I Needed Today

I was feelin' a tad stressed yesterday. Some of it travel related, some of it scheduling related, some of it money related, some of it deadline related, some of it work related, some of it book related--blah, blah, blah, blah, BLEH. It was to the point where I was even having trouble sleeping, where you wake up in the middle of the night and have even more irrational worries like, "I need to lose ten pounds." or "Am I going to have time to buy pickles and a baguette before Thursday?"--just ridiculous crap. And then I had today and realized that in the end, life is really cool.

I had my shift at The Raptor Center today.

First up, injured peregrine falcon number 568 is doing really well! She was very feisty when I took this photo right before her examination this morning. Her pins are out and her bone has healed.

Alana, who was her original vet has left The Raptor Center--it's a teaching hospital so there is a steady rotation of vets. The peregrine is now in the care of Dr. Mitch (in green on the left, who has been at The Raptor Center all of 9 days). Today, Dr. Julia Ponder (Executive Director and Vet) also checked on the peregrine with Dr. Mitch to make sure that the healed leg fracture was stable.

The doctors tested both legs to make sure that the fracture healed properly and that the leg wasn't sticking out at an odd angle. After that, Dr. Mitch and Dr. Ponder gave her a sort of falcon pedicure, by sloughing off any tape or medication residue on her toes. The big news is that the healed fracture looks stable and after the Thanksgiving Holiday, our injured falcon will be moved to a flight room with other peregrines--hopefully she will get along with the other peregrines in there and get used to moving around in a larger space! If all goes well, she will move on to flight training. What great news!

As if that wasn't great news enough, I got to give an All About Owls program. Most of the time at The Raptor Center I do a general Raptors of Minnesota program but periodically, groups will request something specific like owls, falconry, eagles, or just about anything. It's fun to break out of the routine. The group was very into it and there was 5th grade boy who knew almost all the owls that I brought out. The only one he missed was the above bird. He called it a ferruginous pygmy owl. Even though the bird is actually an eastern screech owl, I gave him props for even knowing that there is such a species as a pygmy owl.

After the program I got a chance to feed our education barn owl on my gloved hand. There's something relaxing about having a bird feel comfortable enough to eat while perched on your arm, you can't help but feel honored. It's also a fun opportunity to observe the birds at close range. I love getting lost in the stiff feathers on an owls facial disc.

All in all, not a bad day.

Mystery Bird

A bird that was photographed in Tennessee that appears to be a partial albino has birders guessing. The person who observed the bird said it was about 6" in length. It did appear
to have a tuft but does not look exactly like a tufted titmouse. It was spotted near a bird feeder. Do you have any ideas? So far some of the top birders have suggested tufted titmouse, Carolina chickadee, Junco, blue jay, or blue-gray gnatcatcher.

I was thinking either titmouse or chickadee myself.

Local Birds

After all the exotics in Texas, I was kind of jonesing to spend some time watching the usual suspects around Minnesota feeding stations. I'm dealing with a minor mouse issue in our apartment, so I've let my own feeders go empty. We headed to Mr. Neil's yesterday and his feeders have also gone empty because of a minor chipmunk issue. When I had been there about three weeks ago, the woods were chock full of activity with pine siskins, purple finches, juncos, and the other expected species. Yesterday, it was eerily silent...except for the non stop booming of rifles of deer season. I filled the feeders and gradual activity resumed, but not in time for photos. All of the images in this blog entry came from a quick stop at Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge this morning.

The visitor center is closed on Mondays, but you can still watch the feeders from outside, as well as take the trails. I'm not sure if it was because it was Monday and things were closed, but they only had their platform feeders out (not the super cool peanut feeder they had up last winter) and the platform feeder was empty--note the disappointed nuthatch above.

But fortunately, I'm the kind of crazy person who keeps a bag of bird seed in the car just for such an occasion--note the shocked look of the nuthatch in the above photo. So, I grabbed the mug from my car's emergency kit and tossed some seed into the feeders.

Chickadees came out of the woodwork--zipping in all over. I love that point at a feeding station when birds are coming from all directions and you don't know where to look next, it's just a constant flow of a activity. At one point, every time I took a photo with my digital camera through the scope, the image that came up would be a different bird: chickadee, nuthatch, two chickadees, downy woodpecker, nuthatch, chickadee.

Look--bookend chickadees! I really needed the relaxation, I'm getting edgy about travel this coming weekend. We normally stay home and Non Birding Bill have our little Naked Thanksgiving, avoiding all the holiday cranky and cramped travel. But, we're doing the Disapproving Rabbits book signing at Big Hat Books on Saturday at 4pm. So, we'll have Thursday for our celebration, but Friday we drive to Indianapolis--and there's supposed to be a storm in the Midwest--including Indiana. But I'm looking forward to meeting the folks form the Indian House Rabbit Society who will be at the signing.

Now the black-capped chickadees are facing out at the same time--perhaps this is a little Tomax & Xamot action going on?

So, here's a video of all the bird action going on, just at this small corner of the feeder. You can hears some goldfinches chipping the back ground. Not long after I took the video, a northern shrike flew in (it didn't stick around long enough for the photo) but I have to say that I have seen so many shrikes this fall, I think this is the most I've seen this time of year, so keep your eyes open around the feeders.

Final Rio Grande Valley Bird Festival Post

Really, it is. I swear. At least for this year.

Banding was slow today at Carpenter Nature Center and I spent the morning talking to the Development Director while she repaired nets. Fortunately, I had a chance to observe some banding while at the Rio Grande Valley Bird Festival. Once again, a Sunday morning trip was scheduled to watch bander Mark Conway (that's Mark in the above photo banding a kiskadee) and his assistants band birds at Los Ebanos Preserve.

Here's a closer shot of the kiskadee Mark was banding. Something interesting that I learned was that all kiskadees have a yellow gape.

I took a photo of one earlier in the festival and I had never noticed that before and thought it was a young bird, but all kiskadees of all ages have that yellow outline at the corners of their mouths.

The first bird of the morning wast a gray phase eastern screech owl. The banders weren't targeting owls, but they had the nets up at not long after dawn and this bird was just flying through and flew into the net.

Here is a long-billed thrasher which I hear way more than see in when birding in South Texas. That bill is not deformed, that's the way they are.

The best part of the day was getting to see a green jay up close. Last year they banded quite a few and I figured that green jays were par for the course.

But Mark said that they don't get green jays in the nets very often as they are members of the corvid family and very intelligent. They had not banded at Los Ebanos recently so the birds were just not used to it.

Mark said that this set a record for the most green jays that they have ever caught in a day: 9 green jays banded--and I never got tired of them.

Another exciting bird of the day was an olive sparrow--one of the hardest birds to see, you hear them quite a bit. I was glad to have a chance to get this photo because, frankly, my earlier efforts were just plain sad:

Behind all those tiny branches lurks an olive sparrow at Llano Grande. This was not bad, just finding an olive sparrow sitting on a branch long enough to aim your scope and camera is feat within itself.

Here, Mark is holding an orange-crowned warbler. These guys are all over in the trees in south Texas this time of year. They're not an easy warbler to see, so when a guide finds one, I think people hear warbler and hope for an exciting/colorful bird. As they search and search, they'll say, "I see a small brownish bird..." Yep, that's the orange-crowned. It's not even as orange as a blackburnian warbler. You may be wondering to yourself, why this bird is called an orange-crowned warbler...

Here, Mark demonstrates the name. When you hold and orange-crowned warbler about six inches from your face and blow on its crown, you can see a kind of orangish color on the underside of the crest feathers--see how obvious that is? Another one of those birds that was named when bird watching was done with a gun, not with binoculars.

Here are one of the many great-tailed grackles in the area. When you get them in the sun, they really are a striking bird. You can hear great-taileds singing all over Harlingen, any time of day--even all night long when they are roosting in the trees--how do those guys get any rest?

They do sound incredibly mechanical as opposed to musical. I wonder how that adaptation sounded, and what must have early explorers to North America have thought hearing those things chatter all night in the trees above them?

There was also a very exciting bird into the nets--a common yellowthroat, which to Mark are not common but something to study in depth. He thinks that there is an isolated population of yellowthroats that could be a subspecies that he calls the Brownsville yellowthroat. Will there a split some day separating this species of yellowthroat from the rest of the common yellowthroats seen around the United States? If so, Mark will have been instrumental in that research.

Okay, this doesn't have too much to do with banding, but there were quite a few anoles running around during the banding program and this guy with the wavy tail caught my eye. I wondered what happened to make it look like that? Did appear to slow it down in its daily travels.

And so, I leave you wit one final green jay photo, because they are just so darn cool looking. I'm very excited, it looks like we will be able to go out with Mark one day on the South Texas trip next year, which would be awesome for the group and great for me to learn different banding techniques from different people.

Mistrial In Jim Stevenson Cat Killing Case

This just in: the judge declared a mistrial in the case involving the birder who admitting shooting a cat he felt was feral and threatening a population of endangered piping plovers.

I think stupidity was exhibited on all sides of this case. The Birder in Question could have found other options besides blatantly shooting the cat. He could have been more discreet in killing it, he could have live trapped them and dropped them at a no kill shelter, he could have talked with bridge workers to find a solution to remove the cats and protect the plovers. He just took matters into his own hands, somewhat vigilante style.

The big issue was whether or not the cat in question was feral. In Texas it's legal to shoot and kill a feral cat, but not legal to shoot and kill a pet cat. A toll-booth employee, John Newland argued that he "owned" all the cats around the bridge because he put food out for them and toys. However, he never paid for the cats and never brought them inside his home. Newland also mentioned in one of his many interviews that he had noticed at least 10 cats that had been shot dead around the area--call me crazy, but as a responsible pet owner, if you see pets being killed in your area--you protect your pet, you bring them inside. Why isn't he being brought up on charges for encouraging non native/invasive predators around endangered species?

And the media seems more interested in portraying the whole thing as bird lovers vs cat lovers. It's more interesting to them to tell the story about some wacky bird watcher went so over the edge in his love for birds that he bought a gun and killed a cat.

Even though it appears the The Birder in Question is avoiding jail time and a fine, I can't imagine what his legal fees will be from this--possibly more than the fine. I don't know if this really did anything to further the cause of protecting birds from feral cats.

I And The Bird

I and the Bird is up and running. For those new to the blog, I and the Bird is a Carnival or a collection of blog entries from various bloggers. It's great way to discover new blogs out there or ones that have been around that you have never experienced.

It runs the gamut from a few of us reporting on the Rio Grande Valley Bird Fest (Amy got a baby javelina photo--I is sooooooooo jealous!) to slowed down bird calls to the evolution of bird claws. Cool stuff.

Disapproving Rabbits In Indy

This is a photo by John Rubbo, the official photographer of the Minnesota Companion Rabbit Society. He took this at the DreamHaven Book Release party.

Well, we have a whirlwind trip to Indianapolis coming up next week. Cinnamon and I will be on Daybreak Saturday Morning on WISH TV sometime between 8:30am - 9am. That afternoon, we'll be doing a book signing at Big Hat Books at 4pm. Members of the Indiana House Rabbit Society will be on hand with literature about whether or not a rabbit is the right pet for you and have live foster bunnies.

I don't think I can manage a Birds and Beers, we just don't have enough time on this visit--I have a large family so it's hard to squeeze everything in. Speaking of which, my mom will be at the signing. If you think I'm short, wait until you see her. And if anyone is curious, Non Birding Bill will be on hand too on bunny wrangling duty. So, come meet Cinnamon and learn about a great rabbit organization in Indiana.

Estero Llano Grande State Park

And yet more Texas birding goodness. Incidentally, if you have been reading these entries and thinking, "Dude, I so have to get my birding butt to south Texas!" I have been in contact with a friend of Non Birding Bill's who runs a travel agency and we are putting together a trip for next October...

I had so much fun on my field trip to Estero Llano Grande State Park on my first day of the Rio Grande Valley Bird Festival, I thought I would go back and do some proper digiscoping before I had to work the birdJam booth on Saturday morning. It really is a cool park--it's new and I think over time will gain in popularity.

I wanted a chance to see and digiscope the black-bellied whistling duck without the fog. These guys were all over the park and they kind of whistle and their bellies are black--boy ornithologists must have been having a bad day--a bird that actually fits its name. Shocking.

The park isn't all wetlands. The path to the visitor center is quite lush and great for watching butterflies. Please don't ask me what kind--I do know lots of people were freaking out because some rare butterfly had been spotted but I can't remember the name. I'm taking baby steps towards butterfly id--I mean, I ranch caterpillars but I don't drop everything to see a hairstreak. I am kinda getting more into it...I must admit that I did pick up one or two butterfly id guides. Man, butterflies have much better names than birds: Shasta Blue, Frigga Fritillary (say THAT 5 times fast), Dull Firetip (kind of an oxymoron name), Definite Patch, Confused Cloudywing--seriously, those are all butterfly names. Ornithologists, if you discover any more birds on this planet, please take note of butterfly names and come up with something creative.

The area also had some hummingbirds. I will mark off a few points from the park for not having their bird feeders filled. Guys, what were you thinking? It's a bird festival weekend, plus you have your own programs going on, how can you not have your bird feeders filled? For a new park, this is not a good first impression--empty feeders on a busy weekend? If you're trying to attract regular birder traffic, that's not the way to do it. I know some of us left feed back on that, so hopefully after the park is open awhile they will have a regular schedule to keep their feeders filled. The empty hummer feeders did put the kibosh on my chances of getting a decent buff-bellied hummingbird photo. Believe it or not, there is a female ruby-throated hummingbird in the above shot. Can you see her? No? She's hard to see? You betcha', so I put my camera to the scope:

There she is. She would fly towards the empty hummingbird feeder, test it out and then sit on the thorn, waiting or perhaps hiding from the buff-bellied, it seemed on constant patrol and ready to chase her off if she even thought about approaching a feeder.

Periodically, a buff-bellied hummingbird would show up, but it never landed in a spot that was easy to photograph. This was the best I could do.

The park did have a nice shorebird selection and after my class that I took this summer, I thought I would try my id skills. It was tough because I learned how to id shorebirds for Minnesota and the Dakotas, not Texas. But I had the time, they were fairly close and it was a good idea to practice. Above we have sleeping shorebirds, mostly dowitchers and stilt sandpipers. But time to break 'em all down and see what I can find.

This one is easy enough--a black necked stilt. Can't really mistake it for anything else.

Here's a family group of stilts. Actually, while I was digiscoping these guys, a rail flew past me. It was so fast and I only saw the silhouette, but I'm assuming it was a Virginia rail. Several soras scooted about the reeds too.

Argh! Here is where it would get tough. Okay, there's a dude in the back with light colored legs and it's smaller than the black legged dudes in front--they guy in back has to be a least sandpiper. But what are the other three? They are either western sandpipers or semi-palmateds. There bills didn't look blunt and kind of down curved--are they westerns? I'm thinking that they're westerns.

Fortunately, as I was digiscoping, I found Clay Taylor (digiscoped above). He confirmed that they were in fact westerns--wrong time of year for semi-palms anyway. Incidentally, he was there for the butterflies.

Now, here was an interesting scenario. The bird on the right is a yellowlegs with a broken leg and the other three are dowitchers. Now which yellowlegs and which dowitchers. Lesser yellowlegs are about the same size as either dowitcher, so this would be a lesser yellowlegs. Now, the dowitchers were very vocal and my shorebird instructor said that if they're noisy, they're long-billed dowitchers. Everyone who passed me called them long-billed as well. Plumage-wise, I just can't really tell. If anyone wants to add tips in the comments on your tips for separating dowitchers--please feel free. I'm calling these long-billed dowitchers.

Or maybe I should call them long-billed bullies, because they would go after any bird trying to feed in their vacinity. Note the posture of the bird in the middle of the dowitchers--puffing itself up and stretching its neck to look impressive. The injured yellowlegs was in no position to argue and soon flew off. But the bird in the middle was not finished.

It made a beeline for a stilt sandpiper (on the right). Again, notice the dowitcher craning its neck as it approaches the stilt sandpiper, major intimidation mode.

But then suddenly everybody flew off--even the thug dowitcher (that's his rump in the above photo in mid take off. I looked up and sure enough, there was a Cooper's hawk cruising overhead. The shorebirds formed a tight flock and circled the water noisily. The Coops didn't dive for any of the birds, but continued over the wetlands in search of less suspecting prey.

A few minutes after the hawk passed, an immature lark sparrow popped up to see what was going on. About this time, I needed to head back towards the convention center. I ran into Clay who was still searching out the butterflies. We talked for a few minutes and one of the visitor center staff came out and said that they had observed a bobcat lurking in the vegetation behind us. Who knew? Stuff like that always makes me wonder what I miss. How many owls do I walk under? How many coyotes cross the path behind me? How often has mountain lion considered whether or not I'd be worthwhile prey?

Inca Dove Making Headlines

The Inca dove (like one of the doves in the above photo) reported in Two Harbors is making headlines. Last night it was a headline on the Star Tribune web page and MPR interviewed Jim Lind, the man who found and photographed this first state record.

This morning fm107's Ian and Margery called and we talked about it on their show. They were referencing the part of the story where Jim describes seeing the bird for the first time. "I was shaking, I knew it was a very big deal," said Lind, an avid birder.

Margery asked, "Seriously, he was shaking?"

I tried to explain that it was a big deal to submit a first state record to a bird records committee and then the conversation derailed, "There's a state records committee for birds?!?"

They wanted to know if the guys on the records committee were fun or serious...I think we can guess the answer to that question.

I have not gone to see the Inca dove and probably will not. I have no immediate plans to visit that area up near Duluth and can't justify the gas. Also, I just got back from Texas where I trippin' over the tiny doves (note how tiny they are in the above photo--those are house sparrows mixed on the tray feeder with the doves). I'll be curious to see if it stays and for how long. It's great find for the state. I do wonder how it got here, they just don't seem that capable of long distance flight. But maybe it's taken over a year for it to get here--just gradually pushing north? What's weird is that during the Detroit Lakes Bird Festival this year, a hard core birder who lives in Florida and had done lots of birding in Texas thought he saw one fly off the road during the field trips. He was hesitant to bring it up and a small group went back to look for it and it was never found--was this the same dove that over the summer and fall traveled southeast towards Two Harbors? We had the green-tailed towhee last year that showed up in southern Minnesota after being banded in Canada.

Another birding mystery.