Birdchick Blog
Found on the way to inspecting the beehives today--ginormous (I've used it twice in a week, I'll stop) sulphur shelf! I was going to say this fungus is as big as your head, but that's Non Birding Bill for size comparison and it's already bigger than his head--and he has an unusually large cranium to begin with! (Seriously, he's not egotistical, he really does have a large head--to hold that massively huge brain--it's why I love him.)
I am so hungry!
FYI - fun bee post coming soon!
Lots of readers sending in this story of the gull thief with a taste for crisps:
I just saw a promo for Mr. Neil's movie on tv. I can't believe I know someone who wrote a book that's being promoted as a mainstream summer movie. The "in a world" guy is even narrating the trailer. Ooooooo.
Poor Cinnamon, first she's losing blog time to birds and bees, now she's losing her parsley to the black swallowtail caterpillars.
Well, the black swallowtail caterpillars are proving to be very exciting compared to the monarchs. If you recall from the last entry, I was having trouble initially identifying the cats because they didn't look like the photos of black swallowtail caterpillars in my books. That has changed in the last twenty four hours. Here is one of the caterpillars from yesterday.
Here they are today! Some of the cats are finally looking like they do in my caterpillar field guides. Two still look like bird poop, but they're growing up so fast. Another exciting development is that I thought I only had four, but discovered that I in fact, have five swallowtails to watch grow.
I broke out my Nikon 4500 to get some macro shots of the caterpillars. The bird poop looking ones do have some color when you look at them up close--little dark orange spots with spikes coming out of them. I think since the young caterpillars spend so much time on the top side of the leaf, the bird poop look helps them avoid predators (no one wants to eat that).
Then compare that to the more colorful older ones. They are very garish and look as though they would stick out like a sore thumb. However, I noticed that they tend to stay on the stems of the parsley and if we were looking at parsley bunched together, the yellow, white and black stripes would help them blend with the stems.
Even their little caterpillar toes are cute!
While I was taking macro photos, one of the bird poop looking cats, shed its skin to reveal the older cat coloration--it happened too fast for me to get a photo, but you can see the old skin right behind it. Freaky.
The photos might make the caterpillars look much larger than they are at the moment, so I used a pen as a size comparison. That is one of the older cats munching on some parsley--still quite tiny. I bet next week it will by ginormous.
The monarch caterpillars are still going strong. Almost all of my eggs have hatched. This tiny egg was showing signs of getting ready to hatch yesterday. You can see the dark head showing through the top of the egg.
This morning the egg was empty, the cat was out and about.
It had already fattened up quite a bit by noshing on some milkweed and leaving some frass (caterpillar poop). Monarchs are cool, but it's fun growing caterpillars that change color.
There was a request to see video of me giving a Raptor Center program. I don't have that, but Tuesday when I was feeding the education barn owl during my volunteer shift, I had fellow crew members, Maddy and Sue take some video with my camera and just ask me questions. This is not like one of my usual programs--I'm WAY more animated in front of a large audience, but I thought it would be fun to watch the barn owl eat. For those curious, I'm feeding her cut up pieces of mice.
The video cuts off before I can answer that last question. The barn owl is a captive bred bird and imprinted on humans. I think The Raptor Center got her from a facility in North Carolina, who breeds them for release in the wild.
Sometimes you see things on the Internet requesting clicks or money or whatever, but you never hear the results. Well, I'm happy to report that we were all part of something good and we did make a difference. Remember the Click for Condors? Here is a note from the folks at Ventana Wildlife Society:
Fantastic news! Your rabid clicking for the condors helped us win!! We got the $5,000 grant from Patagonia, which was turned over officially to us on Saturday, plus a matching $5,000 grant from Nepenthe. Thanks to you, VWS was rewarded $10,000, which will go to support our Species Recovery program and our work with the California Condors. Thank you all so much for your help, and for passing my message on to so many friends and family. We blew the competition out of the water, ending up with 18,000+ votes, which was something like 60% of the total.
And now, here is an official thank you from our Executive Director, Kelly Sorenson:
"This recent online vote was eye opening to us. What was so amazing is that we are able to reach thousands of people in such a short period of time. This online vote was fun and I know for some of you it became an obsession. We are committed to sharing with you interesting stories, news and updates and other activities like this recent vote on things that are important to our mission. One of the reasons why we were so successful in this vote was because of email. Please take a moment and forward this message of thanks to anyone that you asked for help during the vote and invite them to join our free email subscriber list. All they have to do is click here to subscribe. Anyone can unsubscribe at anytime but I promise to make it as fun and interesting as possible while furthering our mission of conserving native wildlife and their habitats. Together, we can create hope for people and wildlife. Thank you again for your support." If you had fun helping us out and you want to join our e-mail list, you can do that by clicking the link above. But don't feel obligated: your help was just what we needed. And as Kelly said, please forward this thank you e-mail to anyone you passed my original plea to, because I want to make sure everyone knows how much this meant to me, to Ventana Wildlife Society, and to the birds! I have also attached a thank you in the form of a laboriously crafted mini-comic starring our avian overlord, the King of the Bushtits. Oh, and a condor.
So, readers, if you did any clicking, pat yourself on the back, that you indeed helped a group reintroducing condors get $10,000. If you live near either of the business, make sure to let them know you appreciated their support of VWS. Great job, everyone. It's nice to see when we can make a difference.
I have to admit, I went into Birds and Beers last night with a little nervousness. I put up a notice on the blog and on the Minnesota listervs and I got a lot of emails from people saying that they want to come, but were either out of town or lived too far away. I wondered if anyone would show up?
But show up they did, and we had about 12 people! Merlin's Rest had promoted it, so some of their regulars also stopped by to see what it was all about. I didn't have much a of a theme planned, my ultimate goal was for people to connect, maybe learn about new places to watch birds, get bird questions answered, or even find a new bird watching partner.
I was really excited that the banders from Lowry Nature Center in Carver Park showed up--they offer banding that is open to the public every third Saturday of the month--as a matter of fact, they will be banding this Saturday. They're fun and knowledgeable guys. Frequent commenter on this blog, HellZiggy came with her hubby. He is not a birder, so Non Birding Bill even had someone to talk to. There were so many other people who showed up, and I fear I will not remember the names: I remember Pat, Bob, Katherine...I'll have to start assigning bird names--that I can remember.
It was a fun and easy going night, John Dingley the general manager, offered a peregrine falcon poster as a prize, local author Bill Watkins read about a wren being the king of the birds from one his books and we gave that away, and I gave away copies of the new Great River Birding Trail and Minnesota River Valley Birding Trail.
I'm going to do this again, probably the next one will be at Merlin's Rest, and as I travel, I will try and organize them on the road. I think Rochester, MN would be good--and Duluth, perhaps even at bird festivals. I also think I might have a theme night. I'm kicking around having people bring their favorite bird related book to the next one.
I had something else going on yesterday too--it was my birthday. When I had scheduled Birds and Beers with Dingley, we pretty much scheduled it as, "Hey, let's do it two weeks from Tuesday." NBB later pointed out, "That's your birthday." We didn't really have anything planned, and what better way for me to spend my birthday than with birders? When I told the group last night, Mark said, "What a wonderful way of having a surprise birthday party, turning the tables and surprising all your guests!"
NBB and I had a little party right before we left for Birds and Beers, and I am now happy to report that I am completely Bent! He got me the one book I am missing from my Arthur Cleveland Bent series, and I finally have a complete set! Whoot. He also had a gift specially crafted for me...
A custom made Birdwatcher Crayon Set. There are four colors: sepia, chestnut, brown, and beaver. I'm not sure how I feel about having a crayon called beaver, I never realized that was its own color.
I've been monarch ranching for awhile, but I've always wanted to ranch some swallowtails. Some species of swallowtail caterpillars feed on parsley. Earlier this spring, I found out that we had accidentally had a black swallowtail living in our apartment (we guess it came in as a caterpillar on some of Cinnamon's parsley) but I wanted to it right this summer, and find the caterpillar and watch it grow. Mr. Neil has some parsley (above) in his garden, so I decided to see if I could find swallowtail caterpillars on that. I find that locating caterpillars takes a long time the first time you look for them, but once you find them, your eyes become trained and in the future, they are easier to find. I sat down and studied the parsley.
After a good ten minutes of study, I found six small caterpillars. They looked nothing like any of the swallowtail caterpillars in my books. I looked up the general characteristics of the black swallowtail: caterpillars are found on parsley (check), on the top side of the leaf (check), and early stages resembles bird poop (check). But still, if you look at what a large black swallowtail looks like, the books show you this. This tiny thing doesn't look like that at all. Fortunately, with the magic of google, you can narrow your search of images on the internet and I found photos of young black swallowtail caterpillars and they look just like what I found in the above photo--success, we have swallowtails!
I took four of the six swallowtail caterpillars and put them in my butterfly pavilion. You can see a water bottle inside, holding a bunch of curly parsley for them to feed off of, right along side a water bottle full of milkweed and monarch caterpillars. Next to the pavillion is a bunch of milk weed in a different water bottle--those are plants with monarch eggs on them. I keep the eggs separate until the caterpillars hatch so I don't confuse leaves with eggs with the leaves for feeding. Should be an interesting couple of weeks.
Meanwhile, we've had an early sampling of our dangerous honey from the Olga hive. Mr. Neil told us to mix some of our honey and comb with some plain Greek yogurt. YUM!
It's like a decadent dessert, only it's yogurt...and honey... from our own bees--that's got to be healthy, right?
Don't forget, tonight at 6pm is Birds and Beers (a gathering of birders to have a drink and talk some birds) at Merlin's Rest. People of all abilities are encouraged to come, if you're interested in birds, you're invited. Non Birding Bill will also be there too, so if you want to bring a non birding spouse, bring 'em along.
Here's the announcement on Merlin's Rest website:
Tuesday: The Birds and the Beers! Join the Birdchick, our ornithologist publican (John Dingley), our ornithologist bartender Bob, and many others for an informal gathering of birdwatchers and enthusiasts. And did you know that Minnesota has its own ornithologists union? Check ‘em out. Smart folks and great photos in their gallery.
Mr. Neil has a cat flap on his garage...
I think I need to put a clarification up before I go further with this post. Mr. Neil has cats. I have given him all the information on the Cats Indoors Campaign, and some of his cats are strictly indoor cats, however one cat in particular cannot be an indoor cat (Mr. Neil readers know him as Fred the unlucky cat). Please do not bombard him with info on Cats Indoors, he knows it, I know it--we've discussed it, especially after the time when young Fred showed up with four puncture marks on his hind quarters in the shape of great horned owl talons. And yes, in a perfect world for me, all cats would be indoors--however, who out there lives a perfect world? It's not always an easy task to turn a free roaming outdoor cat into an indoor cat. We're not going to change every mind in one night and we're not going to get every cat out of the wild by tomorrow morning. We do what we can, as we can, and the Cats Indoors campaign is a gradual effort.
That said, Fred is an outdoor cat who lives in the garage. There is a special cat door that only opens when Fred is standing in front of it, he has a special sensor on his collar that causes it to open. We keep all of the bird seed in the garage (and beekeeping equipment). Recently, something has been coming into the garage and living large in the bird seed--most likely a raccoon. The only way that I could find that they could be getting inside, would be the cat door, I'm sure raccoon claws could outsmart a sensor. We have a motion sensitive game camera and set that up:
Raccoon one (apparently wearing a monacle) came in through the door. I had the camera too close to the cat door and the flash WAY over exposed all the images. Non Birding Bill did a lot of tweaking to get them to this state.
Raccoon two came into join the party. If one has figured it out, it's not long before others follow.
And raccoon number three--this one appears to be smaller than the first two. So far these three have kept there shenanigans to the bird seed and have left the bee supplies along. I'm not sure what the next step is going to be. On of Mr. Neil's readers has suggested a door that uses image recognition software. I suggested leaving Cabal, his large white german shepherd in the garage for a few nights.
And so, here is one of the coons leaving, a little fatter. Perhaps they will eat so much they will not fit through the door--much in the same way Pooh got stuck in Rabbit's hole after eating too much honey.
And yet another grasshopper sparrow, they are everywhere I go, I can't escape them. I've seen them before, but not like this summer. I don't know if I'm just paying more attention or if we are having a bumper crop of grasshopper sparrows...or if aliens from some distant planet are trying to send me a message about saving the planet via grasshopper sparrow (although, that would seem to me to be an unreliable messenger).
You can tell this press release about Cape May Bird Observatory's new website was sent by a hardcore birder:
"Since you all have blogs and/or have close connections to Cape May I thought you might like to take a look at the site..... and in the event that you might be looking for something to write about given the slow nature of the summer......."
Slow nature of summer? Not in my neck of the woods! There's always some birding happening (and now bees--and some new caterpillar madness had started which I'll be talking about soon). Oh, how my grasshoppery ways have caught up to me this last week--sheesh. Here it is Monday, and I have bloggin' left over from last Friday.
So, Friday at Carpenter was a first for me--banding a tiny bird. Usually, at Carpenter, I'm happy to lurk and watch the pros but the bands swiftly on the birds. I enjoy trying to get the birds out of the net and bringing them in, but I always felt my place at the table was to just promote all the cool things that they do. I'm used to banding large birds, but not the tiny ones, so I have avoided actually pacing a band on a bird. Friday that changed. There have been offers before, but every time I always answer, "Oh, let's wait for a cowbird, let me practice on a cowbird, not a chickadee or goldfinch."
Friday, Jen Veith, the Development Director and experienced bander would not take no for an answer and had me band my first tiny bird--a house wren--man oh man, talk about a really tiny bird to band! Larry took a photo of this momentous occasion (above photo). It all happened so fast, and I was so freaked about not breaking one of those tiny wings, or legs that I barely remember it.
Up next was a house finch. Larry helped supervise the banding of that bird. You will note that we are doing these outside. Jen recommended that the first few times I band birds outside, that way, if I accidentally let one go, it won't risk injury by hitting walls and windows indoors. I was much more comfortable putting the band on this one.
Here I am taking the wing cord--fancy talk for measuring the wing. This house finch was a hatch year bird (hatched this year) and we couldn't tell if it was male or female. I measured the wings, all went well and the bird flew away.
Since many of the birds I have banded (pelicans, hawks) it's still hard for me to get the songbird bander's grip down: holding the bird in my left hand with it's back to my palm, it's head between my index and middle fingers, also holding it's chest. With my small hands, the finch and wren fit easily in my hand...
Then came a much larger hairy woodpecker--not so easy to hold in one hand--good grief, how will I ever hold a blue jay in one hand? This bird we could tell was female and were able to determine her age by her eye color (brown to grayish brown indicates that this bird was hatched either last year or this year). She also had a brood patch for incubating eggs and chicks, which she wouldn't have if she hatched this year, so that means she is a second year bird--she was hatched last year.
In between teaching me how to band, Larry got to band an eastern phoebe. I took a picture with his new Sony digital camera--it's got a pretty good macro feature--look at that feather detail. While we were taking this photo, the phoebe flapped a few times, and each time we heard a rapid clicking noise--phoebe's snap their bill when agitated--just like owls do! I never knew they did that. Of course, I've never had the opportunity to make a phoebe angry.
After banding, Jen and I explored the prairie area at Carpenter--loaded with grasshopper sparrows (another one above) and sedge wrens. Jen and I came upon a family of grasshopper sparrows, and the young were just learning to fly. It was a hoot to watch their labored flights around us and then the oh so awkward landing on what looked like a sturdy perch but turned out to be a wobbly prairie flower. About as graceful as a girl in her first pair of high heels.
There was also a pair of eastern meadowlarks scolding us, we must have been too close to their nests. It would be fun sometime to move the banding operation out to the prairie and get some bands on the birds out here.
