Disapproving Rabbits Note

On the off chance anyone here has not seen it, we have a new logo for Disapproving Rabbits and it's available on a shirt and hat. Sunday, November 29, 2009 is the last day to place an order.

We also have stuff in the Zazzle store which will continue to be available. We don't use Zazzle for shirts and hats because our friend Leann at NoodleTogs does such a great job with them, does them for much less money and Leann's husband Jon was in Non Birding Bill's production of THAC0. We love Leann and her family and love that Disapproving Rabbits stuff contributes to their kids' college fund. We use the Zazzle store to create "on request" items like Disapproving Rabbits shoes (who knew), if anyone has any requests for bird or bee stuff, let me know and I'll create it--titmouse shoes anyone? Bee stickers?

Operation Migration Needs Our Help

Well this is a nasty Thanksgiving Week surprise. Operation Migration is a group that has been using ultra light planes to teach an introduced population of whooping cranes their migratory flight path from Wisconsin to Florida. They raise the young cranes in captivity and great pains are taken to make sure they young birds do not imprint on humans...because when the humans are around the cranes, feeding them, tending to them, etc--they must dress and behave as close to a whooping crane as they can.

Once the young birds learn to fly, they are guided by special planes down to Florida--it is a long drawn our process. The flights must be taken in small steps, weather and aerial predators and individual bird strength must be considered. They are actually in the middle of a fall flight right now. Here's a short video that gives you an idea of what they do:

To add to their worries, their hangar used in summer and storing equipment and belongings of some of the crew working with the cranes on the current has been vandalized. Here's an excerpt of a news report from the Wisconsin State Journal:

The Operation Migration effort that is escorting young whooping cranes to refuges in Florida, already beset by weather-caused delays, received a major blow this week when a break-in and heavy damage from vandalism was discovered at its Necedah aircraft hangar.

The Juneau County Sheriff’s Office confirmed the break-in, but was unable to supply details.

In the daily Operation Migration field journal, which reports on the progress of the migration, Joe Duff wrote Wednesday from Livingston County, Ill., that the small nonprofit’s hangar used during the summer was "robbed and vandalized." The lights were smashed and tires slashed on the stored vehicles of two staff members. One of the staff members, who lives with the endangered birds all year, lost all of his belongings, Duff reported.

"His entire life is spent on the road so he uses the hangar to store all of the belongings the rest of us would leave at home. Most of them are now gone or destroyed in some distorted expression of violence that we simply cannot understand," Duff wrote.

Four wings for the ultra-light aircraft, used to escort the birds, were slashed, something that will cost $20,000 to replace. The group does not have insurance. A full-sized sculpture of a whooping crane, made by one of the ultralight pilots, was smashed and spray-painted. One of the ultralights used in the past to lead geese, swans, sandhill cranes and whooping cranes was damaged.

You can read the full story here.

It's going to take a lot of love and donations to make that up. All of us are tapped right now. It's the Holidays, there are gifts and as someone who earns have of her living via free lance work who now has the joy of a car payment reintroduced to her life, it's a tough economy. But, if you have any spare dollars or are looking for a unique gift idea, consider giving what you can to Operation Migration to help their efforts.   

One way that will be easy for some is to just Give a Whoop or a $10 donation. That's two drinks in my neighborhood or about three fancy coffees from a coffee shop. If just ten readers gave $10 each, that's an easy $100 buck for the cause which is much needed right now. Also, check out the Crane Gift Shop--surely you could find some cool gifts for the birder or even the person marginally interested in birds in your life. It's a tight time and many of our favorite organizations and sadly many people we know are struggling. But if you can help, I highly recommend helping this crowd.

Hazards Of Hand Feeding Raptors Part 2

I hope readers who celebrate Thanksgiving had a wonderful day full of favorite foods, gratitude and a minimum of family drama. Non Birding Bill and I thought of all the things we're grateful for and one thing that I am always grateful for is the opportunity to work with birds of prey. There's something captivating about the intimacy of a bird ravenously feeding from your gloved hand.

I found some more video footage I took of hand feeding raptors that again demonstrates some of the perils of hand feeding birds, although not nearly as gross as the red-tailed hawk incident. When you feed peregrines on the fist--especially something like quail, you just know that you're going to end up messy at the end. In the wild, peregrines will fly to a perch and pluck off feathers of their prey to gain access to the meat (many raptors do pluck out the larger feathers of prey). In this video, it's interesting to note how large the quail is in relation to the falcon...and how little is left at the end.

Incidentally, peregrines are one of the reasons I'm no longer a vegetarian. They make eating meat look so, so good.

Did you love the little "quail mustache" that the bird has while chowing down? And here is what your pants (and sometimes your hair) looks like when you are finished feeding a peregrine:

You get covered in plucked feathers and unwanted bits of meat.

A Christmas Carol: The Golden Girls Remix

If you're in the mood for a little something not bird related, Non Birding Bill and I are in a show at the Bryant Lake Bowl. It's a little bit of Dickens and a whole lotta Golden Girls. We opened last night to a full house and a lively audience and got a mention in MetroMix. We're running Sundays (and one Friday) through Christmas. The BLB is a great place, you can come for dinner, a drink and even bowl a game after the show. I highly recommend the artichoke dip.

Pine Siskins Hit This Weekend

We had the Wingscapes Cam up at Mr. Neil's this weekend and I'm fairly certain I witnessed the arrival of pine siskins. I was out and about on Wednesday and I didn't see any. Just the usual suspects like the above tufted titmouse were using the feeders on Wednesday.

Then on Saturday, I noticed one or two pine siskins. The pair either jockedy for position at the thistle feeder with the goldfinches or took their chances with the more easy going black-chickadees at the sunflower feeder. Non Birding Bill and I ended up spending the night and the next morning...

...it was pine siskin palooza! I stepped outside and you could hear that distinctive upward trill of the siskins sounding from the tops of trees, they easily out numbered the goldfinches at this point. I wasn't expecting to get big numbers of siskins this year, last winter we had tons and some even stayed around the Twin Cities metro area to breed. I wonder if we'll get a few redpolls again this year?

Here's an animated gif of the birds flocking down to the stump covered with sunflower and thistle. I love watching the build up with the photos. It starts with a chickadee and then ends with a ton of siskins.

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Hazards of Hand Feeding Raptors

Warning! This video gets kinda gross...especially for me.

After we banded birds this morning at Carpenter Nature Center, I was asked if I could help feed some of their education birds of prey. Their red-tailed hawk is a very easy going imprinted bird. He eats easily from the hand, so I thought I would take a quick video so you could get an idea of what it's like to watch a red-tail up close as he eats a gutted mouse. Well, he got a chunk of mouse lodged in the wrong way and tried to gag it out as if it were a pellet...

And there you have it, the chunk of mouse nailed me right in the kisser. I don't know if you caught it, but you can see a red smudge on the right side of my mouth--from the offending piece of regurgitated mouse.

Here's what hit me. It's bad enough feeding peregrines who pluck feathers all over you, but leave it to a red-tail to up the ante and nail you with actual flesh.
Yuck. The price I pay for cool birding experiences.

Chasing Golden Eagle 42

WARNING: some of the photos in this post are of animal parts. If you are squeamish, this might freak you out. I don't think this is as gross as previous photos in this blog, but Non Birding Bill frequently points out that I have a very different of definition of gross than most.

Golden Eagle 42 has been on the move. Since I have last posted about the bird, he has already gone down to his presumed wintering grounds near Wabasha, MN, but then headed a bit north again. Now we have more questions. How wide is his winter territory and if it's really wide...are there way more golden eagles than the 80 or so that have been documented about Wabasha, MN?

Mark Martell and I were supposed to have a lunch meeting today, but he called early this morning while I was having a little breakfast and working on the previous blog post to ask if I would mind heading out to see if we could find Golden Eagle 42 who was about 60 miles away and had been hanging out in one spot for a week. How could I say no to tracking a golden eagle with a satellite transmitter by using the gps coordinates sent out that morning--it's like bird geocaching! I met Mark and we headed out.

It was a blast following the directions and then trying to match the roads on Google Earth to the terrain and figuring out the roosting location of this eagle. We figured out where the bird was and presumed that since it's deer season and this is a rural area, the eagle was most likely feeding on a deer carcass. We found a dirt road that matched what was on the Google Map and drove around to speak with landowners to get permission to walk out and check the bird's location. One man was just about to head out with his daughter for some deer hunting. Mark showed him the map and explained about the golden eagle. The man was excited and then pointed to the trees behind us to an eagle perched near it's nest--right at the end of his yard! We got an okay and headed out. The road ended we faced the above corn field--everything matched the map. You can't see it in the above photo, but there was a deer stand behind the tree line on the left. The deer stand was close to where the eagle had been hanging out and added credence to the idea that there would be a deer carcass nearby.

We carefully made our way down between the rows of corn. I always feel weird because I can't see over the corn and feel like something going to come out and grab me. We could hear crows going bonkers ahead of us...could they be excitedly dining on a deer carcass? Or better yet mobbing a golden eagle??

We got to a break in the corn. According to the data of the transmitter, Golden Eagle 42 was hanging out in the stand of trees ahead, about in the direction Mark if facing above. The woods were chock full of crows. Mark suggested that I stay out in the field as he approached. If he flushed birds, I would have a better view of them with my scope and he might miss it being closer. It was a plan.

Sure enough, as Mark carefully approached, a large eagle like bird took off! I did a Fred Sanford, clutched my chest, "It's the big one, Elizabeth!!" I trained my scope on it and just slammed my finger onto my Nikon D40 and took photo after photo, hoping against hope we had flushed our boy.

Alas, the eagle banked and quickly revealed this was an immature bald eagle. DANG! But still cool to see an eagle. Mark motioned for me to join him and we headed to the wooded edge.

We found a trail and figured this must be used by the hunters who use the deer stand. One the right it was flat and on the left was a ravine that went down to the creek, we could hear dozens of crows off to our left and a red-tail screaming above our heads.

At the base of the trail we found lots of poop. Mark and I wondered if this was crow poop, red-tailed poop, or possibly eagle poop. We both wondered aloud how close a carcass would be and then we looked ten feet to our left on the edge of the ravine...

There they were, a pile of deer parts and they looked pretty picked clean. The crows, foxes, coyotes, bald eagles and mostly likely Golden Eagle 42 had been taking advantage of this ample food source. I presume this pile was the result of hunting leftovers, but this could also be a pile from road kill. When I worked at the bird store, the county would drop of road kill deer in the marsh behind the store. I was kicking myself for not bringing my WingScapes Cam to see what comes to the carcasses...I may come back it in a few days. Who knows, maybe there will be fresh deer on the pile?

The carcass still had plenty of food to offer birds like the above downy woodpecker flying in. She landed on the rib cage and carefully peeled off scraps of meat and fat--as did several black-capped chickadees. They were all taking advantage of the original suet feeder.

We did not find Golden Eagle 42 but we had one heck of an adventure. Mark would like to trap a few more golden eagles and put transmitters on them to find out more about their breeding grounds. We're learning some interesting things about Golden Eagle 42, but one bird does not speak for a whole wintering population. Mark got that bird from The Raptor Center, he was found caught in a leg hold trap last winter (that eagle has a thing for scavenging). Mark has tried to trap goldens but with no success. He mentioned that last Spring they tracked Golden Eagle 42 to a carcass in this same county. The carcass was in the woods like this pile, not out in the open. Mark had tried baiting golden eagles out in the open and now wonders if he should try doing it in a wooded area like this carcass.

I love bird banding and all the cool stuff we learn from it. Can't wait to see what else happens with this projects.

Identifying Ducks On Aerial Waterfowl Surveys

I was planning on Monday being a busy day: wake up and meet the pilot and fellow counter at the small airport at 7am, count ducks for 2 hours, tweak an article due that day, take our new Kia in to our mechanic for the final approval, edit photos, have all my lines memorized because our rehearsal that night was our first night off book and if there was time a quick bike ride before winter sets in for real. A busy day, but nothing outlandish. The day started out well, as we left the tiny Lakeville airport, the skies were clear, all looked perfect for a morning of counting waterfowl on the Mississippi.

Then we got to the river and noticed a problem. Some very dense low lying fog. Check it out, it's below that water tower, I love the shadow cast by the rising sun.

The fog was just over the river, nowhere else. That makes finding ducks hard and flying low at 120 feet a bit too dangerous, we had to call the flight off for the time being. Our pilot flies all over using his plane to survey waterfowl all over the river, testing out aerial camera equipment, vegetation assessment, and documenting land use violations. He had two other flights to do that day, one to count waterfowl down by LaCrosse and another to take aerial photos of tundra swans. His plan was to fly down and do those surveys and meet up with us for our count later in the afternoon. My schedule wax flexible so that wasn't a problem but then I hatched a crazy plan and asked the pilot if I could fly down with him and observe the counts he was doing on the other side of the river. He wasn't sure since the plane was small and there would be two others on the flight, but fortunately for my short legs, he was able to squeeze me in. This complicated my plan, but it was one heck of an opportunity to watch and learn...and take photos!

And so we flew down to Winona, MN to pick up the other counters. I love, love flying in these small planes. Number 1, I can talk to and interact with the pilot so I know he's awake and sober. He also will mention hazards that he sees like cell phone towers. It's amazing what we can see from up above lie the above farm on top of one of the bluffs near the Mississippi River...or large piles of corn right in front of a deer stand (not pictured above). But flying in these small planes is really conquering my fear of flying and heights.

I'm really getting spoiled traveling through all these tiny airports. For one thing, they all have dogs (note this lovely fellow had his own recliner). How can you not be in a good mood when greeted by a friendly pooch with soft fur and wagging tail? Secondly, there's no airport security, no baggage check, no taking off of shoes, no standing in line, no wanding, and there's free coffee. I'm going to be a bit whiny the next time I'm on a commercial flight.

The flocks of ducks in this stretch of the Mississippi River was off the hook--insane numbers. I was grateful for the opportunity to be an observer, I would have been way too focused on fast id and quick counting to take pictures. The above is a mixture of canvasbacks, scaup, ring-necked ducks and a few coots. There's probably one or two gadwall in there as well.

Here's a closer look of part of that flock, you can make out the canvasback shape (and the bright canvas colored back).

It was so cool to fly over Winona, MN and some of the other areas like Weaver Bottoms, I've gone there so many time to look for tundra swans and I wondered what it would be like to fly over it. I can't believe I actually got to do it. It was so cool.

We flew right over the Brownsville, MN Swan Watch. Note all the white specks? Every single white speck is a tundra swan. We estimated that there were close to 7000 there. There were also thousands of smaller diving ducks mixed in too.

Here's a closer view of the swans, rather than a 2000 feet like the previous photo, here's a view at about 100 feet. There also some mallards and Canada geese mixed in.

If you look closely, you can make out three bald eagles flying away from our plane--there were dozens mixed in on the islands near the swans--there were like mini flocks of eagles. I tried very hard to see if any of them were golden eagles since they are in the general area of where golden eagle 42 is supposed to spend the winter but they were all bald eagles.

Speaking of golden eagle 42, he's hanging out near here and I just got a phone call from Mark Martell and we're going to go out and look for him this morning. I'll post more on the surveys when we get back.

Favorite Holiday Recipe

A friend and fellow blogger called Makeover Momma (wonder if I should have a bird makeover in the blog some day) asked for submissions for our favorite Holiday Recipes!  I think she was hoping for fudge and cookies and gingerbread, but of course, mine is a bird food recipe.  It's one many birders may be familiar with but the recipe always bears repeating.  It's the suet dough recipe that I learned from my favorite bird blogger, Julie Zickefoose.  I have adjusted the recipe a bit for the birds in my area and feel free to make adjustments as you see it.  The original recipe can be found at the Bird Watchers Digest site.

• 1 cup melted lard or beef suet
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 2 cups quick oats
• 2 cups yellow cornmeal
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• half cup sunflower hearts (unsalted)
• half cup crushed pecans (unsalted)
• half cup peanuts (unsalted)

Melt lard and peanut butter together on a low burner. Take off heat, and add remaining ingredients. Spread on a cookie sheet, and allow to cool in the refrigerator until the mixture is just hard enough to cut into pieces. Store in freezer bags and use as needed.

This is a great suet dough to spread into suet logs, spread on the sides of trees, use in the suet sandwich, a tray feeder or offer on a deck rail and dish like Julie does.

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Remember, if you purchase items at my Birdchick's OpenSky Store 20% of the profits are donated to the American Birding Association's birding programs for kids. So you're not only getting products that I personally recommend and own (or have given to family and friends), your support helps grow cool birding opportunities for young birders.

Birds and Beers This Thursday

On the off chance you haven't checked the Birds and Beers tab at the top of the page: The next Birds and Beers is November 19, 2009 at 6:00 pm at Merlin’s Rest.

Birds and Beers is an informal gathering of birders of all abilities–if you’re interested in birds, you’re invited. You can meet other birders–maybe find a carpool buddy, ask about where to find target birds, share cool research projects you might be working on, ask a bird feeding question, share life lists, share some digiscoping tips, promote your blog–the sky is the limit. It’s low key and it’s fun.

There's a Facebook Event Page for it here.