Pouring More Salt

As if missing the northern shrike banding weren't bad enough, my buddy Larry Sirvio has sent more photos of what I missed at Carpenter's banding this morning! Hm. I don't think that turkey is going to fit into that Potter Trap...and the next photo I think deserves a caption contest:

Here is a first year sharp-shinned sitting on top of a Potter Trap with a freshly trapped junco. I bet a junco has never been so happy to be trapped in its life. Got any caption ideas? The one who makes me chuckle out loud wins their choice of a Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America or a Lang Elliot's Music of the Birds: A Celebration of Bird Song (with CD)--prizses courtesy of Houghton Mifflin.

Pain And Banding Withdrawl

My schedule has been nuts this December and I haven't had a chance to go to Friday banding at Carpenter Nature Center. This morning I had to miss it because I had a tv segment. I just came home and am going through email when I found the report of what they got this morning:

This photo was taken by Dennis Donath--a shrike, they got a northern shrike and I missed it! Stupid tv segment! It even has fresh blood around its bill from having killed something (that's one of the reasons shrikes aren't raptors--they don't kill with their feet, they kill with the bill).

Pain, withdrawl, gnashing of teeth, lots and lots of whining...

Countable Birds?

I had some errands to run yesterday. I needed to pick up some seed for Mr. Neil's house and I needed some seed to take onto Showcase Minnesota with me. I went to Cardinal Corner in Newport and decided to take a quick trip over to Point Douglas Park to see if I could find a Barrow's goldeneye. Two had been reported in that area mixed in with some large flocks of common goldeneye, bouncing between the Minnesota and the Wisconsin side of the river. Barrow's is an unusual bird for Minnesota and you can see some great comparisons of the two species over at Bill Schmoker's site.

There were oodles of common goldeneye and some trumpeter swans. Note the swan above on the left that is leaning forward? It was trying to break up some of the ice to get through to the other side. It was interest to watch the swan rock back and forth and push its way through.

There were some other species mixed in with the common goldeneye, including redheads and a canvasback (and the ever present Canada geese). I wasn't really seeing anything that looked like a Barrow's goldeneye. Local birder Tom Bell said that you watch for a black thumb mark on the side of the bird. I wasn't really trying that hard either. I don't know, we seem to have Barrow's goldeneye reported every year in Minnesota, but it's not a bird that I try for very hard. So, I just decided to focus on some digiscoping and see what kinds of shots I could get. It was warm(ish) day in the 30s, there was sun and I was just happy to be out on a day when we have only eight hours of daylight.

When I was going through my images on iPhoto I noticed this photo. There is a merganser, but check out the duck in the top center of the photo. Here's a zoom in:

There's a thumb! It's a Barrow's goldeneye! I haven't seen one before and I don't know if I'll count this one. I didn't realize I was seeing it while I was there but found I had it when I came home. However, if this was a bird I didn't know but was trying to id and needed to take the image home to consult some field guides, I would. If you see a bird out in the wild but didn't know it was there, can you count it? I shall ponder this...

More Pigeon Extremists

This past June, I blogged about a pigeon fancier club that was trapping and killing native raptors to protect introduced pet birds aka roller pigeons. I thought it was interesting that the club's official statement admitted the was illegal and didn't condone it, but did feel that they were entitled to get rid of hawks for killing their valuable pigeons--much the same way farmers protect their livestock.

Well, Birder's World blog recently blogged about it and had some of the actual photos from the investigation--including a photo of the live trap with a bait pigeon and freshly trapped (live) Cooper's hawk--that hawk survived, although many did not.

I've said it before and I'll say it again--this is unreasonable. If you have a prey species as a pet and then let it loose in the wild where there are naturally occurring predators and then get upset when the pet gets eaten is unreasonable. If I let my pet rabbit Cinnamon loose along the Mississippi River near Red Wing, Minnesota where there are a bunch of bald eagles, and then she got eaten--that would be my fault. She's been raised as a pet and not to survive in the wild. Just because I have her and love to watch her run does not mean that I have the right to let her run where ever I want and expect nothing bad to happen.

Roller pigeons are not part of our natural ecosystem. And even if decades ago you could fly these birds without hawks taking them--think about the history. We didn't have that many hawks because of pesticides and wanton shooting decades ago. Times change and environments change. Native wildlife puts up with enough trying to learn to live with us. We don't need to take native predators out of the skies because someone insists on flying their non native pet and not want to deal with the consequences.

These pigeon fanciers really should consider switching to falconry, you could fly those birds and not have to worry as much about them being eaten and you still get to watch some cool flying action. Although, last time I put that in the blog, some pigeon fanciers sent me nasty emails telling me (with some creative profanity woven in), "How dare you call yourself a bird lover with an attitude like that! Blah blah blah." I love birds--I even enjoy pigeons, I just want people to take responsibility for their pets.

And if you need something cleansing after reading this, here's the reason why Cinnamon disapproves so much--I make her dress like an elf and dance with birds (it may take a minute for the video to load).

Cleansing Suet Bunnies & Ringed Parakeets

So, it must be the last minute Christmas crunch, tempers appear to be flaring. I'm on some different listservs and all I'm gonna say is that some people are wearing some cranky pants. So, I was trying to find something cleansing, remember the cleansing nuthatch? I was looking over photos that I haven't posted and hoped to find something cleansing there. I thought I found a cleansing blue jay:

But, some people have issues with blue jays and now matter how cute a photo of one may be, they just cannot get on board with a cleansing blue jay. It's not your fault, blue jays, it's that Audubon painting that shows you chugging egg yolks like frat boys around a beer bong. Lot of birds eat other birds eggs, you just end up taking the rap for it more often.

So I continued my search for something cleansing and then Els from the Netherlands who has been a frequent contributor to the Disapproving Rabbits blog emailed me a photo of home made suet bunnies:

Els* writes, "It's winter here now and I'm spending a fortune trying to feed the birds outside. Now I've resorted to making my own feedballs... and somehow I thought just balls would be boring, so there it is: a fat rabbit!"

Els ads, "Can't find any disapproving in the face yet though, so I think he agrees!" People have sent us portraits of Cinnamon, shown us Cinnamon jack-o-lanterns, and now suet bunnies. Life is very strange, and I'm loving every minute of it! Breathe in the suet bunnies, breathe out the suet bunnies. Cleanse with the suet bunnies, cleanse. Let the holiday tensions melt away, like a suet cake in 90 degree temperatures...breathe in, breathe out.

Els also included a photo of some ring-necked parakeets that live wild in the Netherlands. Els tells me that these are the result of pet birds that escaped, survived and multiplied some 30 years ago. All big cities in The Netherlands have them now. This pair of parakeets were eating nuts right outside his window. He blames them for not being able to get his work done. I found an entry about these parakeets over at the City Parrots Blog. Interesting stuff.

* I learned after I did this post that Els is female not male. As always, I blame my husband for this.

Because Amy Asked For It

So, we went to see a preview of Sweeney Todd last night, which was fun--perhaps not the feel good Christmas movie one might expect to see this time of year, but a great movie. This is not a musical for kids or the squeamish! It is a rated R, bloody movie but if you're familiar with the Stephen Sondheim musical, you kind of know that going in.

Johnny Depp is GREAT and sings the songs well (no surprise there, we heard him sing in the John Waters classic Cry Baby. Actually, it was weird because there area couple of shots of him and I started thinking, "Man, Sweeney Todd is hot." but then I'm, "Wait, he's a blood thirsty killer--ingore the Johnny Depp animal magnetism, he's not hot!"

Helena Bonham Carter did a good job, she doesn't have that strong of a voice for singing, but since it's a movie and the camera can make the scenes more intimate and she's a great actress, it works for the most part.

The story is about a barber who gets swindled out of his cozy family and years later seeks to exact revenge...as only a barber can. There is an issue of disposing of the bodies, but fortunately, the barber shop is over a meat pie shop...it's the best bloody serial killer movie with cannibalism and singing that you'll see this year! If you're worried that you can't take the gross factor, the music almost always clues you in that a murder is about to happen so you can cover your eyes, but make no mistake there is lots of blood. Again, not something I would take kids to go see.

And because Amy (who is hosting the next I and the Bird, get her entries in by December 20th) asked for it, here it is. MAC cosmetics was at the preview and offering free "Sweeney Todd makeovers". They asked if I wanted a little or a lot, so I got a lot. Also, Sweeney Todd Hair Salon was there too giving out white hair extensions, so I signed up for that too. Here's the end result:

Born Again Bird Watcher calls this The Demon Birder of Fleet Street...or at least of the Twin Cities. When they started to put the pale make up on to make me look dead, the woman said, "Wow, on everyone else, this looks like deadly pale, it's actually a good color for you!" So she went under the table and brought out something that was just pure white and that gave me the dead person look. Non Birding Bill was confused--he liked the goth look but was not used to me wearing so much make up and found it hard to have a conversation with me. Not a big call for having "smoldering eyes" at bird festivals.

Rebirth of the Eagle aka False Load of Crap

The Rebirth of the Eagle PowerPoint is the latest "wondrous" bird thing hitting email inboxes. Not since the movie Caracara have I been so blown away with such blatant lies being made about an animal's natural history. The Caracara movie was where the lead actress was a falconer who had a rare bird to hunt with...a caracara...which looked remarkably like a Harris hawk...that she kept in a parrot cage...and would let loose to hunt from her Manhattan high rise...at night...

But I digress!

I'm not sure where this PowerPoint originated, there's not much up on Snopes yet (the urban legend debunking website) but I'm sure it's a matter of time until it is there. From what I'm able to gather, this was a presentation given at a church about change and rebirth, but somehow has made its way onto the web and people are passing this info off as true. Don't believe me, The Raptor Center has been getting emails asking if it's a true story. The worst part is that some "religious" sites have put it up and when people comment that the information is wrong, incorrect, inaccurate, a load of bull, etc. The web operators reply with "well, you're not an eagle expert, so we can't trust your info." Grrrrrrrrrrr. So, I'm going to post it here with the notes as to why it's wrong and links to where it's appropriate.

Let's assume they are talking about bald eagles and not golden eagles or any other eagle species.

Okay, I can find NO records of a bald eagle living to be 70 years old. According to the Bird Banding Lab, the oldest bald eagle documented in the wild was 30 years old and 9 months. I've tried to look up the oldest bald eagle in captivity, but I can find records of eagles living 21 - 47 years. I can say at The Raptor Center, we have an education bald eagle that was admitted as a first year bird in 1983.

And, the only decisions a bald eagle needs to make are: Can I kill and or eat that? Can I mate with or drive that out of my territory? I wonder if that tree would make a good nest? I wonder how many eggs we should try to hatch this year?

I've yet to meet any eagle, hawk, owl or falcon that has "flexible talons". The talons are always hard and they are always curved.

Whoa! Hey! What's that, we were talking bald eagles and now all of a sudden this is a golden eagle? You can't just switch species like that? Yes, that is a golden, not an immature bald eagle--note the golden hackle feathers (feathers on the back of the head and neck) and for the record, this process doesn't happen with any eagle species or ANY real life bird. Anyway, it reads that "Its' long and sharp beak becomes curved." Um...has ANYONE EVER seen an eagle with a straight and pointy beak like you would see on a heron?? NO! Eagles are raptors, two of the characteristics that make a raptor are sharp, curved talons and a strong curved beak.

Oh, hey, look at that, we're back to a bald eagle again. The only time birds feathers get stuck to their chest is when the bird has been involved in an oil spill. They molt out old feathers every year and grow in new ones. Honest, birds get new feathers every year.

No. This doesn't happen and they don't have to make that decision. Apart from molting into adult plumage, eagles do not go through a process of change. And they don't have a choice, they attain adult plumage in five to seven years if they want to or not.

Oh! Another golden eagle again. The only time eagles sit in their nests is to incubate eggs, brood young, or just do some remodeling. It's not someplace they hang out when there is nothing else better to do or if they have to go through some sort of fictitious change.

Let's just deal with the logistics of that sentence. The eagle is knocking its beak against a rock but it still manages to "pluck it out". If a bird did this, it would die. It wouldn't be able to tear and rip its meat in order to swallow it. Eagles and other birds will rub their beak against a hard surface to help wear it down. Like our fingernails, eagle beaks are constantly growing. Sometimes the vets at The Raptor Center have to trim beaks because they can get too long.

Again, this is not a survivable injury (unless the bird is force fed by wildlife rehabbers). If it waits for a missing beak to grow back, it will starve to death. Why am I justifying this, they don't pluck it out to begin with! Arrrrgh. An eagle's talons are the same, they are like our finger nails--they are constantly growing, they do not need to be plucked out.

No, eagles do not pluck out their old feathers. They go through a natural molting process. Did we go through this already?

An eagle that has not been hunting and eating for five months is a dead eagle and certainly not capable of living for another 30 years.

And you may have gone through this with me and thought, "Seriously, Sharon, did you really need to post this and explain that it's not true." Yes. People are forwarding this and asking, "This isn't true is it?" Here's a link to a blog with just the text and the blog writer seems to think this true. Sheesh.

Now, I'm all for taking some artistic license for a good story but this is just bad. It makes me mad when someone has to make up BS about an animal when their natural history and facts are cool enough on their own.

*UPDATE: Snopes does have an entry up now. I first heard about this at The Raptor Center on Tuesday and the woman who wrote the response from TRC on Snopes showed me the letter. I had no idea at the time that it was going on Snopes.

Hooty Owls Photo and Video

Holy Cow! I am working on a blog entry for the latest piece of inaccurate bird crap floating on the Internet and wow, just wow, wait til you see it--if you haven't seen it already.

Wow...

In the meantime, while I was at The Raptor Center today, some our education great horned owls were hooting up a storm in the courtyard--well it is December, prime flirting time for great horneds. We have two great horned owls that are housed next to each other that are imprinted on humans (illegally raised by people as chicks and now kind of think of themselves as the same species as human). When you hoot at them, they'll hoot back, so I got a video of Bubo hooting at me (you'll hear me in the background to get hit hoot). Part way through the the video clip, you will hear a bark and more hooting, that is Lois. And I think she's female because her hoot is a little higher in pitch and because she makes that barking call quite a bit. Both male and female great horneds can give the call, but females do it more often:

The hoots may not sound like the great horned hooting you hear on bird cds or in your yard, but this bird is imprinted and sometimes imprints can't do a perfect hoot. And for all those who cannot watch video, here is a photo of Lois in mid hoot:

The best part of watching great horned owls hoot is seeing that little gular pouch puff out. Sometimes I wish I could have a fluffy little pouch poof out...okay that would probably gross out Non Birding Bill. Here's a video of Lois (the bark heard in this video is me trying to get her to bark back) she did it, but not when my camera was on her:

Crow Lovin'

What a weekend of gifts! The snowy owl was pretty awesome, that was such an exotic bird to me when I looked at it in field guides as a kid. And I got to drive underneath one on Saturday evening! Also, artist Marcy Hall sent us a HUGE vibrant portrait of Cinnamon (above). She's selling the image on shirts, bags, mugs and cards and 10% of the sales goes to the Minnesota Companion Rabbit Association.

While I was doing some writing, I looked out the kitchen window to see some crow flirting going on--not behavior I would expect to see in December in Minnesota! It was hard to get a great photo, we have our storm windows in and I didn't want to open them since that would scare them off--crows are so cagey. I did get about seven seconds of video:

Christmas Bird Counting

I helped out with the Eagan Christmas Bird Count today. Most of the trails were fairly well groomed, but the temps in the Twin Cities started out at -5. But it was at least 20 degrees by the end of the day.

Actually, Linda the woman in the above photo had us hiking pretty hard and fast on some snowy hills. All the hiking had us sweating under our multiple layers of pants. And if you're looking at the above photo thinking that it doesn't look so bad, check out where we had just come from:

Yes, that is where we had just come from. Hoo-wee. Linda wore me out but kept me warm.

Since the goal was to try and count birds, I didn't have a chance to do huge amounts of digiscoping but I did get an okay shot of a tree sparrow.

We wrapped up at about 4pm and since it was evening, I thought I would drive by the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport to see if a snowy owl had shown up yet. I passed by the glycol plant and there on one of the light posts was a snowy owl.

I got out of the car and tried to digiscope a photo of the snowy, but the light wasn't the best, but good enough for the blog. And it's usually best not to lallygag around the glycol plant at an airport with a spotting scope taking photos.

It's a one way road out of the plant so I drove slowly past the lamp and stuck my camera out the window to get one last photo. I love living in Minneapolis where a snowy owl is less than eight miles from home.