thought it would be." For starters, take a look at this photo from today:

This is stinging nettle dappled with copious amounts of heron poo. That kind of sums up where I was. I visited a heron rookery on Pig's Eye Lake in St. Paul, MN. It's an island that's a Scientific and Natural Area. You can canoe around it, but you can't go on the island where the rookery is without a permit or an escort with a permit. I was lucky enough to find an escort and believe you me, so many nettles surround the rookery, it is well protected. On top of that, there is so much poop raining down from the 1600 or so nests, that would be deterrent for any shenanigans someone might want to pull. And of course, living up to the Minnesota reputation, the mosquitoes are oh so voracious.

Right across from the island the island is a company that repairs barges. It was kind of surreal to be canoeing around them. It's one of my great joys is seeing a place like this and knowing that birds find a way to survive. At first glance would you think that there is a heron colony a few hundred feet away?

Now, my original intent for visiting this area was a lead on a turkey vulture nest. We didn't find a nest, but we did find dozens roosting on a sunken barge. We were smart and did stay away from barfing range of the vultures.

My Keens were really put to the test. Here I got stuck in about a foot of muck on the island. Notice all the heron prints around my sunken foot?

We did find some interesting dead stuff. Would you like to try a hand at one of the carcasses we found? My guide, Andy told me that a great horned owl has been picking off some of the birds. The look of the exploded bird supports that...as does the large owl pellet Andy found in the middle of an eaten carcass.

Here is the pile of feathers. Hmm, they look mostly gray, not white so that should rule out great egret.

Here are more feathers, bones, feet and a skull. The skull is towards the upper left hand corner. Note that the bill is thick and black on both the top and bottom mandibles. The feet are yellow. So, mostly gray feathers, thicker black bill and yellow feet? Have you guessed it yet? If you need more clues, it's for sure a heron and not a crane. Need any more clues?

This is the bird's head and neck would have looked like alive and with all it's feathers on its body and not on the ground. A black-crowned night-heron. Pretty cool!

Andy showed me that on the third toe, the talon on the third toe has a serrated edge, this is the toe they use for preening. Who knew? The kill was so fresh that we could easily manipulate the toes. I hated to see it go to waste, so what else is a girl supposed to do with a freshly ripped off heron leg?

Why take it back to her office and dry it out and save it as an educational prop. Speaking of offices, Eagle Optics gave a sponsorship to The Raptor Center and I have office space there! This has great advantages for all of us--especially Non Birding Bill. He was never all that thrilled with me bringing home bird parts to dry out. Other benefits include portions of binoculars sales that I do are donated to TRC. And, if you want to test out the close focus of a binocular, you can do it on one of the education birds--even a bald eagle! I'm just so happy that my company and a great organization dedicated to helping birds and educating the public can work together to help each other out. So, if you're ever visiting TRC, see if I'm around and say hi. I'll update a page about it on the site so that way people can have an idea of my schedule. I'll only be at TRC when I'm not traveling...or when I'm not mucking around nettle and heron poop.

Quick Announcement

Quick Note: due to a slight change in plan, next weekend I'll be at North Dakota Potholes and Prairie Birding Festival. I think Cinnamon will be coming along too. I've always wanted to visit this festival based on the great recommendations I've read about it. I've never been to a Dakota in my entire life. I'm looking forward to going...I hope I go to the right one.

What does Cinnamon have to say?

"But I don't think I approve of North Dakota. What the heck can I chew on out there?"

A Quick Cleanser

Okay, another slightly gross post coming up, so I thought I would highlight a couple of other fun entries in the blogosphere to cleanse the pallet.

Birding is NOT a Crime Blog would like the record to show that he posted the Moonwalking Manakin last October--my bad. I love BINAC, he's always tryin' pish the flock--if you know what I mean.

Meanwhile, Wild Bird on the Fly Blog is posted one of the more...oh, I'm too tired to think of a more creative adjective, so I'll say blurry photo submitted to her photo contest. I wonder if she will have a contest of who can correctly identify the bird in the photo. I hope she posts more.

For those in the Twin Cities looking for a William Shakespeare fix, King Lear is being performed by The Cromulent Shakespeare Company starting tonight through June 17. Why would I suddenly have a Shakespeare mention in the blog? Because Non Birding Bill is in it as Oswald. It's a small part, but he gets killed and that's always fun for an actor to play...and at times for a wife to watch. NBB will be quite busy this summer. As soon as this show is over, he starts rehearsal for his Fringe Festival show. Auditions are coming up soon if you know anyone who would like to try out.

Really Gross Eagle Post

WARNING! This is a really GROSS post. Quite frankly, I don't know how I'm going to muddle through it. It's interesting and does have a happy ending, but for those of you out there who don't like bugs, especially squishy maggots, I highly recommend avoiding going any further in this post. However, if you're like me and just can't help yourself, keep reading...although, you may not want to be eating anything at the moment.

"Ugh, I've got that not so fresh feeling."

A five week old bald eagle was down in clinic at The Raptor Center today and the vets were kind enough to let me follow with my camera. As vet Jane Goggin was looking over the young bird, it looked in good condition...and then she checked one of its ears.

Instead of finding a clear ear canal, it was chock full of maggots! Are we ready? On the count of three: 1...2...3...EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW! This is not a common occurrence in young raptors, but it happens often enough that when they are brought in, the vets check the ears. Vet Juli Ponder said that generally in nature, the maggots go through their whole life cycle and leave, causing relatively little damage. She did add that they can find this in any raptor, especially great horned owls and bald eagles.

Here are the contents of the ear (one ear, mind you). The vets pluck out the maggots with forceps and then drop them in alcohol to kill them, afterwards swabbing out the ear. Can you imagine having maggots in your ear and not being able to get them out. Think about that, feeling (and hearing) all that squirming and squiggling and itchiness in your ear for days. When Juli said that great horned owls get them too, I thought about how owls are supposed to have better hearing, how does multiple maggot sucking blood in their ear canals rock their world?

Jane checked the young eagle's other ear and found more of the same. 1...2...3...EWWWWWWWW!! So, basically this bird's ears have been plugged up with squirming and sucking. Gross, gross, gross. Think about how big your head is compared to an eagle. Now, can you imagine what it must be like to have 9 maggots wriggling in one ear on such a small head. Ew. Ew. Ew.

"We love our job! It's fun to pick maggots out of bird ears. We rock!"

That's Jane on the left and Julie on the right, smiling after a job well done and seriously, they do rock--I really don't think I could do some of the icky treatments they have to do. I love all the vets in clinic, they all have what's best for the bird in the forefront of their minds. In the photo above they are now testing the bird's feet--which were quite soft because it is so young and hasn't done much perching. Who knew bald eagle feet were so baby soft?

The eagle is now ready to go back to the wild. I wondered if afterwards the young eagle was marveling at all the new sounds it was hearing. It's ears were plugged up for awhile and now they are wide open and cleaned out. In the wild the maggots can clean up on their own, but it never hurts to give the birds a little extra help if they visit the clinic. From now on when I look at raptors soaring and envy their flight capability, I will just remind myself that "Hey, I don't have to worry about maggots in my ears." I think that should calm my envy.

From the Mouth of Babes

Cinnamon Says:

"Seeing such grave disapproval from ones so young gives me hope for the future. Oh, and by the way, I GREATLY disapprove of this. You can just feel the disapproval emanating from that photo."

Endangered Birds Pushing Their Luck

Killer birds raid Cyclone Larry town

From:

By Ian Gerard

Visitor ... Jan Shang keeps a close watch on a visiting cassowary as she attends to chores. Picture: Eddie Safarik

THEY have borne Cyclone Larry and weeks of torrential rain, but now the luckless residents of Innisfail face a new dilemma, a posse of hungry marauding cassowaries.

The critically endangered and famously testy flightless bird, known for its ability to disembowel humans with its razor-sharp claws, is running amok through the backyards and suburban streets of north Queensland in search of food.

The birds are believed to have left rainforest areas after much of the fruit-bearing plants they depend on were knocked down by Larry's 260km/h winds.

It is expected to be months before the birds' food sources begin to replenish.

Meanwhile, roaming cassowaries are reported to have chased several residents through town. One recently fell into a backyard swimming pool and had to be rescued.

The people of Innisfail and surrounds have now been warned not to feed the birds.

Queensland Parks and Wildlife rangers have set up food stations throughout the cyclone-affected region to entice cassowaries back into the forests and save them from being hit by cars or chased by dogs. At least six cassowaries have died in the Mission Beach region, south of Innisfail, since the cyclone, all struck by cars.

The birds are vital to the survival of the World Heritage-listed wet tropics rainforest because they are the only animals capable of distributing the seeds of more than 70 species of trees whose fruit is too large for any other forest-dwelling animal to eat and thus relocate.

There are less than 1200 cassowaries left in Australia.

Read the rest of the story here and be sure to check out the gallery of other deadly animals in the region.

Moon Walking Manakin

Click on the link and then click on "video".

Birds, Swallowtails and Squirrels, oh my

I had to share the above photo. I was giving a program at The Raptor Center yesterday and right before it started, the merlin I was going to use decided to take a bath. This photo is after it had dried a little bit, but at first she looked just awful, completely waterlogged. It's hard to convince people what badasses merlins are when they are soggy and scrawny looking.

I had my first encounter with an apiary. One of the staff at Carpenter Nature Center took me out to their beehives to begin my training on keeping an apiary. I knew this was going to be a real test. Oh sure, I've been reading about keeping bees, but would I panic and freak when actually confronted with a hive? I didn't freak--I even got see a queen. There's A LOT involved with keeping a hive for honey but this is something doable for me. For those interested, I did not get stung.

While there, I found several eastern tiger swallowtails all over their lilac bushes. They really do love to nectar on those plants. It was interesting to note that birds had sampled some of the swallowtails.

Take a look at the swallowtail at this swallowtail. See the chunk of wing missing. That hole left in the wing almost looks like it had been grabbed by the bill of a great-crested flycatcher, but who knows for sure which bird tried to eat it?

People who were reading this blog last summer may remember my problem with squirrels chewing their way into my bedroom window and I had to relocate all the ones that decided to come in whenever they wished. Once again, I'm having a squirrel issue. Last night while sitting on the couch reading, I heard a chewing sound come from the bathroom. Without thinking I automatically shouted, "Cinnamon, get out of the bathroom!" The chewing continued, I looked up and suddenly noticed that Cinnamon was sitting on the Love Sac right across from me. She stared at me with great disapproval that I would accuse her of chewing. Both of her ears were facing me. We heard in the gnawing sound again. Cinnamon's right ear turned towards the direction of the sound while she continued to stare at me accusingly. It was dark out. Cinnamon was in front of me...what was chewing in the bathroom. I'll give you three guesses: a squirrel.

For some reason a squirrel has decided to build a nest in our bathroom window. You can see in this photo I took of the ledge this morning, the little cup impression on the lower left corner where it cuddled up and slept. I don't know why the squirrel wants to live here. We live in an old brown stone with lots of little quirks, one being a window on the same wall as a bath tub/shower. We keep a shower curtain in front of it, but still you would think a squirrel would notice the hot steam rolling out when we shower. Is this some kind of pervert squirrel that has been peeping when we are showering? What is it with my apartment and squirrels??

Killdeer Feelin' The Love

The killdeer post from a few days ago inspired Karen Cramer:

While waiting for him in the Jeep, from along the western edge of the parking lot I heard this commotion consisting of continuous and raucous "Kill-Deer", "Kill-Deer" calls. After my Uncle returned with his steaming cup of caffeine, I had him drive toward the area of the lot where all the noise was originating. There, we observed a group of 5-6 killdeer, darting and calling, chasing each other, displaying, and, yes, a couple of killdeer were even doing the WILD THING. Of course, always having my camera on me as if it were a third eye, I just had to snap a photo. So attached to this message is my Future Killdeer Parents photo. Enjoy!

Thanks, Karen, I would say, we are enjoying this, but would that make me sound weird? I remember the first time I saw birds engaging in mating. I was kid and was watching two flickers--I was surprised and excited, I had read about mating and now here it was. It looked almost impossible to figure out that balance--the killdeer in the above photo are at least on the ground, the female flicker I watched was balancing on a branch and the male was balancing on her--that seems like a lot of work. Anyway, I remember my mom walked in and asked what I was watching so intently out the window. "Two flickers having sex!" I answered excitedly. She came over to watch, and I'll never forget the look on her face when she said, "I don't know if you should be watching that." I think in her mind she was thinking, "On the one hand, she's a kid, should she be watching this? On the other hand, this is nature and scientific..." The flickers decided the dilemma for her and both flew off.