Cape May Autumn Weekend & Blogging Confernece

Are you going to Cape May Autumn Weekend? If you're already on the fence as to whether or not you should sign up for the action packed East Coast migration spectacular, don't forget this is your chance to meet some of your favorite bird bloggers! So far, here are the bloggers I know will be there:

10,000 Birds
Beginning To Bird
Birdchick
Born Again Bird Watcher
Hasty Brook
Hawk Owl's Nest
Mary's View
Somewhere in NJ
Susan Gets Native
WildBird on the Fly
Leica Birding Blog

If you would like to get the discounted blogging rate, the requirements and info can be found here. Some of the above bloggers are going for the conference and some will be there to work booths. It's a great time, with great birders, great birds, great face painting, great pancakes, and beautiful scenery. Hope to see you there.

Banded Sandpipers

Remember the banded semi-palmated sandpiper we found over the weekend along Duck Banding Road on Big Stone NWR? Well, Doug Buri found out where and when it was banded from Nate Thomas, the doctoral candidate working on tracking them:

The first bird was banded about 2 miles south of Salt Lake on the Minnesota/South Dakota border on July 21-23 2004. That means that the bird is at least 3 years old! Since we couldn't read the individual band number, we don't know if it was tagged as an adult or an immature bird but it has been surviving and migrating since 2004! WOW!

I didn't mention that on our final field trip, we found a second banded semi-palmated sandpiper with different colored tags. I can tell you from my other banding experiences that finding recovered birds is unusual, but finding two banded birds in a weekend--that's unbelievably rare. Again, we couldn't read the individual band number, but based on the color marks on its legs, Nate said the bird was banded in either 2003 or 2005, making the bird either 4 or 2 years old.

These birds breed in the Arctic and migrate down to South America for the winter. Think of the thousands of miles they cover year after year--I'm still trying to wrap my head around that one. What is this saying about migratory route fidelity? So, if you are lucky enough to see any shorebirds in your neck of the woods, even if you can't identify them, think about the migratory journey they could be on.

Pishing A Golden Eagle

What happens if you pish at a golden eagle:

This is Andi, one of the education birds at The Raptor Center. She's an adult golden eagle and we know she is female because of her large size (in the raptor world, females are larger than males) and each spring she lays an egg (it's unfertilized, it's just that her hormones are ready to make an egg). She was found injured during a snow storm. Her injuries were consistent with a collision with power lines. When she was brought in, she had porcupine quills all over her face. Though none were in her eye, as she recovered, her left eye clouded up with scar tissue and is now blind in that eye (we speculate that a quill did get in there and she got it out before she was captured). That combined with a permanent wing injury makes her unreleasable and she will spend the rest of her life at TRC.

Shorebird Immersion Course


I told Doug Buri that if he ever offers his shorebird identification workshop again, he should call it a Shorebird Immersion Course. Number one, you're surrounded by shorebirds, up close and personal (like the short-billed dowitcher and pectoral sandpiper above). Number two, you are out in the mud flats and could sink.

Here's my buddy Amber out taking photos of the many shorebirds that we saw. You can see that the ground surrounding her was a tad wet. Doug's motto was that the way to id shorebirds is to get up close, out on the mud flat. The birds would initially fly away and then come back and feed near you--a human shape is not a known predator so they don't worry about us too much. During one of the morning trips, we were walking on the mud flats. As we went along, I felt my feet sink a little with each step. As long as we kept moving, it wasn't a problem. But then the group stopped to watch some birds and I noticed the world getting taller. I looked down and discovered my Keens were engulfed in mud. We stayed and I tried to quietly free myself--it wasn't happening. Doug said, "Well, at this point we can either go forward or go backwards, whatever the group wants to do."

"Maybe we should go back, I'm starting to sink." I said in a calm voice.

Doug laughed and said something to the effect of "How can you tell, you're always low to the ground." Our group was in a line and I was in back, so no one could really see the situation. I tried again to free my shoes and said, "I kind of am sinking." Again, in a calm tone.

One of the group turned around and saw my shoes and said, "Oh!"

"Yeah, seriously," I said. "I'm sinking and can't get out."

It took two people, but we freed my shoes and I continued on, although a little muddy. Fortunately, there were lots of puddles nearby and I was able to rinse of my shoes.

Doug made us work for those birds, whether it be standing on unsteady mud...

Working on id in a coming storm...

Descending loose rocks near a dam...

Or trudging through eight foot high cattails.

But it was worth it! These little least sandpipers were within about five feet of our group. They were too close to digiscope so I just aimed my camera the old school way--point and shoot.

However, I did get some up close shots of the leasts.

This is a semi-palmated plover (above) not to be confused with the semi-palmated sandpiper (below):

And if you're wondering what the heck "palmated" is all about, it's a throw back to when bird id was done with a shot gun. If you hold a dead semi-palmated sandpiper (or plover) in you hand, about six inches from your face, you will see some slight webbing between their toes. Not all shorebirds have this and as a regular birder, it's not something you're going to notice out in the field. The semi-palmated plover is one of the cutest shorebirds out there--kind of like the kid brother of a killdeer.

"I wish he'd quit copying me. Sigh."

I have to say, Doug had some unconventional methods for teaching us id. Here he was doing a slide show on the finer points of sandpiper identification at a local restaurant. The walls were kind of a peachy color and to help keep the colors true, he borrowed a cook's apron to use as a screen.

In our final class he made us identify old decoys. Actually it worked, we used the hints that he gave us and we were able to figure out what species the artist was trying to carve.

Some questions came up in the comments section about the bugs. I have to say that for all but one of the field trips, we didn't have any mosquito problems. My biggest concern was sunburn and heat exhaustion. When I took most of these photos (like the above dowitcher), it was in the upper 90's and high humidity. I was covered from head to toe with my third application of sun block--I could feel my pores staging a large acne protest on my face, and I could feel sweat dripping down my back and my legs. Stinky mud oozed through my Keens enveloping my toes. It was late afternoon and we were watching some of the birds bathe, I risked the spongy mud to dip my feet in the water, hoping for some cool relief only to be greeted with warm bathwater temperatures. But it was awesome and I had a GREAT time. I was in the middle of nowhere, unable to hear any mechanical sounds (no planes, no cars) and just the sounds of calling shorebirds.

But all his torturous techniques worked, I can now identify my own photos with confidence, instead of sending them on to friends to help id:

This is a pectoral sandpiper.

This is a short-billed dowitcher.

Here's another of the oh so cute least sandpiper.

Here we have the diabolical lesser yellowlegs, not to be confused with the even trickier...

greater yellowlegs. Okay, I know some of you out there are saying, "Yo, Shaz, that bird looks EXACTLY like the photo above it! How can it be different?" Well, this bird was 30% larger than the bird in the other photo and if you look close, it's bill is "two toned" it's lighter at the base than the tip. The lesser yellowlegs has an all dark bill. Really, it does. Honest.

All in all, this workshop was a great time, I learned a lot and I highly recommend it to anyone who would like to learn their shorebirds. Part of my block is that there aren't any places where I live that I could watch shorebirds up close several times. I didn't necessarily see several species, but I needed the repetition of the common species in different light to really get them down. Doug has a relaxed teaching style that makes learning fun and helps you feel encouraged. I almost feel like I could take on gulls sometime in the next five years.

An Exciting Day

I'm too wiped out to do a proper entry, but I will leave you with some exciting bits from the day. First up, can you identify the bird in the above photo? Hint: It's not a shorebird. When you're ready to guess, the adult plumaged bird can be seen here. No prize, just glory in the comments section.

Second, I met someone totally cool (in my book) on the trip. Long time readers of this blog may recall that I am a big fan of the crop art at the Minnesota State Fair. One of my all time favorite pieces was a portrait of Jackie Chan in 2005. Turns out that one of the women taking the shorebird workshop not only does crop art, but her husband did the Jackie Chan portrait (I totally geeked out). I told her that her cool points had just sky rocketed in my book. Between that and the fact that there is a Strong Bad sticker on her car, leads me to believe that we could be friends outside of birding--if my overwhelming (but sincere) excitement over crop art didn't frighten her. I'm not sure she wants me to completely out her or her husband as crop artists, but I will say that if you visit Cropart.com they have some work up in the gallery section.

Take note of the above photo. Notice anything out of the ordinary? Note the bird coming in for a landing. Do you see tags on the legs?

We found a tagged semi-palmated sandpiper! Normally, I would say that finding a tagged bird is excitement enough--we'll report it, find out where it was banded, how old it is, etc. But I'm even more excited that when it flew in, I was able to tell the trip leader that we had a tagged semi-palmated sandpiper...I identified a semi-palmated sandpiper on my own (sniff, sniff) I've had a total breakthrough!

Shorebird Workshop Day 1

Today was hardcore! Yes sir, this was some mighty fine birdin' in some sloshy areas. We drudged through wetland vegetation to get as close as possible to some shorebirds--and they didn't care! Okay, some cared a little but for the most part they just probed away at the mud, oblivious to our presence. That's our fearless leader Doug Buri above. I don't know if you can see it in the above photo, but here are some dark specks in the sky--those are swallows, thousands and thousands of swallows (of several different species) swarming over our heads. Doug said that the winds pushed insects from the lake to one end and the birds were above catching them. That's really cool and all, but I did wonder...how may insects are just overhead to cause the skies to cloud with swallows? Eep!

The least sandpipers didn't care about us in the least (har har--sorry, I couldn't resist). A minor problem that I had was that they were so oblivious to us that they would turn their backs to us and ignore the six large creatures and I had to wait to get a head on photo.

Doug has really planned this workshop well. He brought up a common problem that I can relate to. When you go out to watch shorebirds, you will go someplace where there are hundreds, if not thousands (the more there are the easier, right?) and it can be tough to learn id that way--too many species to focus on, too overwhelming. The birds constantly move and it's like watching a pot of boiling vegetable soup--it's hard to focus on just one vegetable. He chose areas for today where there would be 3-4 species for us to really focus and learn--species that I have trouble with like pectoral sandpipers, semi-palmated sandpipers, killdeer (okay, I don't have problems with killdeer--I'm not that bad), and least sandpiper (three of those four species are in the above photo). I really, really needed this because goodness knows I have misidentified quite a few shorebirds in this blog. Doug is also using The Shorebird Guide as our text for the workshop--a book that I love. Not only is it full of useful info, but the photos are just gorgeous--really works of art. It's a great book buy it--it won't teach you shorebirds over night, but it will help.

Killdeer are really helpful in the field, they are everywhere, you see them all the time anyway, so you have an idea of their size and they make great comparisons--how big is the bird in relation to a killdeer? Check out the bird behind the killdeer--we probably would have figured this one out without the aid of the killdeer. You notice the neon yellow legs and you may think, could this be a yellow legs? No, way too buffy...

So it's a buff-breasted sandpiper. We weren't really looking for that today, but it was a great and welcome find.

Here we have a couple of birds, the larger is a pectoral sandpiper and you'll note the gray mottling goes halfway down over its chest and makes an abrupt stop. Next to it is a smaller bird. Ack! What could it be? Doug asked me, "If you have to choose a color for this bird, brown or gray, what would you answer?" I answered gray. Then he asked, "Does the bill look like it's the same color as the legs or do the legs look like a different color?" I said that they looked the same. He said, "Semi-palmated sandpiper."

That's all well and good, but the hard part is how do I tell the semi palm from the least--they're almost the same size. Even though the least is a half inch smaller than the semi palm, that can be a hard difference to see in the field.

We looked at this bird and again, Doug asked, "If you have to choose a color for this bird, brown or gray, what would you answer?" I answered brown. "Does the bill look like it's the same color as the legs or do the legs look like a different color?" I said that the legs and bill did not look like it was the same color. That makes this a least.

These are just some of the great tips we are learning from Doug, we're also learning lots of other id clues. He also had us look at a shore line in the distance without binoculars. You could easily see the whites of the semi-palmateds. In some cases, you could see that the birds were quite gray with the naked eye. When you put up your binos, you could see the browner least sandpipers which weren't so visible to the naked eye. In the scope, you can also notice that the bill on the semi-palmated sandpiper is more blunt tipped at the end and the least comes to a finer point.

So, here we go side by side, can you tell which bird is which?

I have to say there are a TON of frogs and toads here. At our first stop this morning we were totally surrounded. Every time someone took a step, twelve frogs would jump in different directions--sometimes ricocheting off of our legs. I guess lots of frogs are a good sign of healthy water.

There were also quite a few toads. I don't think this is an American toad and am wondering if this is a great plains toad. I sent a photo to Stan, but haven't heard from him yet. Anyone out there familiar with these guys? It was kind of spikey and made me think of Delmar in Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou when he says, "She loved 'im up and turned him into a h-h-hooorny toad."

And now I must rest up so I can soak up more shorebirding knowledge tomorrow. It's a great day when all you do is learn new things all day long. I'm still glad that there are birds I don't know and I can have the "ah-ha" moment and finally understand the difference between hard to id birds.

Doug Buri Wasn't Kidding

We're actually supposed to be listening to a class right now, but we're on a break--the shorebirding so far this morning has been FANTABULOUS! Doug wasn't kidding, we totally got within five feet of a least sandpiper (which was advertised). If we had a net with a pole, we could have caught it. More tonight.

Black Swallowtails Growing Up

Howdy, peeps, I write to you from a hotel in the lovely state of South Dakota. Tomorrow starts our shorebird workshop. I'll blog when I can, but most of my time will be dedicated to unlocking the id secrets of tiny shorebirds.

"You can't see me!"

Time to catch up on the swallowtail madness. Well, if you couldn't find the black swallowtail caterpillar in the last post, HellZiggy did a masterful job of pointing it out. Here's an up close view of the cat:

It's amazing that in less than two weeks it went from a tiny thing resembling finch poop to this big squishy thing. You can really see how the stripes work to hide its lardiness amongst the parsley stems.

Right before I left for Indianapolis, all of our swallowtails were forming chrysalises and Non Birding Bill had to help with the ranching as well as maintain the blog. I wanted to try and get a photo of the swallowtail chrysalis formation because they make such interesting little structures.

The first thing they do is find a place that looks like a good spot to hang for a couple of weeks, then they scatter silk all over to secure themselves in place.

After they have their rear ends secured, they somehow emit two silk strings from either side and use that to help attach to the stem or stick. They lean into it and eventually shed their skin to look like this:

This particular caterpillar decided to form its chrysalis on a milkweed stem and the green and yellow really blended well with the plant. There were times when I walked into the kitchen and couldn't see it right away. I was so fascinated by the silk strings and really wanted to try and see how those formed. I had one swallowtail cat left and kept close tabs on it. Alas, I lost it at one point when it decided to go on a walk about and went behind the radiator in the kitchen, it eventually reappeared on the table:

It made its way to a candle holder in the center of the table. Now, one of the upsides of having a camera with a great macro feature is that you get awesome detailed shots of small objects. The downsides is that you get more detail than you bargained for. The candle holder and cat is coated in a layer of dust. The cat picked up most of the dust behind the radiator the holder is an example of my contempt for house cleaning. But, ignore the dust and not the silk coming out of the black spots--must be a special gland that produces the string that will hold the cat in place. Eventually, this caterpillar shed its skin and if you read NBB's entries while I was gone, you'll know it looked like this:

Whoa! What happened? It's brown instead of green? This the massive amount of dust the caterpillar picked up in the kitchen cause it to turn such a dingy color? No! As someone pointed out in the comments, swallowtails can form their chrysalis into either green or brown--the color depends on where its made to keep it camouflaged. I had read about this, and was hoping I would get my cats to do this--one of the reasons I let them out of the Butterfly Garden and let them go where they wanted, to see if they would change color--and they did! I love it when a plan comes together.

When I came home, the chrysalises started to change color. Just like the monarch chrysalis, the swallowtail caterpillars darkened and you could make out the butterfly wings on the inside about 12 hours before they emerged. See the black and yellow through the green skin?

I put the chrysalis into the Butterfly Garden and the next morning the black swallowtail had emerged, ready to take on the world.

I got a chance to get some photos and really notice the splotches of color on the under wings--so beautiful! Something interesting about the swallowtails--when they first emerged, they smelled like moldy parsley--beauty does come with a price.

The swallowtails took their time to leave. We placed them on the ledge, they pumped their wings and eventually took to the air after about twenty minutes. I tell ya', after this, I'm gonna inspect my parsley a bit more closely from now on. I do wonder how many eggs and tiny cats Cinnamon has eaten.

We still have a few monarch caterpillars left, but I think it's time to be winding things down at the Stiteler Butterfly Ranch. Now, it's off to bed to get ready for shorebirds.

And Yet Another Test

Okay, there's some kind of blogger publishing problem. Several comments and a couple of posts are not showing up on the blog, but people who get the RSS feed can see it...hmm, curious. So, lets do the test again and this time, we'll try a photo. Can you see the black swallowtail caterpillar in this bunch of parsley? You may have to click on the photo to enlarge it to be able to see it.