Queen Excluder Time

I took this photo of an entrance reducer to show you guys what it is...I didn't notice the juxtaposition of Non Birding Bill until after I downloaded photos. If you read my answers at Nerve.com, you get the joke (insert naughty giggle here).

I'm confused about the Kitty hive, but I have a plan and am rallied by all the support! First, let's talk good news: Olga was reversed and given a queen excluder and a propolis trap today! Chances are good, that last sentence made very little sense to you, but it's a whoot in my book.

Olga had filled all three of her brood boxes with eggs and honey. Since all the frames in the boxes were 100% filled with drawn out comb, we need to switch the top box with the bottom brood box. Bees tend to fill hives from the top down, so to encourage more brood, we needed to switch--all the frames in the bottom box have hatched, all the frames on the top were full of freshly laid eggs. I'm SO glad NBB was with me. I learned something today: a brood box full of honey and brood is too heavy for me to lift...and I can lift sixty pounds without a problem.

It was a messy business. As we took the whole hive apart, worker bees were running a amok, gathering all over the sides. We smoked the crap out of them, but still had a tough time keeping them out of the way. Now, I see the value of a hive brush. One of the instructors in the class inferred that the hive brush was an unnecessary tool, but we could have used one today. I ended up sweeping all of the bees out of the way with my glove--boy they really didn't like that! But it was that or squishing them as we put the hive back together.

After we reversed the hive and reassembled it, I placed the queen excluder on top of the three brood boxes. This allows only the workers to pass above the brood boxes and insure that all the frames placed above this point will only be filled with honey. After I set it on top, I watched closely to insure that the workers could pass through--yes they could.

After we put on our honey supers, I placed a propolis trap on top of them. This will encourage our bees to produce more of the sticky stuff they use to seal up the hive for us to eat. Ah, propolis--irritating when inspecting the hive, tasty and nutritious in your tea.

Now, on to the Kitty hive! I wanted to take a look today to see if there were any eggs--hoping against hope that a new queen had returned from a mating flight and had started laying. As I scanned, I found a bee emerging and was watching it...then I found something troubling. Notice the worker bee right above the emerging bee? That worker bee is doing something she shouldn't--she's plunked her little abdomen into a cell to lay an egg! Doh! That really isn't a good sign for this hive. She sat in there for some time, almost appeared to be struggling like she was constipated.

I watched the hive and the other frames for a long time (at least a half hour) and only found this one worker bee trying to lay eggs. Here's the problem. When a healthy queen is present, workers don't lay eggs. When a queen is gone and the workers aren't controlled by her pheromone, ovaries develop in the workers and they begin to lay eggs. These eggs are infertile and will only turn into drones (female workers and queens are the result of fertilized eggs). If this is happening, this means that there is no viable queen. Perhaps I did kill off all of the queen cells right before the swarm--my effort to prevent the swarm has kind of doomed the colony.

There are other signs of this as well--spotty drone cells capped over in the worker brood frames. Above the bee is a capped over cell that looks puffy--that's a drone that has been laid in a worker cell. All the flat capped over cells are capped worker cells. I called B&B Honey Farms--that's who I have been getting all of our bee supplies from. They ran out of replacement queens last week, so the very helpful Tammy went over some options with me. She agreed that one bee laying eggs is a very bad sign for that hive and I need to take action now.

1. Can I find the swarm? Boy howdy have I tried, but the woods are so thick and full of hollow trees, it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

2. Do I want to pick up a swarm? There are apparently quite a few showing up along Hwy 90 and 94 through Minnesota and Wisconsin. Someone who travels around so their bees can pollinate farms has lost six already. One was in Tomah at a truck stop if I wanted to go for it. A little too far away for me at the moment.

3. Combine what's left of Kitty with the strong Olga hive using the newspaper method.

4. Then I ran an idea I came across on the Hive Mind Bee Blog(one of the beekeepers who answered questions like I did on Nerve.com): take a frame or two of brood from the Olga hive (making sure that it's full of freshly laid eggs) and inserting that into the Kitty hive. Like birds, bees look at eggs as something needing to be raised. They will take some of the eggs (they will all be fertilized and therefore female) and place them in queen cells. The only difference between a worker bee and a queen is that the queen is raised entirely on royal jelly. If one of those queens makes it, she will go on the mating flight and then come back and lay eggs. Also, the bees won't turn all the eggs into the queen, but raise them as workers--this will put some new life back in the hive to cover for the lack of eggs being laid in the last few weeks. Tammy said I could try it, however for every person who has had it work, there's another person who hasn't had it work. I think it's crazy enough of a plan that it just might work. What have I got to lose at this point anyway?

I think that's what we'll try tomorrow...too bad we just did the reversal and all the eggs are in the bottom box. Ah well, it'll be good exercise.

Because Kitty's progress we had to change the third brood box. When you start them, you put in ten frames to help with the way the comb is drawn out. Once they fill the brood box, you take one of the frames out so you only have nine in there. When you are expanding, you put the tenth frame in the new brood box. We'll we've expanded all we can in the Olga hive and the supers for honey are too small to hold a brood frame.

So, I brought it in and we had a little of the honey in our tea. It wasn't capped over, so it wasn't true honey, but it tasted awful darn close.

It was yummy! Although, now that we are going to take a frame of brood out of Olga and put it in the Kitty hive, we'll need to put this frame back in Olga. Good thing we didn't scrape off all the honey from her comb.

Refreshed, recharged, and ready to tackle the situation!

Quiet in the Kitty Hive

Non Birding Bill and I are watching Cabal (the beekeeping dog) while everyone is away--If you don't regularly read Mr. Neil's blog, the last week has been hilarious--Maddy, his 12 year old daughter has been guest blogging their adventures on a movie set in Budapest. Check it out, she writes exactly as she talks. She's crackin' me up, this one is my favorite.

Well, on to the saga of the Kitty hive. If you remember from last week, she was showing signs of swarming or a failing queen by building lots of queen cells. If queen cells are on the bottom of one of your frames, that means she's feeling crowded and the old queen will stop laying eggs, and then fly off with half the hive. If the queen cells are on the middle of the frames, that's a sign that the current queen is failing and is about to be superseded. We had mostly queen cells on the bottom frames and a few in the center. We removed as many queen cells as we could find and added a third brood box, hoping that room for expansion would encourage them to stay. We decided to wait a week and see what was happening.

Non Birding Bill and I went out to the Kitty hive and opened the box. It was quiet...too quiet. There was not the usual buzzing. We took out two center frames and they had not drawn out any comb at all. Not a good sign. We opened the second box, still quiet and the bees were totally calm. One of the most important beekeeping tools is the smoker, it helps keep them calm. We really didn't need it. The bees were as calm as the were when we first installed them...there were also noticeably fewer. We had our answer, sometime in the last week, the Kitty hive had swarmed. The old queen left, taking half the workers with her. The other half was left behind to start with a new queen.

Taking out more frames we found queen cups, the start of queen cells, the workers probably started those after I had ripped out all of the queen cells I could find last week.

I also found queen cells that I had missed. Can you find this one? Look at the top of the photo right in the center--there's kind of a vertical peanut shell structure--that's a queen cell. If you recall, this was the hive that kind of doubled up on each frame--the cells were away from the frame, so the bees had brood on the outside and between the cells and the frame--I wonder if that contributed to the feeling of being overcrowded? If you still can't see the queen cell, here is an up close shot:

I started to think back to the last time we were at the hive, last week when we first discovered the queen cells, quite a few bees were covering the side of the hive--they were much further along in swarming than I realized. Ah, hind sight is twenty twenty. Now, what will I do. I tried to find the new queen, but we couldn't. However, depending on when she hatched, she could be out on her three day "maiden voyage". A newly emerged queen is a virgin. When she hatches, the workers show her around the hive and she seeks out any remaining queen cells and kills them--it's kind of a Highlander thing--there can be only one. This takes about three days. Then she flies off for another three days to a "drone congregation area". Seriously, this is what the drones live...and die for. She will go up in the air about a half mile and find a few dozen drones to mate with (each drone she accepts will die in the copulatory act). After three days of sex and killing, she will return to the hive full of sperm and begin laying eggs.

In that time, I have to hope that nothing bad happens like a phoebe or great-crested flycatcher eating her before she comes back from her mating flight. There is some unhatched brood, but there haven't been new eggs for awhile. I'm kind of at a crossroads: do I start a new queen or do I work with the old queen? Which ever way I go, is there enough time for them to build up enough food and workers to survive winter this far north? I also wonder if I just shouldn't have left the queen cells last week.

Searching bee forums, I did what I could, but I should have caught this much sooner. My mistake was not checking the bottom box after adding the second. I thought that if I had let them alone, they would construct faster. Although, I did learn that even if I had caught it early, my methods of stopping a swarm still might not have worked. There are even some valiant efforts I could have tried, but probably wouldn't have, like finding the queen and cutting off her wings, making her flightless. If she couldn't fly, she would fall down on the swarm flight and the other workers would have been forced to stay. I don't think I could have the heart to cut the queen's wings.

As I look at the frames that are completely empty of brood, I feel that I have let this hive down with my inexperience. NBB was very excited--he was looking at this from a more scientific angle. He found the whole swarm process and the change in the hive's behavior fascinating. As I kept feeling like a failure, he kept marveling that our bees were now out in the wild--starting fresh and perhaps this healthy line would help build up the population that is so in trouble in North America. Our main goal was to have bees for pollination and well, the swarm couldn't have gone far so they will continue to pollinate Mr. Neil's yard--we will just not be managing it or getting any of the excess honey. So, for now, I will check Kitty daily for eggs, signs of the new queen. If there are no eggs in a week, I'll order a new queen.

The Olga hive, our former problem child is right on schedule and is ready for honey supers--honey for us to collect for our own purposes. Go Olga! Look at this frame full of honey! We took a small taste--it was awesome.

I walked the woods to see if I cold find signs of the swarm. Swarms don't go too far from the hive. There are quite a few hollow trees nearby, so they could be near. I watched the hives to see where the bees were flying off to. From this photo, they start from each hive respectively, and then fly up and off to the upper left corner of this photo. They clear the tree line and then go on. I tried following the bees, but was stopped by waist high stinging nettle.

I started following the creek. I was feeling very down, NBB had a hard time understanding it. It's understandable that there will be some problems your first year as a beekeeper, but I wanted to get everything right. Our class instructor even advised us to get two hives in case something goes wrong, and from what I've read, swarming happens to the best of beekeepers (although usually the second year, not with a new package). I'm bummed, I feel I've let our beekeeping operation down. But on a deeper level, I think what was really bothering me was a sense of rejection. The Kitty bees didn't care for the hive and took a bunch of their workers and left. A bunch of stinging girls left me and moved on. It's middle school all over again.

And then I heard this (it's about 32 seconds long). Can you identify the bird singing:

It's a song I haven't heard for a long time. I've never heard this species singing in Mr. Neil's woods before (this has been a good year for them, many more reports on the local listservs than usual). We used to get these in the woods where I lived as a kid in Indianapolis. It was the first bird I tried to id based on song--without the help of bird identification CDs--or records as we used at the time. My mom and I spent an entire Saturday morning chasing this bird down trying to see what made such a beautiful song. It took us a long time, but finally we caught a glimpse through the leaves of a robin shaped bird, with black spots on a white belly, and brown back: a wood thrush.

Hearing this song reminded me of how much work it was to id this bird. We'd heard it for several days before we had the chance to really track it down and find it. It took a long time, and a lot of work--that's how it was early on my birding life. And it's a good reminder of how it will be with my beekeeping life. I will make mistakes, and bees will do what they want to do.

Thanks, wood thrush, for the reminder and for making one of the most haunting melodies a person can ever hear in the summer woods.

Dakota County Bird Trip

Saturday, I led a field trip with my buddy Stan Tekiela to Dakota County, through Staring Lake Outdoor Center. It was a small group and loads of fun. I love birding this place because it's just south of the Twin Cities metro area and you can see some great birds: loggerhead shrike, dickcissel, grasshopper sparrow, indigo bunting, even a Swainson's hawk (they're not really supposed to be in Minnesota).

We started the morning by checking one of the Outdoor Center's bluebird boxes. Some of the participants got to hold a young bluebird--what a great way to start a Saturday morning!

I had driven our route on Friday looking for target birds and didn't find all of them but hoped for the best on Saturday. I did find lots of song sparrows (above). It's interesting to note the abundance of corn growing in many of the fields and I wondered how much more there will be in the coming years with the popularity of ethanol. One spot that has traditionally been great for yellow-headed blackbirds was all corn.

I like going with Stan, because he likes to help put the adventure in a trip.

Case in point, the above photo. Note in the background the sign reads "Road Closed"--that's where we parked. Well, this was our unplanned last stop of the day. We had seen all target species except for dickcissel. I had an email with me that someone in the past week had seen dickcissel off of Hwy 52 and 117th Street--just off the exit. That was on our way back to the Outdoor Center, so we decided to stop there, what did we have to lose? As we drove on the exit, I had my window down and I immediately heard, "dick dick cissel cissel" and there on the exit sign was a dickcissel. Stan pulled his vehicle over right on the exit, I went a little further ahead to an area blocked off for construction. We hopped out and everyone got a good look at the dickcissel.

Incidentally, we were across the highway from the Koch Refinery. Even though we were far away, my spotting scope though aimed at the dickcissel, was pointing towards the refinery. Two security vehicles approached us in less than five minutes to insure that we were not taking any photos--I opted to not try and digiscope the dickcissel.

One of the target species (and on that put on the best show was a northern shrike). I had seen one along this stretch of road on Friday and at first I drove past it, but Stan called out on the two way radio, "Shrike." We pulled back and there it was perched on a telephone pole.

Look at that little shrike loaf. The bird was totally dosing off--slacker. It was hunkered down and periodically the eyes would close--certainly wasn't too stressed out by us humans. I even pulled out my Handheld Birds and played the call of the northern shrike versus the loggerhead and it still continued to dose off.

Eventually, the shrike did wake up and went through a series of stretches. Here is your basic wing stretch.

And this? I don't know, perhaps a bird version of downward dog? I'd never seen a shrike stretch quite like this before--kind of a butt up pose. Boy, it doesn't look anything like it does in field guides. After this stretch it flew across the street to some spruce trees and teed up. It looked like it was on the hunt. I wonder if the shrike was thinking, "Alright, you got your pictures, you got to see me, I'm off the clock, so buzz off."

Another highlight of the day was watching some young kestrels that had recently left the nest learning to fly and hunt. The young birds would fly and perch right over us...that is until the adults showed up and started screeching a warning.

All and all a fun time. Up next is a bee entry. Brace yourself, we find out what happened to Kitty.

For Teageeare

Who tells me that I don't put enough Kabuki in the blog:
Here is my cranky little cockatiel, eyeing my inbox, hoping I will not notice if he pulls out and chews some paper. He and Cinnamon are about to go an a small adventure. We're going to dog sit for the next few days and we're bringing the pets with us.

I can't believe blogging escaped from me for a couple of days--it turned much busier here than I had anticipated. Next weekend should be about the same. I took Cinnamon with me to Carpenter Nature Center on Friday. I got an email a few weeks ago from some blog readers who said they might join us for banding. They asked if Cinnamon would be there and originally I had said no, but Thursday night and Friday morning, she was doing all those things that say, "Hey, mom, I need some stimulation." ie - digging in her litter box and sneaking into the kitchen. So, on went her leash and she went with me to Carpenter and found a whole slew of new things to disapprove of.

Even though we can still get her to put on the leash and harness without too much of a fuss doesn't mean she tries to chew and whip it off when she thinks I'm not looking.

We're getting in quite a few of the summer residence. Above is a male robin we have had in the nets twice this summer. You can tell he is male by the dark head and the darker rusty breast. Boy, he really looks unhappy in this photo.

We also got in this hairy woodpecker. Notice anything strange about him? Check out his red patch--it's on the front of his head and not the back--a way you can tell if the bird just hatched this year when it is at your feeder.

Cinnamon was not as impressed with all the banding going on and was way more interested in exploring all the prairie grasses. Just by hopping in a few feet, she would completely disappear.

Apart from the leash, the only other way you could tell she was in there was by watching a tall piece of grass waver for a moment and then fall over as she had chewed its stalk. She was almost on sensory overload with the abundance of chewables at her feet.

To a blade of grass, she's kind of a scary looking monster. Afterwards, she kept me company as i scouted for a field trip that I was leading on Saturday. Which I will blog about later tonight. Right now, I have to go out and check on the bee situation...have I prevented a swarm...will the Olga hive be ready for a queen excluder...what wonderful bee adventures will I encounter this week?

Bald Eagle Is OFF The Endangered Species List

Well, it's about darn time in my book.

I'm happy to see that in my lifetime that today we have gotten something very right with conservation and that the national symbol for the United States of America has been taken off of the Endangered Species List.

The move is important on so many different levels--number one, bald eagle numbers increased from 417 breeding pairs in the lower 48 states in 1963 to an estimated new high of 9,789 breeding pairs today! The longer the eagle stayed on the list, the more critics could point to it and say, "See, it doesn't work, the bald eagle is still on the list. Let's get rid of the Endangered Species Act."

I know some are arguing that the delisting means that there could be loss of eagle habitat, but at the same time, bald eagles are choosing to nest in areas that previously weren't considered eagle habitat. Case in point, the bald eagle nest that 10 minutes from my house that's in a residential neighborhood, bordered by two major highways, and right across the street from the Minneapolis/St Paul International Airport.

These birds don't care as long as they can find food like fish, injured waterfowl, and roadkill. The eagles are also still protected under the Bald Eagle Act and the Migratory Species Act. And individual states can still keep the bald eagle on state threatened or endangered lists, but it is time for eagles to be off of the federal list, so we can concentrate on the other 1,300 species still on the list.

There are still concerns like bald eagles ingesting lead --lead is something that needs to be taken out of the environment for several species. Bald eagles are exposed to lead in gut piles of deer during hunting season, the common loon (Minnesota's state bird), trumpeter swans are exposed to it via lead sinkers in the bottom of lakes and streams. Lead isn't good for anybody--including us. We need to quit putting it out there.

And if you're still not convinced that the bald eagle delisting is a good thing, rather than sending me an email or comment telling me that I'm killing eagles and I have no business calling myself a bird lover (which I don't think I have ever used that phrase to describe myself anyway), I encourage you to read about what Rhode Island is doing and start a similar program for habitat preservation in your area.

Beekeepers Give Advice

"I don't approve of this entry at all! I'm seriously considering disowning you. Harumph!"

I've been kind of debating about whether or not to put up a link. But, I'm going back to my personal blogging rule, "Would I find this interesting?"

Yes, I would.

Nerve.com asks for experts in different fields (like sudoku masters) to give sex advice once a week. This week, they were looking for beekeepers and I was asked--that's right, they were looking for beekeepers, not birders. Who knew that beekeeping would ever lead to this? So, with LOTS of warning that this link is NSFW and to those of you who are reading this with your kids, save it for later or visit this beekeeping blog about a guy who is experimenting with bee sculpture. He was one of the beekeepers also asked for advice.

Okay, if you still want to proceed and are chronologically an adult, here is the Nerve.com link.

If you are visiting this blog for the first time from Nerve.com and you're wondering where all the bee entries are, check here. And, everyone wants to know what an entrance reducer is, so here's a photo of a wooden one and here is a photo of a metal one--I've got both! You use these to control your traffic and it helps maintain temperature and ventilation early in the spring.

Goldfinch Date

I saw goldfinches gathering nesting material today. At distance, their coloring really blended in with the dull yellow of the vegetation. You would think the males would pop out more. This female appeared to be supervising the male's gathering.

But perhaps she was just begging for a kiss? He didn't give her any nesting material, he actually dropped what he had to bill tap with her. She had started coming towards him, wings slightly fluttering, giving a soft call and then they had a quick bill peck. No copulation occurred, but I'm sure it was some sort of pair bonding.

She flew away, and he continued to gather the soft thistle down. I wonder what goldfinches used for nesting material before thistle was introduced to North America?

Minor Monarch Release

Yesterday when I was trying to get ready to go to The Raptor Center, I noticed that one of my monarch chrysalises was about ready emerge. Wow, that was fast. Seemed like it was only yesterday this guys made the pretty, green chrysalis. Right before the monarch emerges, the chrysalis turns dark and you can see the butterfly on the inside. I wish I could have gotten a photo of it as soon as it came out--they look deformed. Ah well, another time.

When I came home from TRC, I made some lunch and sat on the couch...I noticed the chrysalis was empty and paused to try and see where the butterfly was hanging out in my apartment. Then I noticed some fluttering and found it at one of the windows. It had emerged, had plenty of time to pump moisture into it's wings and was ready for forage for nectar. I didn't see any dark spots on the lower wings, which means this was a female monarch. I opened the window and tried to get a video of her release from my apartment:

After she landed, I set up my digiscoping equipment and got a few shots of the monarch resting on a tree:

Then she flew off to search for nectar. She will also search for a male for mating and eggs will grow into the monarchs who will migrate south into Mexico this fall.

Ecological Investment Market

From Newswise Science News (thanks budak for the heads up):

Farmers in Jamestown, R.I., are being paid by local residents to delay haying their fields until after birds have completed nesting in a unique test to establish investment markets for ecological services.

The project to protect habitat for bobolinks, a grassland-nesting bird whose population is declining in New England, was designed by a team of University of Rhode Island economists in collaboration with a URI biologist and Providence-based EcoAsset Markets, Inc.

“The public constantly says that they value a clean and healthy environment, and yet the economy overlooks those values and instead creates environmental problems,” said Stephen Swallow, a URI professor of environmental economics. “Ecological markets are a way to correct these environmental problems by enabling businesses and individuals to express their values and invest in the environment. It’s a way of bringing environmental qualities into our everyday decision making.”

Farmers who grow hay for their livestock can usually get two cuttings a year from their fields, but the first one typically interferes with nesting grassland birds. The mowing machines can destroy the birds’ nests, eggs and young. By compensating the farmers for the cost of delaying the harvest and purchasing replacement hay, the birds have enough time to mature and fly away without negatively impacting the farmers.

“This market approach is brand new,” said Emi Uchida, assistant research professor in the URI Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics. “The Jamestown residents and farmers experienced one of the first experiments in the world to use a market approach to enhance ecosystem services.”

Read the rest of this very cool story here. Very cool idea! More communities should steal that idea.

Turkey Vulture Hangover Fix

We have some really cool friends. One of whom is Kitty, who among many other talents is a caterer to bands. Now, when I say bands, I don't mean like Kielbasa Kings, I mean mainstream bands you might actually have heard of: Motley Crue, Depeche Mode, Justin Timberlake, etc. Yesterday, she came into town with TOOL and we met her and the crew for some drinks at their hotel. And I learned two things:

1. The Embassy Suites in downtown St. Paul has ducks inside their hotel.

2. And I don't quite have the alcohol tolerance I did in college. Sigh.

I have to say that after tossing a few back and then seeing a duck fly in the lobby of the hotel, I thought that I was ready to be cut off. But I went to the lobby and sure enough, there were ducks in the fountain. It looked like the hotel had cinnamon teal, wood ducks, and green-winged teal. But looking at the photos today, some of them had an odd shape or their markings are a little off. They must be hybrids from a game farm. Anyway, it's nice to know that even when a few sheets to the wind, I can still find the birds and id them...sort of.

I got a big kick meeting all of the back stage guys (wish I could remember their names)--especially the tour accountant. I tried to tell him that he was the hippest accountant I had ever seen, but he kept stressing that he wasn't really an accountant, that was just a title (kind of like people who have all the birding gear but won't call themselves birders). I met another guy who had a mother who lived in New Zealand and he lamented that she only came to visit him when he was in an area with a lot of bird species to add to her list. There's another guy looking to sample bird calls for music and I'm going to try and hook him up--he really wants a western meadowlark. All in all it was a great time...until I woke up this morning. Ugh!

And as much as I really wished I could have stayed burrowed under the sheets, I had to go to The Raptor Center for my weekly volunteer shift. I felt awful, but staying home was not an option. We had a big program scheduled and my not feeling well was entirely my own fault, not the result of a stray virus. I drove in after copious amounts of juice and coffee, hoping that working with the birds or giving a program would take my mind of off my uncertain stomach.

One of the things we are supposed to do on the morning shift is check on all the ed birds, make sure all are upright and to pick up any leftover food from the day before. Quite a few of the birds will leave behind rat skins, fish bones, chicken feet, etc. The photo above is my black glove that I use for handling. We use different gloves for different tasks, that way the birds have an idea of what we are doing when we enter their mew.

This is the big blue welder's glove that we wear when we are picking up scraps, tossing food in the mew or anything not related to giving a program. It's especially important when you are going to pick up food--sometimes the birds get a little territorial. They're not going to eat that dried up and stinky rat skin, but at the same time, they don't want you to have it. If a bird comes at you, this is your main defense. We have a great horned owl that likes to ricochet off of your head, and sometimes eagles or red-tails might run at you.

This is a little glove you can wear on your other hand so your skin doesn't have to come into contact with the leftover food. I prefer not to wear this glove when entering mews because it takes me longer to pick up the food and I really don't mind picking up old rat bits with my hands, I can easily wash them.

Some of the birds are more challenging than others. We sometimes will rotate who takes what out of which bird's mew. Today, Nero, the imprinted (thinks he and humans are the same species) education turkey vulture had some rat skin and fish bits inside his mew. He was sitting right next to the door and was not about to move. I offered to go in and get the scraps, because Nero always flies away from me when I enter his mew and sits on top of his hutch where I have no chance to reach him. He figured out years ago how short I am, so that I wouldn't be able to reach him and take him out for programs. He knows the exact spot to stand on top of his hutch so I will have no chance to grab his jesses (bracelets all the birds wear on their ankles that we use to attach them to leaches). Clever bird.

Look at that beady little head giving me the hairy eyeball. You can't see it from this angle, but he has a mailbox shaped perch near the door. He was on the far end of the perch when I opened it. I stepped in and waited for him to fly up. He didn't, he sat looking quite relaxed. As I picked up the scraps, I noticed some fish pieces back in the corner and went back quickly to retrieve them. When I turned around to leave, he had adjusted his position on the perch and was blocking me from going out. "Hm," I thought, "this is new. Maybe he won't fly away from me anymore and I might be able to use him for program again." It was at this precise moment, that Nero jumped off of the mail box perch and when straight for my legs. I was wearing some capris and had skin exposed, I shoved down the blue glove to block his attack. He jumped and thrashed, trying to dodge it and managed to get a hold of the hem on my left pant leg. He whipped his little head around trying to rip them and jockeyed for a better position. This is where it gets hard. One the one hand, you want to protect yourself, on the other hand, you do not want to hurt the bird (and there is also the third hand of not wanting to scare the vulture so it will barf on you in defense--yuck).

His attack continued and I could feel his chest pressed against my hand, trying to get a better bite. My hand slid down his chest and he jumped up, this time landing on the glove. I quickly raised my hand up and put him in handling position, like I would for a program. This kind of confused him--he was perched the way he was trained to be perched, but the glove wasn't the usual glove. I used those few seconds of his confusion to secure his jesses in my gloved hand and stood for a moment. As soon as I had him secure, the bird curator poked her head in smiling and said, "Hey, what's going on?" She had seen what happened and said I did everything right and then got a handling glove and crated him for a bit. The bottoms of my capris have little tassels and she wondered if the tassels where what Nero was after. Mental note: don't wear tassels in the vulture mew.

I noticed after the vulture incident, that I wasn't feeling my hangover so much anymore. Nothing like a little vulture therapy. Here is a video I took of Nero later on in the morning after he was placed back in his mew with a touch of improved Jaws soundtrack: